Selected early short stories 1886

by Антон Чехов

  "And I protested my love. I was horrified at my conduct which now seemed to me wild and senseless. It is impossible, gentlemen, to imagine a more violent emotion than I experienced at that moment. Oh, what I went through, what I suffered! If some kind person had thrust a revolver into my hand at that moment, I should have put a bullet through my brains with pleasure.

  " 'Come, come . . .' said the lawyer, slapping me on the shoulder, and he laughed. 'Give over crying. The letter won't reach your fiancée. It was not you who wrote the address but I, and I muddled it so they won't be able to make it out at the post-office. It will be a lesson to you not to argue about what you don't understand.'

  "Now, gentlemen, I leave it to the next to speak."

  The fifth juryman settled himself more comfortably, and had just opened his mouth to begin his story when we heard the clock strike on Spassky Tower.

  "Twelve . . ." one of the jurymen counted. "And into which class, gentlemen, would you put the emotions that are being experienced now by the man we are trying? He, that murderer, is spending the night in a convict cell here in the court, sitting or lying down and of course not sleeping, and throughout the whole sleepless night listening to that chime. What is he thinking of? What visions are haunting him?"

  And the jurymen all suddenly forgot about strong impressions; what their companion who had once written a letter to his Natasha had suffered seemed unimportant, even not amusing; and no one said anything more; they began quietly and in silence lying down to sleep.

  NOTES

  chemists: pharmacists

  zinc vitriol: zinc sulfate, a colorless crystalline powder used as a wood preserver and a dietary supplement

  Demosthenes: 383-211 BC, the most famous orator among the ancient Greeks

  Odysseus was a man of the firmest convictions, but he succumbed to the Syrens: In Book XII of Homer's The Odyssey Odysseus is bound to the mast of the ship by his men as they pass the Syrens so that he can hear their song but remain safe

  * * *

  A Gentleman Friend

  by Anton Chekhov

  THE charming Vanda, or, as she was described in her passport, the "Honourable Citizen Nastasya Kanavkin," found herself, on leaving the hospital, in a position she had never been in before: without a home to go to or a farthing in her pocket. What was she to do?

  The first thing she did was to visit a pawn-broker's and pawn her turquoise ring, her one piece of jewellery. They gave her a rouble for the ring . . . but what can you get for a rouble? You can't buy for that sum a fashionable short jacket, nor a big hat, nor a pair of bronze shoes, and without those things she had a feeling of being, as it were, undressed. She felt as though the very horses and dogs were staring and laughing at the plainness of her dress. And clothes were all she thought about: the question what she should eat and where she should sleep did not trouble her in the least.

  "If only I could meet a gentleman friend," she thought to herself, "I could get some money. . . . There isn't one who would refuse me, I know. . ."

  But no gentleman she knew came her way. It would be easy enough to meet them in the evening at the "Renaissance," but they wouldn't let her in at the "Renaissance "in that shabby dress and with no hat. What was she to do?

  After long hesitation, when she was sick of walking and sitting and thinking, Vanda made up her mind to fall back on her last resource: to go straight to the lodgings of some gentleman friend and ask for money.

  She pondered which to go to. "Misha is out of the question; he's a married man. . . . The old chap with the red hair will be at his office at this time. . ."

  Vanda remembered a dentist, called Finkel, a converted Jew, who six months ago had given her a bracelet, and on whose head she had once emptied a glass of beer at the supper at the German Club. She was awfully pleased at the thought of Finkel.

  "He'll be sure to give it me, if only I find him at home," she thought, as she walked in his direction. "If he doesn't, I'll smash all the lamps in the house."

  Before she reached the dentist's door she thought out her plan of action: she would run laughing up the stairs, dash into the dentist's room and demand twenty-five roubles. But as she touched the bell, this plan seemed to vanish from her mind of itself. Vanda began suddenly feeling frightened and nervous, which was not at all her way. She was bold and saucy enough at drinking parties, but now, dressed in everyday clothes, feeling herself in the position of an ordinary person asking a favour, who might be refused admittance, she felt suddenly timid and humiliated. She was ashamed and frightened.

  "Perhaps he has forgotten me by now," she thought, hardly daring to pull the bell. "And how can I go up to him in such a dress, looking like a beggar or some working girl?"

  And she rang the bell irresolutely.

  She heard steps coming: it was the porter.

  "Is the doctor at home?" she asked.

  She would have been glad now if the porter had said "No," but the latter, instead of answering ushered her into the hall, and helped her off with her coat. The staircase impressed her as luxurious, and magnificent, but of all its splendours what caught her eye most was an immense looking-glass, in which she saw a ragged figure without a fashionable jacket, without a big hat, and without bronze shoes. And it seemed strange to Vanda that, now that she was humbly dressed and looked like a laundress or sewing girl, she felt ashamed, and no trace of her usual boldness and sauciness remained, and in her own mind she no longer thought of herself as Vanda, but as the Nastasya Kanavkin she used to be in the old days. . . .

  "Walk in, please," said a maidservant, showing her into the consulting-room. "The doctor will be here in a minute. Sit down."

  Vanda sank into a soft arm-chair.

  "I'll ask him to lend it me," she thought; "that will be quite proper, for, after all, I do know him. If only that servant would go. I don't like to ask before her. What does she want to stand there for?"

  Five minutes later the door opened and Finkel came in. He was a tall, dark Jew, with fat cheeks and bulging eyes. His cheeks, his eyes, his chest, his body, all of him was so well fed, so loathsome and repellent! At the "Renaissance" and the German Club he had usually been rather tipsy, and would spend his money freely on women, and be very long-suffering and patient with their pranks (when Vanda, for instance, poured the beer over his head, he simply smiled and shook his finger at her): now he had a cross, sleepy expression and looked solemn and frigid like a police captain, and he kept chewing something.

  "What can I do for you?" he asked, without looking at Vanda.

  Vanda looked at the serious countenance of the maid and the smug figure of Finkel, who apparently did not recognize her, and she turned red.

  "What can I do for you?" repeated the dentist a little irritably.

  "I've got toothache," murmured Vanda.

  "Aha! . . . Which is the tooth? Where?"

  Vanda remembered she had a hole in one of her teeth.

  "At the bottom . . . on the right . . ." she said.

  "Hm! . . . Open your mouth."

  Finkel frowned and, holding his breath, began examining the tooth.

  "Does it hurt?" he asked, digging into it with a steel instrument.

  "Yes," Vanda replied, untruthfully.

  "Shall I remind him?" she was wondering. "He would be sure to remember me. But that servant! Why will she stand there?"

  Finkel suddenly snorted like a steam-engine right into her mouth, and said:

  "I don't advise you to have it stopped. That tooth will never be worth keeping anyhow."

  After probing the tooth a little more and soiling Vanda's lips and gums with his tobacco-stained fingers, he held his breath again, and put something cold into her mouth. Vanda suddenly felt a sharp pain, cried out, and clutched at Finkel's hand.

  "It's all right, it's all right," he muttered; "don't you be frightened! That tooth would have been no use to you, anyway . . . you must be brave. . ."

  And his tobacco-stained fingers, smeared with blood, held up the tooth t
o her eyes, while the maid approached and put a basin to her mouth.

  "You wash out your mouth with cold water when you get home, and that will stop the bleeding," said Finkel.

  He stood before her with the air of a man expecting her to go, waiting to be left in peace.

  "Good-day," she said, turning towards the door.

  "Hm! . . . and how about my fee?" enquired Finkel, in a jesting tone.

  "Oh, yes!" Vanda remembered, blushing, and she handed the Jew the rouble that had been given her for her ring.

  When she got out into the street she felt more overwhelmed with shame than before, but now it was not her poverty she was ashamed of. She was unconscious now of not having a big hat and a fashionable jacket. She walked along the street, spitting blood, and brooding on her life, her ugly, wretched life, and the insults she had endured, and would have to endure to-morrow, and next week, and all her life, up to the very day of her death.

  "Oh! how awful it is! My God, how fearful!"

  Next day, however, she was back at the "Renaissance," and dancing there. She had on an enormous new red hat, a new fashionable jacket, and bronze shoes. And she was taken out to supper by a young merchant up from Kazan.

  NOTES

  passport: Russians had to have passports even for travel within Russia itself

  Kanavkin: the name suggests "gutter" or "ditch"

  * * *

  A Happy Man

  by Anton Chekhov

  THE passenger train is just starting from Bologoe, the junction on the Petersburg-Moscow line. In a second-class smoking compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight of the carriage. They had just had a meal, and now, snugly ensconced in their seats, they are trying to go to sleep. Stillness.

  The door opens and in there walks a tall, lanky figure straight as a poker, with a ginger-coloured hat and a smart overcoat, wonderfully suggestive of a journalist in Jules Verne or on the comic stage.

  The figure stands still in the middle of the compartment for a long while, breathing heavily, screwing up his eyes and peering at the seats.

  "No, wrong again!" he mutters. "What the deuce! It's positively revolting! No, the wrong one again!"

  One of the passengers stares at the figure and utters a shout of joy:

  "Ivan Alexyevitch! what brings you here? Is it you?"

  The poker-like gentleman starts, stares blankly at the passenger, and recognizing him claps his hands with delight.

  "Ha! Pyotr Petrovitch," he says. "How many summers, how many winters! I didn't know you were in this train."

  "How are you getting on?"

  "I am all right; the only thing is, my dear fellow, I've lost my compartment and I simply can't find it. What an idiot I am! I ought to be thrashed!"

  The poker-like gentleman sways a little unsteadily and sniggers.

  "Queer things do happen!" he continues. "I stepped out just after the second bell to get a glass of brandy. I got it, of course. Well, I thought, since it's a long way to the next station, it would be as well to have a second glass. While I was thinking about it and drinking it the third bell rang. . . . I ran like mad and jumped into the first carriage. I am an idiot! I am the son of a hen!"

  "But you seem in very good spirits," observes Pyotr Petrovitch. "Come and sit down! There's room and a welcome."

  "No, no. . . . I'm off to look for my carriage. Good-bye!"

  "You'll fall between the carriages in the dark if you don't look out! Sit down, and when we get to a station you'll find your own compartment. Sit down!"

  Ivan Alexyevitch heaves a sigh and irresolutely sits down facing Pyotr Petrovitch. He is visibly excited, and fidgets as though he were sitting on thorns.

  "Where are you travelling to?" Pyotr Petrovitch enquires.

  "I? Into space. There is such a turmoil in my head that I couldn't tell where I am going myself. I go where fate takes me. Ha-ha! My dear fellow, have you ever seen a happy fool? No? Well, then, take a look at one. You behold the happiest of mortals! Yes! Don't you see something from my face?"

  "Well, one can see you're a bit . . . a tiny bit so-so."

  "I dare say I look awfully stupid just now. Ach! it's a pity I haven't a looking-glass, I should like to look at my counting-house. My dear fellow, I feel I am turning into an idiot, honour bright. Ha-ha! Would you believe it, I'm on my honeymoon. Am I not the son of a hen?"

  "You? Do you mean to say you are married?"

  "To-day, my dear boy. We came away straight after the wedding."

  Congratulations and the usual questions follow. "Well, you are a fellow!" laughs Pyotr Petrovitch. "That's why you are rigged out such a dandy."

  "Yes, indeed. . . . To complete the illusion, I've even sprinkled myself with scent. I am over my ears in vanity! No care, no thought, nothing but a sensation of something or other . . . deuce knows what to call it . . . beatitude or something? I've never felt so grand in my life!"

  Ivan Alexyevitch shuts his eyes and waggles his head.

  "I'm revoltingly happy," he says. "Just think; in a minute I shall go to my compartment. There on the seat near the window is sitting a being who is, so to say, devoted to you with her whole being. A little blonde with a little nose . . . little fingers. . . . My little darling! My angel! My little poppet! Phylloxera of my soul! And her little foot! Good God! A little foot not like our beetle-crushers, but something miniature, fairylike, allegorical. I could pick it up and eat it, that little foot! Oh, but you don't understand! You're a materialist, of course, you begin analyzing at once, and one thing and another. You are cold-hearted bachelors, that's what you are! When you get married you'll think of me. 'Where's Ivan Alexyevitch now?' you'll say. Yes; so in a minute I'm going to my compartment. There she is waiting for me with impatience . . . in joyful anticipation of my appearance. She'll have a smile to greet me. I sit down beside her and take her chin with my two fingers.

  Ivan Alexyevitch waggles his head and goes off into a chuckle of delight.

  "Then I lay my noddle on her shoulder and put my arm round her waist. Around all is silence, you know . . . poetic twilight. I could embrace the whole world at such a moment. Pyotr Petrovitch, allow me to embrace you!"

  "Delighted, I'm sure." The two friends embrace while the passengers laugh in chorus. And the happy bridegroom continues:

  "And to complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to complete the illusion, one goes to the refreshment-room and tosses off two or three glasses. And then something happens in your head and your heart, finer than you can read of in a fairy tale. I am a man of no importance, but I feel as though I were limitless: I embrace the whole world!"

  The passengers, looking at the tipsy and blissful bridegroom, are infected by his cheerfulness and no longer feel sleepy. Instead of one listener, Ivan Alexyevitch has now an audience of five. He wriggles and splutters, gesticulates, and prattles on without ceasing. He laughs and they all laugh.

  "Gentlemen, gentlemen, don't think so much! Damn all this analysis! If you want a drink, drink, no need to philosophize as to whether it's bad for you or not. . . . Damn all this philosophy and psychology!"

  The guard walks through the compartment.

  "My dear fellow," the bridegroom addresses him, "when you pass through the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with a white bird and tell her I'm here!"

  "Yes, sir. Only there isn't a No. 209 in this train; there's 219!"

  "Well, 219, then! It's all the same. Tell that lady, then, that her husband is all right!"

  Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:

  "Husband. . . . Lady. . . . All in a minute! Husband. . . . Ha-ha! I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a husband! Ach, idiot! But think of her! . . . Yesterday she was a little girl, a midget . . . it s simply incredible!"

  "Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man," observes one of the passengers; "one as soon expects to see a white elephant."

  "Yes, and whose fault is it?" says Ivan Alexyevitch, str
etching his long legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed toes. "If you are not happy it's your own fault! Yes, what else do you suppose it is? Man is the creator of his own happiness. If you want to be happy you will be, but you don't want to be! You obstinately turn away from happiness."

  "Why, what next! How do you make that out?"

  "Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his life man should love. When that time comes you should love like a house on fire, but you won't heed the dictates of nature, you keep waiting for something. What's more, it's laid down by law that the normal man should enter upon matrimony. There's no happiness without marriage. When the propitious moment has come, get married. There's no use in shilly-shallying. . . . But you don't get married, you keep waiting for something! Then the Scriptures tell us that 'wine maketh glad the heart of man.' . . . If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go to the refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not to be too clever, but to follow the beaten track! The beaten track is a grand thing!"

  "You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the devil is he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured mother-in-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the winds? Everything depends on chance. If we had an accident at this moment you'd sing a different tune."

  "Stuff and nonsense!" retorts the bridegroom. "Railway accidents only happen once a year. I'm not afraid of an accident, for there is no reason for one. Accidents are exceptional! Confound them! I don't want to talk of them! Oh, I believe we're stopping at a station."

  "Where are you going now?" asks Pyotr Petrovitch. "To Moscow or somewhere further south?

  "Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when I'm on my way to the north?"

  "But Moscow isn't in the north."

  "I know that, but we're on our way to Petersburg," says Ivan Alexyevitch.

  "We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!"

  "To Moscow? What do you mean?" says the bridegroom in amazement.