Stories

by Anton Chekhov

  There’s a dead silence, such a silence that, as some writer has said, it even rings in your ears. Time moves slowly, the strips of moonlight on the windowsill don’t change their position, as if frozen … Dawn is still far off

  But now the gate in the fence creaks, someone steals up and, breaking a branch from one of the scrawny trees, cautiously taps on the window with it.

  “Nikolai Stepanych!” I hear a whisper. “Nikolai Stepanych!”

  I open the window, and think I’m dreaming: by the window, pressing herself to the wall, stands a woman in a black dress, brightly lit by the moon, gazing at me with big eyes. The moon makes her face look pale, stern, and fantastic, as if made of marble. Her chin trembles.

  “It’s me …” she says. “Me … Katya!”

  In the moonlight all women’s eyes look big and black, people look taller and paler, which is probably why I didn’t recognize her at first.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Forgive me,” she says. “For some reason I felt unbearably sick at heart … I couldn’t stand it and came here … There was light in your window and … and I decided to knock … Excuse me … Oh, if only you knew how sick at heart I am! What are you doing now?”

  “Nothing … Insomnia.”

  “I had a sort of presentiment. Anyhow, it’s nonsense.”

  Her eyebrows rise, her eyes glisten with tears, and her whole face lights up with that familiar, long-absent expression of trustfulness.

  “Nikolai Stepanych!” she says imploringly, reaching out to me with both arms. “My dear, I beg you … I implore you … If you don’t disdain my friendship and my respect for you, agree to do what I ask you!”

  “What is it?”

  “Take my money from me!”

  “Well, what will you think up next! Why should I need your money?”

  “You’ll go somewhere for a cure … You need a cure. Will you take it? Yes? Yes, my dearest?”

  She peers greedily into my face and repeats:

  “You’ll take it? Yes?”

  “No, my friend, I won’t…” I say. “Thank you.”

  She turns her back to me and hangs her head. I probably refused her in such a tone as to prohibit any further discussion of money.

  “Go home to bed,” I say. “We’ll see each other tomorrow.”

  “So you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks glumly.

  “I didn’t say that. But your money is of no use to me now.”

  “Forgive me …” she says, lowering her voice a whole octave. “I understand you … To be indebted to a person like me … a retired actress … Anyhow, good-bye …”

  And she leaves so quickly that I don’t even have time to say good-bye to her.

  VI

  I’m in Kharkov.

  Since it would be useless, and beyond my strength, to struggle with my present mood, I’ve decided that the last days of my life will be irreproachable at least in the formal sense; if I’m not right in my attitude towards my family, which I’m perfectly aware of, I will try to do what they want me to do. If it’s go to Kharkov, I go to Kharkov. Besides, I’ve become so indifferent to everything lately that it makes absolutely no difference to me where I go, to Kharkov, to Paris, or to Berdichev.25

  I arrived here around noon and put up at a hotel not far from the cathedral. On the train I got seasick and suffered from the drafts, so now I’m sitting on the bed, holding my head and waiting for my tic. I ought to go and see the professors I know here, but I haven’t the urge or the strength.

  The old servant on my floor comes to ask whether I have bed linen. I keep him for about five minutes and ask him several questions about Gnekker, on whose account I’ve come here. The servant turns out to be a native of Kharkov, knows it like the palm of his hand, but doesn’t remember a single house that bears the name of Gnekker. I ask about country estates—same answer.

  The clock in the corridor strikes one, then two, then three … These last months of my life, as I wait for death, seem to me far longer than my whole life. And never before was I able to be so reconciled to the slowness of time as now. Before, when I waited at the station for a train or sat at an examination, a quarter of an hour seemed like an eternity, but now I can spend the whole night sitting motionless on my bed and think with perfect indifference that tomorrow the night will be just as long and colorless, and the night after …

  In the corridor it strikes five o’clock, six, seven … It’s getting dark.

  There’s a dull pain in my cheek—the tic is beginning. To occupy myself with thoughts, I put myself in my former point of view, when I was not indifferent, and ask: why am I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sitting in this small hotel room, on this bed with its strange gray blanket? Why am I looking at this cheap tin washbasin and listening to the trashy clock clanking in the corridor? Can all this be worthy of my fame and my high station among people? And my response to these questions is a smile. The naïveté with which, in my youth, I exaggerated the importance of renown and the exclusive position celebrities supposedly enjoy, strikes me as ridiculous. I’m well known, my name is spoken with awe, my portrait has been published in Niva and World Illustrated,26 I’ve even read my own biography in a certain German magazine—and what of it? I’m sitting all alone in a strange town, on a strange bed, rubbing my aching cheek with my palm … Family squabbles, merciless creditors, rude railway workers, the inconvenience of the passport system,27 expensive and unwholesome food in the buffets, universal ignorance and rudeness of behavior—all that and many other things it would take too long to enumerate, concern me no less than any tradesman known only in the lane where he lives. How, then, does the exclusiveness of my position manifest itself? Suppose I’m famous a thousand times over, that I’m a hero and the pride of my motherland; all the newspapers publish bulletins about my illness, expressions of sympathy come to me by mail from colleagues, students, the public; but all that will not prevent me from dying in a strange bed, in anguish, in utter solitude … No one’s to blame for that, of course, but, sinner that I am, I dislike my popular name. It seems to me that it has betrayed me.

  Around ten o’clock I fall asleep and, despite my tic, sleep soundly and would go on sleeping for a long time if no one woke me up. Shortly after one o’clock there is a sudden knock at the door.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Telegram!”

  “You might have brought it tomorrow,” I grumble as I take the telegram from the servant. “Now I won’t fall back to sleep.”

  “Sorry, sir. You had a light burning, I thought you weren’t asleep.”

  I open the telegram and look at the signature first: from my wife. What does she want?

  “Yesterday Gnekker and Liza secretly married. Come back.”

  I read this telegram and am frightened for a moment. What frightens me is not what Gnekker and Liza have done, but the indifference with which I receive the news of their marriage. They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

  I lie down in bed again and begin inventing thoughts to occupy myself with. What to think about? It seems everything has already been thought through, and there’s nothing now that is capable of stirring my mind.

  When dawn comes I’m sitting in bed with my arms around my knees and, since I have nothing to do, am trying to know myself. “Know yourself”28—what splendid and useful advice; too bad the ancients never thought of showing how to use this advice.

  Formerly, when I would feel a desire to understand someone, or myself, I would take into consideration not actions, in which everything is relative, but wishes. Tell me what you want and I’ll tell you who you are.

  And now I examine myself: what do I want?

  I want our wives, children, friends, and students to love in us not the name, not the brand or label, but the ordinary person. What else? I’d like to have helpers and heirs. What else? I’d like to wake up in a hundred years and have at least a glimp
se of what’s happened with science. I’d like to live another ten years or so … And what more?

  Nothing more. I think, I think for a long time, and can’t think up anything else. And however much I think, however widely my thought ranges, it’s clear to me that my wishes lack some chief thing, some very important thing. In my predilection for science, in my wish to live, in this sitting on a strange bed and trying to know myself, in all the thoughts, feelings, and conceptions I form about everything, something general is lacking that would unite it all into a single whole. Each feeling and thought lives separately in me, and in all my opinions about science, the theater, literature, students, and in all the pictures drawn by my imagination, even the most skillful analyst would be unable to find what is known as a general idea or the god of the living man.

  And if there isn’t that, there’s nothing.

  Given such poverty, a serious illness, the fear of death, the influence of circumstances or of people, would be enough to overturn and smash to pieces all that I used to consider my worldview, and in which I saw the meaning and joy of my life. And therefore it’s not at all surprising that I should darken the last months of my life with thoughts and feelings worthy of a slave and a barbarian, and that I’m now indifferent and do not notice the dawn. When a man lacks that which is higher and stronger than any external influence, a good cold really is enough to make him lose his balance and begin to see an owl in every bird and hear a dog’s howl in every sound. And at that moment all his pessimism or optimism, together with his thoughts great and small, have the significance of mere symptoms and nothing more.

  I am defeated. If so, there’s no point in continuing to think, no point in talking. I’ll sit and silently wait for what comes.

  In the morning the servant brings me tea and a copy of the local newspaper. I mechanically read through the announcements on the first page, the editorial, the excerpts from other newspapers and magazines, the news reports … In the news I find, among other things, the following item: “Yesterday our famous scientist, the acclaimed professor Nikolai Stepanovich So-and-so, arrived in Kharkov on the express train and is staying at such-and-such hotel.”

  Evidently, great names are created so as to live by themselves, apart from their bearers. Now my name is peacefully going about Kharkov; in some three months, inscribed in gold letters on a tombstone, it will shine like the sun itself—while I’m already covered with moss …

  A light tap at the door. Someone wants me.

  “Who’s there? Come in!”

  The door opens and I step back in surprise, hastily closing the skirts of my dressing gown. Katya stands before me.

  “Good morning,” she says, breathing heavily after climbing the stairs. “You didn’t expect me? I … I’ve come here, too.”

  She sits down and continues, stammering and not looking at me.

  “Why don’t you wish me good morning? I’ve come, too … today … I found out you were in this hotel and looked you up.”

  “I’m very glad to see you,” I say, shrugging my shoulders, “but I’m surprised … It’s as if you dropped from the sky. Why are you here?”

  “Me? I … simply up and came.”

  Silence. Suddenly she gets up impetuously and steps towards me.

  “Nikolai Stepanych!” she says, turning pale and clasping her hands to her breast. “Nikolai Stepanych! I can’t live like this any longer! I can’t! For the love of God, tell me quickly, this very moment: what am I to do? Tell me, what am I to do?”

  “But what can I say?” I’m perplexed. “There’s nothing.”

  “Tell me, I implore you!” she goes on, choking and trembling all over. “I swear to you, I can’t live like this any longer! It’s beyond my strength!”

  She drops into a chair and begins to sob. She throws her head back, wrings her hands, stamps her feet; her hat has fallen off her head and dangles from an elastic, her hair is disheveled.

  “Help me! Help me!” she implores. “I can’t go on!”

  She takes a handkerchief from her traveling bag, and along with it pulls out several letters that fall from her knees onto the floor. I pick them up from the floor and on one of them recognize Mikhail Fyodorovich’s handwriting, and unintentionally read a bit of one word—“passionat …”

  “There’s nothing I can tell you, Katya,” I say.

  “Help me!” she sobs, seizing my hand and kissing it. “You’re my father, my only friend! You’re intelligent, educated, you’ve lived a long time! You’ve been a teacher! Tell me: what am I to do?”

  “In all conscience, Katya, I don’t know …”

  I’m at a loss, embarrassed, touched by her sobbing, and barely able to keep my feet.

  “Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say with a forced smile. “Enough crying!”

  And I add at once in a sinking voice:

  “I’ll soon be no more, Katya …”

  “Just one word, one word!” she weeps, holding her arms out to me. “What am I to do?”

  “You’re a strange one, really …” I murmur. “I don’t understand! Such a clever girl and suddenly—there you go, bursting into tears! …

  Silence ensues. Katya straightens her hair, puts her hat on, then crumples the letters and stuffs them into her bag—and all this silently and unhurriedly Her face, breast, and gloves are wet with tears, but the expression of her face is already dry, severe … I look at her and feel ashamed that I’m happier than she is. I’ve noticed the absence in me of what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea only shortly before death, in the twilight of my days, but the soul of this poor thing has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her life!

  “Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say.

  “No, thank you,” she replies coldly.

  Another minute passes in silence.

  “I don’t like Kharkov,” I say. “Much too gray. A gray sort of city.”

  “Yes, perhaps so … Not pretty … I won’t stay long … Passing through. I’m leaving today.”

  “Where for?”

  “The Crimea … I mean, the Caucasus.”

  “Ah. For long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Katya gets up and, smiling coldly, gives me her hand without looking at me.

  I want to ask: “So you won’t be at my funeral?” But she doesn’t look at me, her hand is cold, like a stranger’s. I silently walk with her to the door … Now she has left my room and walks down the long corridor without looking back. She knows I’m following her with my eyes and will probably look back from the turn.

  No, she didn’t look back. The black dress flashed a last time, the footsteps faded away … Farewell, my treasure!

  NOVEMBER 1889

  GUSEV

  I

  It has grown dark, it will soon be night.

  Gusev, a discharged private, sits up on his cot and says in a low voice:

  “Can you hear, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan told me their ship ran over a big fish as it went and broke a hole in its bottom.”

  The man of unknown status whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sick bay calls Pavel Ivanych, says nothing, as if he has not heard.

  And again there is silence … The wind plays in the rigging, the propeller thuds, the waves splash, the cots creak, but the ear is long accustomed to it all, and it seems as if everything around is asleep and still. It is boring. The other three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who played cards all day long, are now asleep and muttering to themselves.

  It seems the ship is beginning to toss. The cot under Gusev slowly goes up and down, as if sighing—it does it once, twice, a third time … Something hits the floor with a clank: a mug must have fallen.

  “The wind has snapped its chain …” says Gusev, listening.

  This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and replies irritably:

  “First you’ve got a ship running over a fish, then the wind snaps its chain … Is the wind a beast that it can snap its chain?”
r />   “That’s how Christian folk talk.”

  “And Christian folk are as ignorant as you are … What else do they say? You have to keep your head on your shoulders and think. Senseless man.”

  Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the ship tosses, he usually gets angry and the least trifle irritates him. But there is, in Gusev’s opinion, absolutely nothing to get angry about. What is so strange or tricky, for instance, even in the fish, or in the wind snapping its chain? Suppose the fish is as big as a mountain, and its back is as hard as a sturgeon’s; suppose, too, that at the world’s end there are thick stone walls, and the angry winds are chained to the walls … If they have not snapped their chains, why are they rushing about like crazy all over the sea and straining like dogs? If they do not get chained up, where do they go when it is still?

  Gusev spends a long time thinking about fish as big as mountains and thick, rusty chains, then he gets bored and begins thinking about his homeland, to which he is now returning after serving for five years in the Far East. He pictures an enormous pond covered with snow … On one side of the pond, a porcelain factory the color of brick, with a tall smokestack and clouds of black smoke; on the other side, a village … Out of a yard, the fifth from the end, drives a sleigh with his brother Alexei in it; behind him sits his boy Vanka in big felt boots and the girl Akulka, also in felt boots. Alexei is tipsy, Vanka is laughing, and Akulka’s face cannot be seen—she is all wrapped up.

  “Worse luck, he’ll get the kids chilled …” thinks Gusev. “Lord, send them good sense,” he whispers, “to honor their parents and not be cleverer than their mother and father …”

  “You need new soles there,” the sick sailor mutters in a bass voice while he sleeps. “Aye-aye!”