The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91

by Anton Chekhov

  A good conductor does twenty things at once when interpreting a composer: he reads the score, waves his baton, watches the singer, motions sideways towards the drums or French horns, and so on. That is just what I do when lecturing. Before me are one hundred and fifty faces, all different, with three hundred eyes staring straight at me. My aim is to vanquish this many-headed hydra. If I can keep their level of concentration and comprehension clearly in mind every minute of my lecture, then they are in my power. My other enemy dwells within me. This is the infinite variety of forms, phenomena and laws, and the mass of ideas – my own and other people’s – conditioned by them. Every minute I must be skilful enough to snatch from this vast body of material what is most important and vital and at the same time keep pace with the speed of my thoughts and present them in a form that will be intelligible to the hydra and arouse its attention; at the same time I must be ever-vigilant, so that I convey my ideas not simply as they happen to accumulate, but in the specific order which is essential for the correct composition of the picture I’m trying to paint. Further, I endeavour to use polished language, to ensure that my definitions are brief and precise, my phraseology as simple and elegant as possible. Every minute I have to hold myself in check and remember that I have only an hour and forty minutes at my disposal. In brief, I have my work cut out. At one and the same time I have to play the scholar, the pedagogue and the orator – and woe betide me if the orator gets the better of the pedagogue and scholar, or vice versa.

  After lecturing for about a quarter or half an hour, you suddenly notice that the students are beginning to stare at the ceiling or at Pyotr Ignatyevich. One of them feels for his handkerchief, another fidgets in his seat, another smiles at his own thoughts… This means their attention is flagging and action is necessary. I seize the first opportunity and crack a joke. The one hundred and fifty faces grin broadly, eyes gaily sparkle, the sea briefly roars. I laugh as well. Their concentration has been revived and I can continue.

  No debate, diversion or game has ever given me such enjoyment as lecturing. Only when lecturing have I been able to let myself go completely and come to understand that inspiration is not an invention of poets, but really does exist. And I don’t think that even after his most piquant labour Hercules ever felt such voluptuous exhaustion as I do after lecturing.

  All that is in the past – now lecturing is nothing but sheer torture for me. Barely half an hour goes by before I start to feel an overwhelming weakness in my legs and shoulders. I sit in an armchair, but I am not used to lecturing sitting down. A minute later I get up and continue standing – then I sit down again. My mouth goes dry, my voice grows hoarse, my head spins… To hide my condition from the audience I keep drinking water, cough, frequently blow my nose as if I have a cold, casually make irrelevant jokes and finish by announcing the break before I should. But above all I feel ashamed.

  My conscience and reason tell me that the best thing I could do now would be to deliver a valedictory lecture to my boys, to say one last word to them, to give them my blessing and surrender my post to a younger and stronger man than myself. But as God is my judge I lack the courage to act according to my conscience.

  Unfortunately I am neither philosopher nor theologian. I know perfectly well that I have no more than six months to live. I think I should really be concerned most of all with the gloom beyond the grave and the ghosts that will haunt my sepulchral slumbers. But for some reason my heart rejects these questions, although my mind fully recognizes their full import. Now that I am on the brink of death only science has any interest for me – it is the same as twenty to thirty years ago. When I draw my last breath I shall still believe that science is the most important, beautiful and vital thing in man’s life, that it always has been and always will be the highest manifestation of love and that only through science will man conquer nature and himself. Although this belief may appear naïve and based on false assumptions, it’s not my fault if this is what I believe and not otherwise. This is my creed and I am powerless to destroy it.

  But this is beside the point. All I ask is for people to indulge my weakness and to understand that to tear from his professorial chair and his students a man for whom the fate of the bone medulla is of more interest than the ultimate purpose of the universe would be equivalent to seizing him and nailing him in his coffin without waiting for him to die.

  Because of my insomnia and the strain of fighting my increasing weakness strange things are happening to me. In the middle of my lecture tears suddenly choke me, my eyes begin to smart and I feel a passionate, hysterical urge to stretch my hands out and complain out loud. I want to shout out loud that fate has sentenced me, a famous man, to death and that within about six months another person will be holding sway in the lecture-hall. I want to cry out that I’ve been poisoned. New thoughts that I’ve never known before have poisoned the last few days of my life and they continue to sting my brain like mosquitoes. Just now my position seems so terrible that I want my entire audience to leap from their seats in horror and rush panic-stricken for the exit, shrieking in despair.

  Such moments are not easy to endure.

  II

  After the lecture I stay at home and work. I read journals, theses, or prepare my next lecture; sometimes I do some writing. My work is constantly interrupted as I have to receive visitors.

  The door bell rings. It’s a colleague who has come to discuss some academic matter. He enters with his hat and walking-stick. Thrusting both at me he says, ‘I’ve just dropped in for a minute… only a minute! Now, don’t get up, my dear colleague! Just a couple of words…’

  From the start we try to show each other how exceptionally polite we are and how terribly delighted we are to see each other. I sit him in an armchair and he makes me sit as well – as we do this we carefully stroke each other’s waist, touch each other’s buttons and it seems that we are feeling each other and are afraid of burning our fingers. We both laugh, although we don’t say anything amusing. Seated in our chairs, we lean our heads towards each other and speak in subdued voices. However cordially disposed we might be to each other, we cannot help gilding our conversation with all kinds of pretentious piffle like: ‘As you so justly deigned to observe’, or ‘As I already had the honour of informing you.’ And we cannot help laughing out loud if one of us cracks a joke, however poor. His business completed, my colleague abruptly gets up, waves his hat at my work and begins to say goodbye. Again we paw each other, again we laugh. I see him into the hall. Here I help him on with his fur coat, but he makes every effort to decline so signal an honour. Then, when Yegor opens the front door, my colleague assures me that I will catch cold, but I pretend that I’m prepared to accompany him right out into the street even. Finally, when I’m back in my study, my face is still smiling – from inertia I suppose.

  A little later the bell rings again. Someone enters the hall, spends a long time removing his coat and coughing. Yegor announces that a student has arrived. ‘Ask him in,’ I tell Yegor. A minute later in comes a young man of pleasant appearance. For the past year relations between us have been strained: he makes a dreadful hash of his exams and I give him the lowest mark. Every year I have about seven young hopefuls like him whom I fail – or ‘plough’ in student slang. Those who fail their exams, either through inability or sickness, usually bear their cross patiently and don’t try to bargain with me. The only ones who come to my house to bargain are the sanguine, expansive types for whom hard cramming spoils their appetite and prevents them from going to the opera regularly. To the first I am merciful, the latter I keep ‘ploughing’ all year round.

  ‘Please sit down,’ I tell my visitor. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Sorry to trouble you, professor,’ he begins, faltering and not looking me in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t have taken the liberty of disturbing you if… I… er… I’ve sat your exam five times and I’ve been… er… ploughed every time. I’m begging you, please be good enough to pass me, because…’

  The a
rgument all these idlers defend themselves with is invariably the same: they have passed all their other subjects with distinction, only in mine have they come to grief, which is all the more surprising, since they have always studied my subject so diligently and know it backwards. They have failed because of some mysterious misunderstanding.

  ‘Forgive me, my friend,’ I tell my visitor, ‘but I cannot pass you. Go and study your lecture notes a bit more and come and see me again. Then we shall see.’

  A pause. I have the urge to make my student suffer a little for preferring beer and the opera to learning and I say with a sigh, ‘I think it would be best if you gave up medicine altogether. If someone of your ability can’t pass his exams it’s obvious you have neither the desire nor the vocation to become a doctor.’

  The young hopeful’s face lengthens. ‘I’m sorry, professor, but it would be very odd if I did that, to say the least,’ he laughs. ‘Study for five years and then suddenly chuck it all in!’

  ‘Well, why not? It’s better to lose five years than spend the rest of your life doing something you don’t like.’

  But immediately I feel sorry for him and hasten to add, ‘Well, do as you like. Study a bit more and then come and see me again.’

  ‘When?’ the idler asks in an empty voice.

  ‘Whenever you like. How about tomorrow?’

  And in his good-natured eyes I can read, ‘All right, I’ll come, but you’ll only plough me again, you bastard!’

  ‘Of course,’ I say, ‘you won’t know any more medicine even if you sit my exam another fifteen times. But it’s all good character training – for that you should be grateful.’

  Silence follows. I get up and wait for my visitor to leave, but he stands there looking out of the window, fingering his beard and thinking. The whole thing’s becoming a bore.

  The young hopeful’s voice is agreeably mellow, his eyes are intelligent and mocking, his complacent face is somewhat bloated from too much beer-drinking and lying around on his sofa for hours. No doubt he could tell me many interesting things about the opera, his love affairs, his fellow-students of whom he is very fond, but unfortunately it isn’t the done thing to discuss such matters. Yet I would gladly listen.

  ‘Professor! On my word of honour, if you pass me I’ll… er…’

  The moment we arrive at ‘word of honour’ I gesture in despair and sit at my desk. The student ponders for another minute.

  ‘In that case, goodbye,’ he says dejectedly. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Goodbye, old chap. Look after yourself.’

  Hesitantly he goes into the hall, slowly puts on his coat and probably spends a long time when he’s out in the street mulling everything over again. And then, failing to think up anything except ‘old devil’ with regard to myself, he goes into a cheap restaurant for a glass of beer and something to eat, then back home to bed. May your ashes rest in peace, honest toiler!

  The bell rings for the third time. In comes a young doctor wearing a new black suit, gold-rimmed spectacles and – naturally – a white tie. He introduces himself. I sit him down and ask what I can do for him. Rather nervously, this youthful devotee of learning tells me first that this year he has passed his qualifying exam for his doctorate: it only remains to write the thesis. He would like me to supervise him and he would be awfully obliged if I could suggest a subject.

  ‘Delighted to be of assistance, my dear colleague,’ I say, ‘but let’s first see if we agree about what a thesis is. The word is generally taken to mean an essay which is the product of original work. Isn’t that so? But compositions written on someone else’s subject and under someone else’s guidance have a different name…’

  The candidate says nothing. I fly into a rage and leap from my chair. ‘Why do you all come to me!’ I shout angrily. ‘That’s what I don’t understand. Do you think I’m running a shop? I don’t peddle research subjects! For the umpteenth time I’m asking you all to leave me in peace! Apologies for being so blunt, but I’m really sick to death of all this!’

  The candidate makes no reply – only a slight flush appears around his cheekbones. His face expresses profound respect for my distinguished name and erudition, but I can see from his eyes that he despises my voice, my pathetic figure, my nervous gestures. In my wrath I strike him as some kind of freak.

  ‘This isn’t a shop!’ I fume. ‘Why don’t you want to be independent – that’s what amazes me! Why do you find freedom so repellent?’

  I say a great deal, but still he remains silent. In the end I gradually calm down – and of course I give in. The candidate will get a subject not worth a brass farthing from me, he’ll write a thesis of no use to anyone, under my supervision, he’ll defend it with merit in a tedious oral and be awarded a higher degree that is of no use to him.

  The doorbell could go on ringing for ever, but for the moment I shall confine myself to four visits. It rings a fourth time and I hear familiar footsteps, the rustle of a dress, a dear voice.

  Eighteen years ago an oculist colleague of mine died, leaving a seven-year-old daughter Katya and sixty thousand roubles. In his will he appointed me guardian. Until she was ten, Katya lived with my family, then she was sent to boarding-school and spent only the summer holidays with us. I never had the time to take care of her education and supervised it only in fits and starts, which is why I can say very little about her childhood.

  The first thing I remember about her and which remains a fond memory is the extraordinary trustfulness she showed when she came into my house and with which she let herself be treated by doctors, a trustfulness which always illumined her little face. She would sit somewhere out of the way with her cheek bandaged, invariably looking attentively at something – whether it was myself writing or leafing through a book, or my wife bustling about the house, or the cook peeling potatoes in the kitchen, or the dog playing, her eyes always expressed the same thing: ‘Everything that happens in this world is wise and wonderful.’ She was inquisitive and very fond of talking to me. Seated at the table opposite me she would sometimes follow my movements and ask questions. She was interested in what I was reading, what I did at the university, whether I was scared of corpses, what I did with my salary.

  ‘Do students fight at the university?’ she would ask.

  ‘Yes they do, my dear.’

  ‘Do you make them go down on their knees?’

  ‘Yes I do.’

  She found it funny that the students fought and that I made them go down on their knees and she would burst out laughing. She was a gentle, patient, good child. I often happened to see something taken away from her, saw her punished without reason, or her curiosity left unsatisfied. At such times a touch of sadness would colour her perpetually trusting expression – and that was all. I was incapable of standing up for her, but only when I saw her sadness did I long to draw her close to me and comfort her like some old nanny with the words: ‘My poor darling orphan!’

  I also remember how she loved dressing up and sprinkling herself with scent. In this respect she was like me: I too am fond of nice clothes and perfume.

  I do regret that I had neither the time nor the inclination to observe the origin and growth of that passion which took possession of Katya when she was fourteen or fifteen. I mean her passionate love for the theatre. When she came home from school for the summer holidays she would talk of nothing with such delight and enthusiasm as plays and actors. She would exhaust us with her endless talk of the theatre. My wife and children wouldn’t listen and I alone lacked the courage to refuse her an audience. Whenever she felt like sharing her excitement she would come into my study and plead, ‘Nikolay Stepanych, let me talk about the theatre with you!’

  I would point at the clock and say, ‘You’ve got half an hour. Begin!’

  Later she started bringing home by the dozen portraits of actors and actresses whom she worshipped. Then she tried several times to get parts in amateur theatricals and finally, when she finished boarding-school, she announced th
at she was born to be an actress.

  I never shared Katya’s enthusiasm for the theatre. As I see it, if a play’s any good there’s no need to trouble actors in order to get the intended impression – reading should suffice. If a play’s bad, no acting will make it good.

  When I was young I often went to the theatre and now my family takes a box about twice a year, to give me ‘an airing’. Of course, this does not entitle me to criticize the theatre and I won’t say much about it. In my view the theatre hasn’t improved over the past thirty to forty years. It’s still impossible to get a glass of water in the corridors or the foyer, the attendants still fine me twenty copecks for my fur coat, although I can see nothing dishonourable in wearing warm clothes in winter. The orchestra still plays in the intervals without the slightest need for it, adding a new, unsolicited impression to that which has already been conveyed by the play. The gentlemen still go to the bar in the intervals to drink spirits. If there’s no progress in small matters there’s no point in seeking it in the really important ones. When an actor, cloaked from head to foot in theatrical traditions and prejudices, tries to declaim that simple, straightforward soliloquy ‘To be or not to be’ in a way that is far from simple – and for some reason invariably accompanied by hissing and general bodily convulsions – when he tries to convince me at all costs that Chatsky,14 who talks so much with fools and is in love with a foolish girl, is a very clever man and that Woe from Wit isn’t a dull play, the stage seems to exhale that same old routine which bored me so much forty years ago, when I was regaled with classical lamentations and breast-beating. And on each occasion I leave the theatre more conservative than when I went in. You can convince the sentimental, gullible herd that the theatre in its present state is a school, but anyone who knows what a school really is will not rise to this bait. I cannot predict what will happen in fifty or a hundred years, but as things are the theatre can serve only as a kind of diversion. But this kind of entertainment is too expensive to be enjoyed in the long term. It deprives the state of thousands of healthy, talented young men and women who might have become good doctors, farmers, schoolmistresses, officers had they not devoted themselves to the stage. It robs the public of the evening hours, the best time for intellectual work and friendly conversation – not to mention the wasted money and moral damage to the theatre-goer when he sees murder, fornication or slander badly handled on the stage.