The Steppe and Other Stories, 1887-91

by Anton Chekhov

After bidding Layevsky farewell he went off down the boulevard. Whenever that ponderous, majestic, stern-faced man strolled along the boulevard in his snow-white tunic and impeccably polished boots, thrusting his chest out and flaunting his splendid Order of Vladimir (with ribbon) he was very pleased with himself and thought the whole world was looking at him in delight. Without turning his head, he looked from side to side and concluded that the boulevard had been beautifully planned, that the young cypresses, the eucalyptus and those unsightly, anaemic-looking palm trees were very beautiful in fact and, given time, would cast a broad shade, and that the Circassians were a decent, hospitable people. ‘Strange that Layevsky doesn’t like the Caucasus,’ he thought. ‘Most strange.’ Five soldiers with rifles saluted as they passed him. On the pavement, on the other side of the boulevard, a civil servant’s wife was walking along with her schoolboy son.

  ‘Good morning, Marya Konstantinova!’ Samoylenko called out, smiling pleasantly. ‘Have you been for a bathe? Ha, ha, ha… My regards to Nikodim Aleksandrych.’

  He walked on further, still smiling pleasantly, but when he spotted a medical orderly coming towards him he suddenly frowned, stopped him and asked, ‘Is there anyone at the hospital?’

  ‘No one, General.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No one, General.’

  ‘Very good… Carry on.’

  Swaying majestically, he went over to a soft drinks kiosk, where an old, full-bosomed Jewess who pretended to be a Georgian was sitting behind the counter.

  ‘Please give me a glass of soda water!’ he said, so loud, he might have been giving orders to a regiment.

  II

  The main reason for Layevsky’s dislike of Nadezhda was the falsity – or the apparent falsity – of everything she did. All he had read attacking women and love, it seemed, couldn’t have been more applicable to himself, Nadezhda and her husband. When he arrived home she was already dressed and had done her hair, and she was sitting at the window drinking coffee, looking through a literary review with an anxious look on her face. He reflected that simply drinking coffee hardly warranted such a worried look and that her fashionable hair-do had been a sheer waste of time, since there was no one around worth pleasing in this kind of place and no point in the exercise anyway. And reading that review was only another pretence. He thought that she had only dressed up and had done her hair to look pretty, and in the same way the reading was just to make herself look clever.

  ‘Do you mind if I go for a bathe today?’ she asked.

  ‘Why not? I don’t suppose the mountains will cave in if you do or if you don’t.’

  ‘I only asked because the doctor might be annoyed.’

  ‘Well, go and ask him. I’m not qualified to speak on the subject.’

  What Layevsky disliked most about Nadezhda on this occasion was her bare white neck and the little curls around the back, and he remembered that when Anna Karenina stopped loving her husband, she had conceived a particular loathing for his ears. ‘How true, how true!’ he thought. Feeling weak and despondent, he went to his study, lay down on the couch and covered his face with a handkerchief to keep the flies away. Dull, lazy, monotonous thoughts lumbered through his mind like a long train of peasant carts on a foul autumn evening and he lapsed into a drowsy, depressed state of mind. He thought he was guilty as far as Nadezhda and her husband were concerned and that her husband’s death was his fault. He felt he was to blame for ruining his own life, for betraying the wonderful world of noble ideas, learning, work, which did not seem to exist or be capable of realization in this seaside resort with its hungry, prowling Turks and lazy Abkhazians,4 but only in the north with its opera, theatres, newspapers and great diversity of intellectual life. Only there could one be honourable, clever, noble-minded and pure – not in this sort of place. He accused himself of being without ideals or guiding principles in life, although he only had a vague idea what that meant. Two years before, when he had fallen in love with Nadezhda, he thought all he had to do to escape the nastiness and futility of life was to become her lover and go away with her to the Caucasus. Similarly, he was convinced that he only had to abandon Nadezhda and go to St Petersburg to achieve his every desire.

  ‘Escape!’ he muttered as he sat biting his nails. ‘Escape!’

  He imagined himself going on board ship, having lunch, drinking cold beer, chatting with the ladies on deck, then catching a train at Sevastopol – and away! Hail, Freedom! Stations flash past one after the other, the air grows cooler and sharper. Now he can see birches and firs, that’s Kursk, now Moscow… Cabbage soup, mutton with buckwheat, sturgeon, beer at station buffets – in brief, no more of this barbarity, but Russia, the real Russia. The passengers discuss trade, new singers, Franco-Prussian accord. Everywhere life is vigorous, cultured, intelligent, brimming with energy. Faster, faster! Here at last is the Nevsky Avenue, Great Morskoy Street, then Kovensky Lane, where once he had lived with students. Here is that dear grey sky, drizzle, those drenched cab-drivers…

  ‘Ivan Andreich!’ someone called from the next room. ‘Are you in?’

  ‘I’m here!’ Layevsky answered. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’ve got some papers.’

  As Layevsky lazily got to his feet, his head was reeling and he went into the next room yawning and shuffling his slippers. One of his young colleagues was standing by the window that overlooked the street and laying out government papers along the sill.

  ‘Won’t be a second, old man,’ Layevsky said softly and went off to find an ink-pot. He returned to the window, signed the papers without reading them and remarked, ‘It’s hot!’

  ‘Yes, sir. Are you coming to the office today?’

  ‘I don’t think so… I’m not feeling too good. My dear chap, please tell Sheshkovsky I’ll look in after dinner.’

  The clerk left. Layevsky lay down on his couch again and thought, ‘So, I must carefully weigh up the pros and cons and come to a decision. Before I leave this place I must settle my debts. I owe about two thousand roubles. I’ve no money… Of course, that’s not important. I could pay part of it now, somehow or other and I’ll send some later from St Petersburg. The main problem’s Nadezhda… I must get things straight between us, before I do anything else… Yes.’

  A little later he was wondering if it might be best to go to Samoylenko for advice. ‘I could go and see him,’ he thought, ‘but what’s the use? I’d only say the wrong thing again, about boudoirs, women, what’s honourable or not. And how the hell can I discuss what’s honourable or not when the most urgent thing is to save my own skin, when I’m suffocating in this damned slavery and killing myself… It’s time I realized that carrying on living as I am is shameful and an act of cruelty before which all else pales into insignificance!’

  ‘Escape!’ he murmured, sitting down. ‘Escape!’

  The deserted beach, the merciless heat and the monotony of the eternally silent, hazy, pinkish-violet mountains saddened him and seemed to be lulling him to sleep and robbing him of something. Perhaps he was very clever in fact, talented and remarkably honest; perhaps he might have made an excellent district official, public servant, orator, commentator on current affairs, champion of causes, had he not been shut in on all sides by sea and mountains. Who knows? And if this were true, wasn’t it stupid to argue whether it was the right thing or not if a talented and useful man – a musician or artist, for example – tore walls down and fooled his jailers to escape from prison? For any man in that situation, everything was honourable.

  After two o’clock Layevsky and Nadezhda sat down to lunch. When the cook served rice soup with tomatoes Layevsky said, ‘The same old thing every day. Can’t she make cabbage soup?’

  ‘We haven’t any cabbage.’

  ‘That’s strange, Samoylenko has cabbage soup, Marya Konstantinova has cabbage soup, only I am obliged to eat these sickly slops. It’s no good, my dear.’

  Like most married couples, at one time Layevsky and Nadezhda could not finish lunch withou
t some scene or tantrums. But since Layevsky decided he did not love her any more, he tried to let Nadezhda have everything her own way, spoke gently and politely to her, smiled and called her darling.

  ‘This soup’s like liquorice,’ he said, smiling. He was making a great effort to be friendly, but it was too much for him and he told her, ‘No one looks after things in this house. If you’re really so ill, or if you’re too busy reading, I could see to the cooking, if you like.’

  Earlier she would have replied, ‘See to it, then’, or ‘It’s obvious you want to turn me into a cook’, but all she did now was give him a timid look and blush.

  ‘Well, how do you feel today?’ he asked affectionately.

  ‘I’m all right today, just a little weak.’

  ‘You must look after yourself, my dear. I’m terribly worried about you.’

  In fact there was something wrong with Nadezhda. Samoylenko said she was suffering from intermittent fever and was giving her quinine. But another doctor, Ustimovich – a tall, skinny, unsociable person who stayed in during the day and strolled slowly along the front in the evenings, coughing away, his walking-stick pressed to his back with his hands – found she had some woman’s complaint and prescribed hot compresses. Before, when Layevsky was in love with Nadezhda, her illness had made him feel sorry for her and worried, but now he could see it was mere pretence. That sallow, sleepy face and sluggish look, those yawning fits she had after attacks of fever and the way she lay under a rug during them, making herself look more like a little child than a grown woman, the stuffiness and unpleasant smell in her room – to his mind all this served to destroy any romantic illusions and was enough to throw cold water on any ideas of love and marriage.

  For a second course he was served spinach and hard-boiled eggs, while Nadezhda had jelly and milk, as she wasn’t well. At first, when she anxiously touched the jelly with her spoon and then lazily started eating it, washing it down with milk, the gulping noise aroused such violent hatred that it made his head itch. The way he felt, he knew very well, would have insulted a dog even, but he was not angry with himself, but with Nadezhda for stirring such feelings in him and he understood why lovers sometimes murder their mistresses. Of course, he could never have committed murder himself, but if he had happened to be on a jury at that moment he would have found for the accused.

  ‘Merci, my dear,’ he said after dinner, and kissed Nadezhda on the forehead.

  Back in his study he paced up and down for five minutes, squinting at his boots, after which he sat on the couch and muttered, ‘Escape! Escape! Just get things straight and then escape!’

  As he lay on the couch he remembered that he was possibly to blame for the death of Nadezhda’s husband. ‘It’s stupid blaming someone for falling in or out of love,’ he said, trying to convince himself as he lay there lifting his legs up to put his boots on. ‘Love and hatred are beyond our control. As for her husband, I was possibly one of the causes of his death, indirectly. But there again, is it my fault that I fell in love with his wife, and his wife with me?’

  As he walked along Layevsky thought, ‘I’m just like Hamlet in my indecision! How truly Shakespeare observed it! Oh, how truly!’

  III

  To ward off boredom and to cater for the desperate needs of new arrivals and bachelors who had nowhere to eat, owing to the complete absence of hotels in the town, Dr Samoylenko maintained a kind of table d’hôte. At the time in question only two of these gentlemen were taking meals with him, von Koren, a young zoologist who had arrived in the summer to study the embryology of the jellyfish in the Black Sea; and Deacon Pobedov, who had left theological college not long before and had been dispatched to this small town to stand in for the old deacon, who was away taking the cure. Each paid twelve roubles a month for lunch and dinner, and Samoylenko had made them promise faithfully to be there for lunch at two o’clock on the dot.

  Von Koren was usually first to arrive. He would silently sit down in the drawing-room, pick up an album from the table and examine faded photographs of certain strange gentlemen in wide trousers and toppers, and ladies in crinolines and lace caps. Samoylenko could remember the names of only just a few and would comment with a sigh on those he had forgotten, ‘A very fine person, of the highest intellect!’

  When he had finished with the album, von Koren would take a pistol from the shelf, screw up his left eye and keep it pointed for a long time at Prince Vorontsov’s5 portrait; or he would stand in front of the mirror surveying his swarthy face, large forehead and hair that was as black and curly as a Negro’s, then his faded cotton print shirt with its large floral pattern resembling a Persian carpet, then the broad leather belt he wore as a waistcoat. This self-contemplation gave him almost greater enjoyment than inspecting those photographs or that expensively mounted pistol. He was satisfied with his face and with his beautifully trimmed beard and broad shoulders that were clear proof of his good health and strong build. He was satisfied too with his terribly smart outfit – from the tie, which matched his shirt, right down to his yellow shoes.

  While he was standing before the mirror looking through the album, Samoylenko was rushing bare-chested around the kitchen and pantry, without jacket or waistcoat. He sweated profusely as he excitedly fussed around the tables, preparing the salad, or some sort of sauce, or the meat, or cucumbers and onions for the soup, glaring furiously and alternately brandishing a knife and a spoon at the batman who was helping him.

  ‘Vinegar!’ he commanded. ‘No, not the vinegar, I meant salad-oil!’ he shouted, stamping his foot. ‘And where are you going, you swine?’

  ‘To get the oil, General,’ replied the stunned batman in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘Hurry up! It’s in the cupboard. And tell Darya to put some more dill into the cucumber jar. Dill! Cover up that sour cream, you moron, or the flies will get to it!’

  The whole house seemed to echo with his shouts. At about ten or fifteen minutes to two the deacon arrived – a thin young man of about twenty-two, long-haired, beardless and with a barely visible moustache. After he entered the drawing-room he crossed himself before the icon, smiled and held out his hand to von Koren.

  ‘Hullo,’ the zoologist said coldly. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Fishing for gobies in the harbour.’

  ‘Why of course. It’s quite evident, deacon, you’ll never put your mind to doing some work.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ the deacon said smiling, shoving his hands into the cavernous pockets of his white cassock. ‘Time enough for work tomorrow!’

  ‘You always win,’ the zoologist sighed.

  Another fifteen or twenty minutes passed and still they weren’t summoned to the table; and they could still hear the clatter of boots as the batman scurried from pantry to kitchen and back again, while Samoylenko shouted, ‘Put it on the table! What are you doing? Wash it first!’

  The deacon and von Koren, who were starving by now, showed their impatience by tapping their heels on the floor, like a theatre audience. At last the door opened and the harassed batman announced, ‘Lunch is ready!’

  In the dining-room they were confronted by an angry, crimson-faced Samoylenko, who looked as if he had been boiled in that hot kitchen. He glanced at them malignantly and there was a horrified look on his face as he lifted the lid of the soup tureen and filled their plates. Only when he was convinced that they were enjoying the food, that it was to their taste, did he heave a gentle sigh and sink into his deep armchair. His face took on a languid, unctuous expression. Leisurely, he poured himself a glass of vodka and said, ‘To the younger generation!’

  After his talk with Layevsky, Samoylenko had passed the entire morning until lunch feeling rather heavy at heart, despite his generally excellent mood. He felt sorry for Layevsky and wanted to help him. Drinking his vodka before starting the soup he sighed and said, ‘I saw Ivan Layevsky today. The poor devil’s having a rough time of it. Materially, he’s in a bad way, but the main problems are psychological. I do feel
sorry for the young man.’

  ‘Of all people I’m not sorry for him!’ von Koren said. ‘If that nice young gentleman were drowning I’d help him down with a stick and tell him, “Drown, my dear chap, please drown.” ’

  ‘That’s not true, you wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘And why not?’ the zoologist said with a shrug of the shoulders. ‘I’m just as capable of a good deed as you are.’

  ‘Is making someone drown a good deed?’ the deacon asked, laughing.

  ‘If it’s Layevsky – yes.’

  ‘There’s something missing in the soup,’ Samoylenko said, trying to change the subject.

  ‘There’s no question about it, Layevsky’s as harmful and dangerous to society as a cholera microbe,’ von Koren went on. ‘Drowning him would be rendering it a service.’

  ‘It does you no credit speaking like that about your fellow human being. Tell me, why do you hate him?’

  ‘Don’t talk such nonsense, doctor. It’s stupid hating and despising a microbe. But to think that any passing stranger just has to be thought of as your fellow human being, without discrimination – that’s not rational at all, but a refusal to take any reasonable attitude towards people, if you don’t mind my saying so. In short, it’s the same as washing your hands of the matter. That Layevsky is a swine – I won’t conceal the fact – and I regard him as such with the clearest conscience. But if you consider him your fellow, then go and drool over him as much as you like. If you consider him your neighbour that means you have the same attitude towards him as to the deacon and myself, and that means any old attitude. You’re equally indifferent to everyone.’

  ‘Calling the man a swine!’ Samoylenko muttered, frowning with disgust. ‘That’s so awful, words just fail me!’

  ‘People are judged by their actions,’ von Koren went on. ‘So now you can judge for yourself, deacon. There’s something I’d like to tell you. Mr Layevsky’s activities lie wide open before you, like a Chinese scroll, and you can read about them from beginning to end. What has he achieved in the two years he’s been here? Let’s count it on our fingers. Firstly, he’s taught the people in this town to play whist. This game was unknown here two years ago, but now everyone’s playing it from morning to night, even women and teenagers. Secondly, he’s taught the people to drink beer, which was also unknown in this place. And the people are indebted to him for information regarding different brands of vodka, with the result that now they can tell Koshelyov from Smirnov No. 21 blindfold. Thirdly, when men used to sleep with other men’s wives in this place before, they kept it a secret, for the same reasons that motivate burglars, who go about their business in secret and don’t tell the whole world about it. Adultery used to be looked on as too shameful for the public eye. But Layevsky has shown himself to be a pioneer in this field, he’s living quite openly with another man’s wife. Fourthly…’