Ward No. 6 and Other Stories, 1892-1895

by Anton Chekhov

  III

  After supper, when the guests had left, he went to his room and lay on the couch. He wanted to think about the monk, but a moment later in came Tanya.

  ‘Here, Andrey, read Father’s articles’, she said, handing him a bundle of pamphlets and offprints. ‘They’re wonderful, he’s an excellent writer.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that!’ Yegor Semyonych said, forcing a laugh as he followed her into the room; he felt embarrassed. ‘Don’t listen to her, please! Don’t read them! But if you need something to make you sleep, then go ahead. They’re an excellent soporific!’

  ‘In my opinion they’re magnificent’, Tanya said with great conviction. ‘Read them, Andrey, and persuade Father to write more often. He could write a whole course in horticulture.’

  Yegor Semyonych gave a forced laugh, blushed and started speaking in the way shy authors usually do. In the end he gave in. ‘In that case, read Gaucher’s article4 first, then these short ones in Russian’, he muttered, turning over the pamphlets with trembling hands. ‘Otherwise you won’t understand a thing. Before you read my objections, you must know what it is I’m objecting to. However, it’s rubbish… boring. What’s more, I think it’s time for bed.’

  Tanya went out. Yegor Semyonych sat beside Kovrin on the couch and sighed deeply. ‘Yes, my dear boy’, he began after a short silence. ‘Yes, my dear Master of Arts. Here I am writing articles and exhibiting at shows and winning medals… They say Pesotsky has “apples as big as your head” and that he made his fortune with his orchard. Pesotsky is monarch of all he surveys,5 in short. But, you may ask, what’s the point of it all? The garden is really beautiful, a show-garden in fact. It’s not so much a garden as a complete institution, of the greatest importance to the state, a step, so to speak, towards a new era in Russian economics and industry. But what’s the point of it? What’s the use?’

  ‘It speaks for itself.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. I’d like to know, what will happen to the garden when I die? It won’t be kept up to its present standard for more than one month. The secret of my success isn’t that it’s a big garden, with lots of gardeners, but because I love the work – do you follow? Perhaps I love it better than myself. I work from dawn till dusk. The grafting, pruning, planting – I do them all myself. When people start helping me, I get jealous and irritated until I’m downright rude to them. The whole secret is love, and by that I mean the keen eye and head of the master looking after his own place, the feeling that comes over you when you’ve gone visiting for an hour and you just sit still. But your heart’s not there, you’re miles away – afraid something might be going wrong in the garden. And when I die who’ll look after it? Who’ll do the work? The head gardener? The ordinary gardeners? What do you think? So let me tell you, dear boy, the principal enemy in our work isn’t hares, cockchafers or frost, but the man who doesn’t care.’

  ‘And Tanya?’ laughed Kovrin. ‘She couldn’t possibly do more harm than a hare. She loves the work, she understands it.’

  ‘Yes, she loves and understands it. If the garden passes into her hands after my death and she takes charge, I could hope for nothing better. But supposing she marries, God forbid?’ Yegor Semyonych whispered and gave Kovrin a frightened look. ‘This is my point! She’ll marry, have children and then she’ll have no time to think about the garden. But my main worry is her marrying some young whipper-snapper who’ll grow greedy, rent the garden out to some market-woman and it’ll all go to rack and ruin within a year! In this kind of business women are like the plague!’

  Yegor Semyonych sighed and was silent for a few minutes. ‘Perhaps it’s just egotism, but I’m telling you quite frankly: I don’t want Tanya to marry. I’m afraid! There’s that young fop who comes here scraping his fiddle. I know Tanya won’t marry him, I know that very well, but I just can’t stand the sight of him. On the whole I’m quite a crank, dear boy. I admit it.’ Yegor Semyonych got up and paced the room excitedly; it was plain he wanted to say something very important, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

  ‘I’m extremely fond of you and I’ll be open with you’, he said at last, stuffing his hands into his pockets. ‘I’m usually quite straightforward when it comes to certain ticklish questions and I’m telling you exactly what I think – I can’t stand these so-called “innermost thoughts”. I’m telling you straight: you’re the only man I wouldn’t mind marrying my daughter. You’re clever, you have feelings and you wouldn’t let my beloved work perish. But the main reason is – I love you like a son… and I’m proud of you. If Tanya and yourself became fond of each other, well then, I’d be very glad, happy even. I’m telling you straight, without frills, as an honest man.’

  Kovrin burst out laughing. Yegor Semyonych opened the door to go out and stopped on the threshold. ‘If Tanya gave you a son I’d make a gardener out of him’, he said thoughtfully. ‘However, that’s an idle dream… Good night.’

  Left alone, Kovrin settled himself more comfortably on the couch and started on the articles. One bore the title Intermedial Cultivation, another A few Observations on Mr Z’s Remarks on Double-Trenching in New Gardens, and another More about Grafting Dormant Buds; and there were other titles like that. But what a restless, uneven tone, what highly charged, almost pathological fervour! Here was an article with apparently the most inoffensive title and unexceptionable subject – the winter dessert apple. But Yegor Semyonych first weighed in with an audiatur altera pars6 and ended with sapienti sat,7 interpolating these dicta with a whole torrent of venomous animadversions apropos the ‘learned ignorance of our self-appointed gentlemen-horticulturalists who look down on nature from their Olympian heights’: or Gaucher, ‘whose reputation was made by ignoramuses and dilettantes’. These remarks were followed by the totally irrelevant, forced, sham regret for the fact that it was no longer legal to birch peasants who stole fruit and damaged trees in the process.

  ‘It’s a fine, pleasant, healthy occupation, but even here it’s passion and warfare’, Kovrin thought. ‘Probably, it’s because intellectuals are neurotic and over-sensitive everywhere, in all walks of life. Perhaps it can’t be avoided.’

  He thought of Tanya who liked Yegor Semyonych’s articles so much. She was not tall, was pale and thin, with protruding collarbones; her dark, clever, staring eyes were always peering, seeking something. She walked just like her father, taking short, quick steps. Very talkative, she loved to argue and would accompany the most trivial phrase with highly expressive mimicry and gesticulations. She was probably highly strung.

  Kovrin read on, but he understood nothing and gave up. That same, agreeable feeling of excitement he had had when dancing his mazurka and listening to the music made him weary now and stirred a multitude of thoughts. He stood up and started walking round the room, thinking about the black monk. It occurred to him that if he alone had seen that strange, supernatural apparition, then he must be ill and a prey to hallucinations. This thought frightened him, but not for long.

  ‘In fact I feel fine. I’m not harming anyone. So that means there’s nothing bad in these hallucinations’, he thought and felt fine again.

  He sat on the couch and clasped his head to hold in check that incomprehensible feeling of joy which filled his whole being; then he paced up and down again and started to work. But the ideas he found in the book left him unsatisfied. He wanted something gigantic, immense, staggering. Towards dawn he undressed and reluctantly got into bed. After all, he had to sleep!

  When he heard Yegor Semyonych’s footsteps receding into the garden, Kovrin rang the bell and told the servant to bring him some wine. After enjoying a few glasses of claret his senses grew dim and he fell asleep.

  IV

  Yegor Semyonych and Tanya had frequent quarrels and said nasty things to each other. One morning, after a squabble about something, Tanya burst into tears and went to her room. She didn’t appear for lunch, or tea. At first Yegor Semyonych walked around solemnly and pompously, as if he wanted to make it known th
at he considered justice and order more important than anything else in the world. But he could not keep up the pose for long and lost heart. Sadly he wandered through the park, sighing the whole time, ‘Ah, Good Lord, Good Lord!’ and he did not eat a thing for dinner. Finally, full of guilt and remorse, he knocked on the locked door and called out timidly, ‘Tanya! Tanya?’

  A weak voice, drained by tears, but still determined, replied from behind the door, ‘Leave me alone, I beg you.’

  The anguish of the master and mistress was reflected all over the house, even in the gardeners. Kovrin was immersed in his interesting work, but in the end he too felt bored and embarrassed. Trying to dispel the prevailing unpleasant atmosphere, he decided to intervene and towards evening knocked at Tanya’s door. She let him in.

  ‘Come now, you should be ashamed!’ he joked, looking in amazement at Tanya’s tear-stained, mournful face that was covered in red blotches. ‘Surely it’s not as bad as all that? Now, now!’

  ‘If you only knew how he torments me!’ she said and copious, bitter tears welled from her large eyes. ‘He’s tormented the life out of me’, she went on, wringing her hands. ‘I didn’t say anything to him… nothing at all. I only said we don’t need to keep on extra workers when… when we can engage day-labourers if we want to. You know, our gardeners have been standing idle for a whole week. That’s all I said, but he shouted and said many insulting, deeply offensive things. Why?’

  ‘Now, that’s enough, enough’, Kovrin said, smoothing her hair. ‘You’ve had your quarrel and a good cry, and that’s enough. You must stop being angry now, it’s not good… especially as he loves you so very much.’

  ‘He’s ruined my whole life’, Tanya continued, sobbing. ‘All I hear is insults and abuse… He thinks there’s no place for me in this house. Agreed. He’s right. I’ll leave this place tomorrow, get a job as a telegraphist… That’s what I’ll do.’

  ‘Come now, there’s no need to cry, Tanya. Please don’t, my dear… You’re both quick-tempered, easily upset, and you’re both to blame. Come on, I’ll make peace between you.’

  Kovrin spoke with feeling, convincingly, but she kept on crying, her shoulders twitching and her hands clenched as if something really terrible had happened to her. He felt all the more sorry for her because, although her grief was nothing serious, she was suffering deeply. How little it took to make this creature unhappy all day long, for her whole life perhaps! As he comforted Tanya, Kovrin thought that he wouldn’t find two people who loved him so much as Tanya and her father in a month of Sundays. Having lost his father and mother as a small child, but for these two, probably, he would never have known true affection until his dying day. He would never have known that simple, disinterested love that is felt only for those who are very close, for blood relations. And he felt that this weeping, trembling girl’s nerves were reacting to his own half-sick, overwrought nerves like iron to a magnet. He could never have loved a healthy, strong, rosy-cheeked woman, but that pale, weak, unhappy Tanya attracted him.

  And he gladly stroked her hair and shoulders, pressed her hands and wiped away the tears… Finally she stopped crying. For a long time she complained about her father and her hard, intolerable life in that house, imploring Kovrin to see things as she did. Then gradually, she began to smile and said sighing that God had given her such a bad character. In the end she laughed out loud, called herself a fool and ran out of the room.

  Shortly afterwards, when Kovrin went into the garden, Yegor Semyonych and Tanya were strolling side by side along the path as if nothing had happened. They were both eating rye bread with salt, as they were hungry.

  V

  Pleased with his success as peacemaker, Kovrin went into the park. As he sat pondering on a bench he heard the clatter of carriages and a woman’s laughter – guests had arrived. As the shadows of evening fell across the garden he heard the vague sounds of a violin, voices singing, which reminded him of the black monk. Where, in what country or on what planet was that optical absurdity wandering now?

  Hardly had he recalled that legend, conjuring up the dark spectre he had seen in the rye field, when quite silently, without the slightest rustling, a man of medium height, his grey head uncovered, all in black, barefoot like a beggar, his black eyebrows sharply defined on his deathly white face, slipped out from behind the pine trees just opposite. Nodding his head welcomingly, this beggar or pilgrim silently came over to the bench and Kovrin could see it was the black monk. For a minute they both eyed each other – Kovrin in amazement, the monk in a friendly way, with that same rather crafty look.

  ‘You’re just a mirage’, Kovrin murmured. ‘Why are you here, sitting still like that? It doesn’t tally with the legend.’

  ‘Never mind’, the monk answered softly after a brief pause, turning his face towards him. ‘The legend, myself, the mirage are all products of your overheated imagination. I’m an apparition…’

  ‘That means you don’t exist?’ Kovrin asked.

  ‘Think what you like’, the monk said with a weak smile. ‘I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, so I exist in nature too.’

  ‘You have a very aged, clever and extremely expressive face, as if you really have lived more than a thousand years’, Kovrin said. ‘I didn’t know my imagination could create such phenomena. But why are you looking at me so rapturously? Do you like me?’

  ‘Yes. You’re one of the few who are rightly called God’s Chosen. You serve Eternal Truth. Your ideas, intentions, your amazing erudition, your whole life – all bear the divine, heavenly stamp, since they are devoted to the Rational and the Beautiful, that is, to the Eternal.’

  ‘You mentioned “Eternal Truth”… But is that within men’s reach, do they need it if there’s no such thing as eternal life?’

  ‘There is eternal life’, the monk said.

  ‘Do you believe in immortality?’

  ‘Yes, of course. A great, bright future awaits you human beings. And the more men there are like you on earth, the quicker will this future come about. Without men like you serving the highest principles, living intelligently and freely, humanity would be worthless. In the normal course of events it would have to wait a long time for its life upon earth to come to an end. But you will lead it into the Kingdom of Eternal Truth a few thousand years ahead of time – this is your noble service. You are the embodiment of God’s blessing which has come to dwell among men.’

  ‘But what is the purpose of eternal life?’ asked Kovrin.

  ‘Like any other kind of life – pleasure. True pleasure is knowledge, and eternal life will afford innumerable and inexhaustible sources of knowledge: this is the meaning of the saying, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.” ’8

  ‘If you only knew how enjoyable it is listening to you!’ Kovrin said, rubbing his hands with pleasure.

  ‘I’m very pleased.’

  ‘But I know one thing: when you’ve gone I’ll start worrying whether you really do exist. You’re a phantom, a hallucination. Does that mean I’m mentally ill, insane?’

  ‘Even if that were so, why let it bother you? You’re ill from overworking, you’ve worn yourself out. I’m trying to say that you’ve sacrificed your health for an idea and it won’t be long before you sacrifice your very life to it. What could be better? All noble spirits blessed with gifts from on high have this as their aim.’

  ‘If I know that I’m mentally ill, how can I have any faith in myself?’

  ‘But how do you know that men of genius, in whom the whole world puts its faith, haven’t seen ghosts too? Nowadays scientists say genius is akin to madness. My friend, only the mediocre, the common herd are healthy and normal. Thoughts about an age of neurosis, overwork, degeneracy and so on can seriously worry only those for whom the purpose of life lies in the present – that is, the common herd.’

  ‘The Romans used to speak of mens sana in corpore sano.’9

  ‘Not all that the Greeks and Romans said is true. Heightened a
wareness, excitement, ecstasy – everything that distinguishes prophets, poets, martyrs to an idea, from ordinary people is hostile to man’s animal side – I mean, his physical health. I repeat: if you want to be healthy and normal, go and join the herd.’

  ‘It’s strange the way you repeat things I think of myself very often’, Kovrin said. ‘It’s as though you spied out and eavesdropped on my most secret thoughts. But let’s not talk about me. What do you mean by Eternal Truth?’

  The monk did not answer. Kovrin looked at him and could not make out his face – its features had become hazy and indistinct. Then the monk’s head and arms began to disappear. His torso merged with the bench and the twilight shadows, and he vanished completely.

  ‘The hallucination’s over!’ Kovrin said laughing. ‘A pity!’

  He went back to the house happy and cheerful. The monk’s few words had flattered not his pride, but his very soul, his whole being. To be one of the Chosen, to serve Eternal Truth, to stand in the ranks of those who, a thousand years ahead of time, would make men worthy of the Kingdom of God, thereby saving them from several thousand years of needless struggle, sin and suffering, to surrender, to surrender everything – youth, strength, health – to an idea, to be ready to die for the common weal – what a noble, blissful destiny! The memory of his pure, chaste, hardworking past flashed through his mind; he remembered what he had learned, what he had taught others, and he decided that the monk had not been exaggerating.

  As he went through the park he met Tanya. She was wearing a different dress now.

  ‘So you’re here’, she said. ‘We’ve all been looking for you, looking everywhere… But what’s the matter?’ she asked in surprise, studying his radiant, glowing face. ‘How strange you are, Andrey.’

  ‘I’m contented, Tanya’, Kovrin said as he put his hands on her shoulders. ‘I’m more than contented, I’m happy! Tanya, dear Tanya, you’re such a likeable person! Dear Tanya, I’m so glad, so glad!’