The Tales of Chekhov

by Anton Chekhov

  Going into the room her daughter, pale and agitated, sank on the bed without uttering a word or taking off her hat, and pressed her head into the pillow.

  “But what is the matter,” said the old lady in surprise, “why back so soon? Where is Alexey Stepanovitch?”

  Nadyezhda Filippovna raised her head and gazed at her mother with dry, imploring eyes.

  “He is deceiving us, mamma,” she said.

  “What are you saying? Christ be with you!” cried the old lady in alarm, and her cap slipped off her head. “Who is going to deceive us? Lord, have mercy on us!”

  “He is deceiving us, mamma!” repeated her daughter, and her chin began to quiver.

  “How do you know?” cried the old lady, turning pale.

  “Our flat is locked up. The porter tells me that Alyosha has not been home once for these five days. He is not living at home! He is not at home, not at home!”

  She waved her hands and burst into loud weeping, uttering nothing but: “Not at home! Not at home!”

  She began to be hysterical.

  “What’s the meaning of it?” muttered the old woman in horror. “Why, he wrote the day before yesterday that he never leaves the flat! Where is he sleeping? Holy Saints!”

  Nadyezhda Filippovna felt so faint that she could not take off her hat. She looked about her blankly, as though she had been drugged, and convulsively clutched at her mother’s arms.

  “What a person to trust: a porter!” said the old lady, fussing round her daughter and crying. “What a jealous girl you are! He is not going to deceive you, and how dare he? We are not just anybody. Though we are of the merchant class, yet he has no right, for you are his lawful wife! We can take proceedings! I gave twenty thousand roubles with you! You did not want for a dowry!”

  And the old lady herself sobbed and gesticulated, and she felt faint, too, and lay down on her trunk. Neither of them noticed that patches of blue had made their appearance in the sky, that the clouds were more transparent, that the first sunbeam was cautiously gliding over the wet grass in the garden, that with renewed gaiety the sparrows were hopping about the puddles which reflected the racing clouds.

  Towards evening Kvashin arrived. Before leaving town he had gone to his flat and had learned from the porter that his wife had come in his absence.

  “Here I am,” he said gaily, coming into his mother-in-law’s room and pretending not to notice their stern and tear-stained faces. “Here I am! It’s five days since we have seen each other!”

  He rapidly kissed his wife’s hand and his mother-in-law’s, and with the air of man delighted at having finished a difficult task, he lolled in an arm-chair.

  “Ough!” he said, puffing out all the air from his lungs. “Here I have been worried to death. I have scarcely sat down. For almost five days now I have been, as it were, bivouacking. I haven’t been to the flat once, would you believe it? I have been busy the whole time with the meeting of Shipunov’s and Ivantchikov’s creditors; I had to work in Galdeyev’s office at the shop. . . . I’ve had nothing to eat or to drink, and slept on a bench, I was chilled through . . . . I hadn’t a free minute. I hadn’t even time to go to the flat. That’s how I came not to be at home, Nadyusha, . . And Kvashin, holding his sides as though his back were aching, glanced stealthily at his wife and mother-in-law to see the effect of his lie, or as he called it, diplomacy. The mother-in-law and wife were looking at each other in joyful astonishment, as though beyond all hope and expectation they had found something precious, which they had lost. . . . Their faces beamed, their eyes glowed. . . .

  “My dear man,” cried the old lady, jumping up, “why am I sitting here? Tea! Tea at once! Perhaps you are hungry?”

  “Of course he is hungry,” cried his wife, pulling off her head a bandage soaked in vinegar. “Mamma, bring the wine, and the savouries. Natalya, lay the table! Oh, my goodness, nothing is ready!”

  And both of them, frightened, happy, and bustling, ran about the room. The old lady could not look without laughing at her daughter who had slandered an innocent man, and the daughter felt ashamed. . . .

  The table was soon laid. Kvashin, who smelt of madeira and liqueurs and who could scarcely breathe from repletion, complained of being hungry, forced himself to munch and kept on talking of the meeting of Shipunov’s and Ivantchikov’s creditors, while his wife and mother-in-law could not take their eyes off his face, and both thought:

  “How clever and kind he is! How handsome!”

  “All serene,” thought Kvashin, as he lay down on the well-filled feather bed. “Though they are regular tradesmen’s wives, though they are Philistines, yet they have a charm of their own, and one can spend a day or two of the week here with enjoyment. . . .”

  He wrapped himself up, got warm, and as he dozed off, he said to himself:

  “All serene!”

  A Gentleman Friend

  T

  he 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 m
ost 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 to 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.

  A Trivial Incident

  I

  t was a sunny August midday as, in company with a Russian prince who had come down in the world, I drove into the immense so-called Shabelsky pine-forest where we were intending to look for woodcocks. In virtue of the part he plays in this story my poor prince deserves a detailed description. He was a tall, dark man, still youngish, though already somewhat battered by life; with long moustaches like a police captain’s; with prominent black eyes, and with the manners of a retired army man. He was a man of Oriental type, not very intelligent, but straightforward and honest, not a bully, not a fop, and not a rake—virtues which, in the eyes of the general public, are equivalent to a certificate of being a nonentity and a poor creature. People generally did not like him (he was never spoken of in the district, except as “the illustrious duffer”). I personally found the poor prince extremely nice with his misfortunes and failures, which made up indeed his whole life. First of all he was poor. He did not play cards, did not drink, had no occupation, did not poke his nose into anything, and maintained a perpetual silence but yet he had somehow succeeded in getting through thirty to forty thousand roubles left him at his father’s death. God only knows what had become of the money. All that I can say is that owing to lack of supervision a great deal was stolen by stewards, bailiffs, and even footmen; a great deal went on lending money, giving bail, and standing security. There were few landowners in the district who did not owe him money. He gave to all who asked, and not so much from good nature or confidence in people as from exaggerated gentlemanliness as though he would say: “Take it and feel how comme il faut I am!” By the time I made his acquaintance he had got into debt himself, had learned what it was like to have a second mortgage on his land, and had sunk so deeply into difficulties that there was no chance of his ever getting out of them again. There were days when he had no dinner, and went about with an empty cigar-holder, but he was always seen clean and fashionably dressed, and always smelt strongly of ylang-ylang.

  The prince’s second misfortune was his absolute solitariness. He was not married, he had no friends nor relations. His silent and reserved character and his comme il faut deportment, which became the more conspicuous the more anxious he was to conceal his poverty, prevented him from becoming intimate with people. For love affairs he was too heavy, spiritless, and cold, and so rarely got on with women. . . .

  When we reached the forest this prince and I got out of the chaise and walked along a narrow woodland path which was hidden among huge ferns. But before we had gone a hundred paces a tall, lank figure with a long oval face, wearing a shabby reefer jacket, a straw hat, and patent leather boots, rose up from behind a young fir-tree some three feet high, as though he had sprung out of the ground. The stranger held in one hand a basket of mushrooms, with the other he playfully fingered a cheap watch-chain on his waistcoat. On seeing us he was taken aback, smoothed his waistcoat, coughed politely, and gave an agreeable smile, as though he were delighted to see such nice people as us. Then, to our complete surprise, he came up to us, scraping with his long feet on the grass, bending his whole person, and, still smiling agreeably, lifted his hat and pronounced in a sugary voice with the intonations of a whining dog:

  “Aie, aie . . . gentlemen, painful as it is, it is my duty to warn you that shooting is forbidden in this wood. Pardon me for venturing to disturb you, though unacquainted, but . . . allow me to present myself. I am Grontovsky, the head clerk on Madame Kandurin’s estate.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, but why can’t we shoot?”

  “Such is the wish of the owner of this forest!”

  The prince and I exchanged glances. A moment passed in silence. The prince stood looking pensively at a big fly agaric at his feet, which he had crushed with his stick. Grontovsky went on smili
ng agreeably. His whole face was twitching, exuding honey, and even the watch-chain on his waistcoat seemed to be smiling and trying to impress us all with its refinement. A shade of embarrassment passed over us like an angel passing; all three of us felt awkward.

  “Nonsense!” I said. “Only last week I was shooting here!”

  “Very possible!” Grontovsky sniggered through his teeth. “As a matter of fact everyone shoots here regardless of the prohibition. But once I have met you, it is my duty . . . my sacred duty to warn you. I am a man in a dependent position. If the forest were mine, on the word of honour of a Grontovsky, I should not oppose your agreeable pleasure. But whose fault is it that I am in a dependent position?”

  The lanky individual sighed and shrugged his shoulders. I began arguing, getting hot and protesting, but the more loudly and impressively I spoke the more mawkish and sugary Grontovsky’s face became. Evidently the consciousness of a certain power over us afforded him the greatest gratification. He was enjoying his condescending tone, his politeness, his manners, and with peculiar relish pronounced his sonorous surname, of which he was probably very fond. Standing before us he felt more than at ease, but judging from the confused sideway glances he cast from time to time at his basket, only one thing was spoiling his satisfaction—the mushrooms, womanish, peasantish, prose, derogatory to his dignity.

  “We can’t go back!” I said. “We have come over ten miles!”

  “What’s to be done?” sighed Grontovsky. “If you had come not ten but a hundred thousand miles, if the king even had come from America or from some other distant land, even then I should think it my duty . . . sacred, so to say, obligation . . .”

  “Does the forest belong to Nadyezhda Lvovna?” asked the prince.

  “Yes, Nadyezhda Lvovna . . .”

  “Is she at home now?”

  “Yes . . . I tell you what, you go to her, it is not more than half a mile from here; if she gives you a note, then I. . . . I needn’t say! Ha—ha . . . he—he—!”