The Lady With the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904 by Anton Chekhov
‘“What exactly do you want?”
‘“Only one thing, Mikhail Savvich. To warn you. You’re a young man, with your future before you and you should watch your behaviour very carefully. You don’t obey the rules, oh, no! You wear an embroidered shirt, you’re always carrying books in the street, and now there’s the bicycle. The Head will get to hear all about your sister and yourself cycling, then the governors… That’s not very nice, is it?”
‘“If my sister and I go cycling that’s no one else’s business,” Kovalenko said, turning purple. “And if anyone starts poking his nose into my private and personal affairs I’ll tell him to go to hell!”
‘Belikov turned white and got up. “If you take that tone with me I must conclude this conversation. And I beg you never to use such expressions about the authorities in my presence. You should have some respect for authority.”
‘“Did I say anything nasty about them?” Kovalenko said, looking at him angrily. “Now, please leave me alone. I’m an honest man and I don’t want to talk to the likes of you. I hate sneaks.”
‘Belikov fidgeted nervously and hastily put his coat on. Horror was written all over his face. This was the first time anyone had been so rude to him.
‘“You’re entitled to say what you like,” he said, going out onto the landing. “But I must warn you: it’s possible someone has overheard us and in case our conversation is misinterpreted and in case there’s trouble, I shall be obliged to report the contents to the Head… the main points anyway. That is my duty.”
‘“Report it? Go ahead and report it then!”
‘Kovalenko grabbed him by the collar from behind and pushed him. Belikov slid down the stairs, his galoshes thudding as he fell. The stairs were steep and high, but he safely reached the bottom, got up and felt his nose to see if his glasses were intact. But just as he was sliding down, in had come Barbara, with two young ladies. They stood at the bottom and watched him: this was the end. He would rather have broken his neck or both legs than become such a laughing-stock, I do believe. Now it would be all over town, and the Head and the governors would get to hear… oh, now there would be trouble – there’d be a new cartoon and he would finish up having to resign…
‘Barbara recognized him when he was on his feet, and when she saw his ridiculous expression, his crumpled coat, his galoshes, she didn’t understand what had happened – she thought he had fallen down the stairs accidentally – she couldn’t stop herself breaking into fits of loud laughter that could be heard all over the house.
‘And these echoing peals of laughter marked the end of everything: of the courtship and Belikov’s earthly existence. He couldn’t hear what Barbara was saying, he saw nothing. As soon as he got home he removed her portrait from the table. Then he lay down, never to rise again.
‘Three days later Afanasy came and asked me if we should send for the doctor, as “something was wrong with the master”. I went to see Belikov. He was lying in his curtained bed, with a blanket over him and he didn’t speak. He just replied “yes” or “no” to any question, saying nothing else. While he lay there, Afanasy (looking gloomy, frowning and sighing deeply) fussed round him, reeking of vodka.
‘A month later Belikov died. All of us went to the funeral – that is, everyone from the two schools and the theological college. Then, as he lay in his coffin, his face looked gentle and pleasant – even cheerful – just as if he were rejoicing that at last he had found a container from which he would never emerge. Yes, he had achieved his ideal! The weather had turned wet and miserable – in his honour it seemed – and we all wore galoshes and carried umbrellas. Barbara was with us and she burst into tears when the coffin was lowered. I’ve noticed that Ukrainian women can only cry or laugh, there’s no happy medium.
‘I must confess burying a man like Belikov was a great pleasure. On the way back from the cemetery we all assumed modest, pious expressions, no one wanted to betray the pleasure he felt. It was the same feeling we had long, long ago when our parents went out and we would run round the garden for an hour or so, revelling in perfect freedom. Freedom, oh freedom! Doesn’t the slightest hint, the faintest hope of its possibility lend wings to the soul?
‘We were all in an excellent mood when we returned from the cemetery. However, hardly a week passed and we were in the same old rut again. Life was just as harsh, tiring and senseless, not exactly prohibited by the school rules, but not really allowed either. Things didn’t improve. Belikov was indeed dead and buried, but how many of these encapsulated men are still left, and how many are yet to come!’
‘Yes, that’s just my point!’ Ivan Ivanych said, lighting his pipe.
The teacher came out of the barn. He was short, plump, completely bald, with a black beard that nearly reached his waist. He had two dogs with him.
‘Just look at that moon!’ he said, looking up.
It was already midnight. To his right, the whole village could be clearly seen, with the long road stretching into the distance for about three miles. Everything was buried in a deep, peaceful slumber. Not a sound or movement anywhere and it was hard to believe that nature could be so silent. When you see a broad village street on a moonlit night, its huts, hayricks and sleeping willows, your heart is filled with tranquillity and finds sanctuary from its toil, worries and sorrows in this calm and in the shadows of night. It becomes gentle, sad and beautiful, and it seems that the very stars are looking down on it with love and tenderness, that all evil has vanished from the world and that happiness is everywhere. To the left, at the edge of the village, the open fields began; they could be seen stretching into the distance, right up to the horizon, and over all that vast moonlit expanse there was neither movement nor sound.
‘Yes, that’s just my point,’ Ivan Ivanych repeated. ‘Isn’t living in a crowded, stuffy town, writing documents nobody really needs, playing cards, the same as being in some kind of case? And spending our whole lives with idlers, litigants, stupid ladies of leisure, talking and hearing all kinds of rubbish – isn’t that living in a case? If you like, I’ll tell you another very edifying story.’
‘No, it’s time we got some sleep,’ Burkin said. ‘It can wait till tomorrow.’
The two men went into the barn and lay down on the hay. They had only just covered themselves and were dozing off when suddenly they could hear the patter of light footsteps. Someone was walking near the barn. The steps passed, stopped, then came the same patter. The dogs growled.
‘That’s Mavra,’ Burkin said.
The footsteps died away.
‘People are such liars,’ Ivan Ivanych said as he turned over, ‘and you’re called a fool for putting up with their lies. Suffering insults, humiliation, lacking the courage to declare that you’re on the side of honest, free people, lying yourself, smiling – all this for a slice of bread, a snug little home of your own, a lousy clerical job not worth a damn! No, I can’t live this kind of life any more!’
‘Come on, that’s another story, Ivan Ivanych,’ the teacher said. ‘Let’s go to sleep.’
And ten minutes later, Burkin was fast asleep. But Ivan Ivanych kept tossing and turning, and sighing. Then he got up, went outside again, sat in the doorway and lit his pipe.
Gooseberries
The sky had been overcast with rain clouds since early morning. The weather was mild, and not hot and oppressive as it can be on dull grey days when storm clouds lie over the fields for ages and you wait for rain which never comes. Ivan Ivanych, the vet, and Burkin, a teacher at the high school, were tired of walking and thought they would never come to the end of the fields. They could just make out the windmills at the village of Mironositskoye in the far distance – a range of hills stretched away to the right and disappeared far beyond it. They both knew that the river was there, with meadows, green willows and farmsteads, and that if they climbed one of the hills they would see yet another vast expanse of fields, telegraph wires and a train resembling a caterpillar in the distance. In fine weather they cou
‘Last time we were in Elder Prokofy’s barn, you were going to tell me a story,’ Burkin said.
‘Yes, I wanted to tell you about my brother.’
Ivan Ivanych heaved a long sigh and lit his pipe before beginning his narrative; but at that moment down came the rain. Five minutes later it was simply teeming. Ivan Ivanych and Burkin were in two minds as to what they should do. The dogs were already soaked through and stood with their tails drooping, looking at them affectionately.
‘We must take shelter,’ Burkin said. ‘Let’s go to Alyokhin’s, it’s not very far.’
‘All right, let’s go there.’
They changed direction and went across mown fields, walking straight on at first, and then bearing right until they came out on the high road. Before long, poplars, a garden, then the red roofs of barns came into view. The river glinted, and then they caught sight of a wide stretch of water and a white bathing-hut. This was Sofino, where Alyokhin lived.
The mill was turning and drowned the noise of the rain. The wall of the dam shook. Wet horses with downcast heads were standing by some carts and peasants went around with sacks on their heads. Everything was damp, muddy and bleak, and the water had a cold, malevolent look. Ivan Ivanych and Burkin felt wet, dirty and terribly uncomfortable. Their feet were weighed down by mud and when they crossed the dam and walked up to the barns near the manor house they did not say a word and seemed to be angry with each other.
A winnowing fan was droning away in one of the barns and dust poured out of the open door. On the threshold stood the master himself, Alyokhin, a man of about forty, tall, stout, with long hair, and he looked more like a professor or an artist than a landowner. He wore a white shirt that hadn’t been washed for a very long time, and it was tied round with a piece of rope as a belt. Instead of trousers he was wearing underpants; mud and straw clung to his boots. His nose and eyes were black with dust. He immediately recognized Ivan Ivanych and Burkin, and was clearly delighted to see them.
‘Please come into the house, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling, ‘I’ll be with you in a jiffy.’
It was a large house, with two storeys. Alyokhin lived on the ground floor in the two rooms with vaulted ceilings and small windows where his estate managers used to live. They were simply furnished and smelled of rye bread, cheap vodka and harness. He seldom used the main rooms upstairs, reserving them for guests. Ivan Ivanych and Burkin were welcomed by the maid, who was such a beautiful young woman that they both stopped and stared at each other.
‘You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you, gentlemen,’ Alyokhin said as he followed them into the hall. ‘A real surprise!’ Then he turned to the maid and said, ‘Pelageya, bring some dry clothes for the gentlemen. I suppose I’d better change too. But I must have a wash first, or you’ll think I haven’t had one since spring. Would you like to come to the bathing-hut while they get things ready in the house?’
The beautiful Pelageya, who had such a dainty look and gentle face, brought soap and towels, and Alyokhin went off with his guests to the bathing-hut.
‘Yes, it’s ages since I had a good wash,’ he said as he undressed. ‘As you can see, it’s a nice hut. My father built it, but I never find time these days for a swim.’
He sat on one of the steps and smothered his long hair and neck with soap; the water turned brown.
‘Yes, I must confess…’ Ivan Ivanych muttered, with a meaningful look at his head.
‘Haven’t had a wash for ages,’ Alyokhin repeated in his embarrassment and soaped himself again; the water turned a dark inky blue.
Ivan Ivanych came out of the cabin, dived in with a loud splash and swam in the rain, making broad sweeps with his arms and sending out waves with white lilies bobbing about on them. He swam right out to the middle of the reach and dived. A moment later he popped up somewhere else and swam on, continually trying to dive right to the bottom.
‘Oh, good God,’ he kept saying with great relish. ‘Good God…’
He reached the mill, said a few words to the peasants, then he turned and floated on his back in the middle with his face under the rain. Burkin and Alyokhin were already dressed and ready to leave, but he kept on swimming and diving.
‘Oh, dear God,’ he said. ‘Oh, God!’
‘Now that’s enough,’ Burkin shouted.
They went back to the house. Only when the lamp in the large upstairs drawing-room was alight and Burkin and Ivan Ivanych, wearing silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, were sitting in armchairs and Alyokhin, washed and combed now and with a new frock-coat on, was walking up and down, obviously savouring the warmth, cleanliness, dry clothes and light shoes, while his beautiful Pelageya glided silently over the carpet and gently smiled as she served tea and jam on a tray – only then did Ivan Ivanych begin his story. It seemed that Burkin and Alyokhin were not the only ones who were listening, but also the ladies (young and old) and the officers, who were looking down calmly and solemnly from their gilt frames on the walls.
‘There are two of us brothers,’ he began, ‘myself – Ivan Ivanych – and Nikolay Ivanych, who’s two years younger. I studied to be a vet, while Nikolay worked in the district tax office from the time he was nineteen. Chimsha-Gimalaysky, our father, had served as a private, but when he was promoted to officer we became hereditary gentlemen and owners of a small estate. After he died, this estate was sequestrated to pay off his debts, but despite this we spent our boyhood in the country free to do what we wanted. Just like any other village children, we stayed out in the fields and woods for days and nights, minded horses, stripped bark, went fishing, and so on… As you know very well, anyone who has ever caught a ruff or watched migrating thrushes swarming over his native village on cool clear autumn days can never live in a town afterwards and he’ll always hanker after the free and open life until his dying day. My brother was miserable in the tax office. The years passed, but there he stayed, always at the same old desk, copying out the same old documents and obsessed with this longing for the country. And gradually this longing took the form of a definite wish, a dream of buying a nice little estate somewhere in the country, beside a river or a lake.
‘He was a kind, gentle man and I was very fond of him, but I could never feel any sympathy for him in this longing to lock himself away in a country house for the rest of his life. They say a man needs only six feet of earth,1 but surely they must mean a corpse – not a man! These days they seem to think that it’s very good if our educated classes want to go back to the land and set their hearts on a country estate. But in reality these estates are only that same six feet all over again. To leave the town and all its noise and hubbub, to go and shut yourself away on your little estate – that’s no life! It’s selfishness, laziness, a peculiar brand of monasticism that achieves nothing. A man needs more than six feet of earth and a little place in the country, he needs the whole wide world, the whole of nature, where there’s room for him to display his potential, all the manifold attributes of his free spirit.
‘As he sat there in his office, my brother Nikolay dreamt of soup made from his own home-grown cabbages, soup that would fill the whole house with a delicious smell; eating meals on the green grass; sleeping in the sun; sitting on a bench outside the main gates for hours on end and looking at the fields and woods. Booklets on agriculture and words of wisdom from calendars were his joy, his favourite spiritual nourishment. He liked newspapers as well, but he only read property adverts – for so many acres of arable land and meadows, with “house, river, garden, mill, and ponds fed by running springs”. And he had visions of garden paths, flowers, fruit, nesting-boxes for starlings, ponds teeming with carp – you know the kind of thing. These visions varied according to the adverts he happened to see, but for some reason, in every single one,
‘He drew up a plan for his estate and it turned out exactly the same every time: (a) manor house; (b) servants’ quarters; (c) kitchen garden; (d) gooseberry bushes. He lived a frugal life, economizing on food and drink, dressing any-old-how – just like a beggar – and putting every penny he saved straight into the bank. He was terribly mean. It was really painful to look at him, so I used to send him a little money on special occasions. But he would put that in the bank too. Once a man has his mind firmly made up there’s nothing you can do about it.
‘Years passed and he was transferred to another province. He was now in his forties, still reading newspaper adverts and still saving up. Then I heard that he’d got married. So that he could buy a country estate with gooseberry bushes, he married an ugly old widow, for whom he felt nothing and only because she had a little money tucked away. He made her life miserable too, half-starved her and banked her money into his own account. She’d been married to a postmaster and was used to pies and fruit liqueurs, but with her second husband she didn’t even have enough black bread. This kind of life made her wither away, and within three years she’d gone to join her maker. Of course, my brother didn’t think that he was to blame – not for one minute! Like vodka, money can make a man do the most peculiar things. There was once a merchant living in our town who was on his deathbed. Just before he died, he asked for some honey, stirred it up with all his money and winning lottery tickets, and swallowed the lot to stop anyone else from laying their hands on it. And another time, when I was inspecting cattle at some railway station, a dealer fell under a train and had his leg cut off. We took him to the local casualty department. The blood simply gushed out, a terrible sight, but all he did was ask for his leg back and was only bothered about the twenty roubles he had tucked away in the boot. Scared he might lose them, I dare say!’