Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (470 page)

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TINA.

That his Excellency’s house was swarming with thieves was nothing new to me; and I added Tina’s letter to the information I had already in my memory on this count. Sooner or later I would be obliged to use this intelligence in a case... I knew who the thieves were.

CHAPTER VIII

Black-eyed Tina’s letter, her large sprawling hand-writing, reminded me of the mosaic room and aroused in me desires such as a drunkard has for more drink; but I overcame them, and by the strength of my will I forced myself to work. At first I found it unspeakably dull to decipher the bold handwriting of the various commissaries, but gradually my attention became fixed on a burglary, and I began to work with delight. All day long I sat working at my table, and Polycarp passed behind me from time to time and looked suspiciously at my work. He had no confidence in my sobriety, and at any moment he expected to see me rise from the table and order Zorka to be saddled; but towards evening, seeing my persistence, he began to give credence to my good intentions, and the expression of moroseness on his face gave place to one of satisfaction... He began to walk about on tiptoe and to speak in whispers... When some young fellows passed my house, playing on the accordion, he went into the street and shouted:

‘What do you young devils mean by making such a row here? Can’t you go another way? Don’t you know, you infidels, that the master is working?’

In the evening when he served the samovar in the dining-room, he quietly opened my door and called me graciously to come to tea.

‘Will you please come to tea?’ he said, sighing gently and smiling respectfully.

And while I was drinking my tea he came up behind me and kissed me on the shoulder.

‘Now that’s better, Sergey Petrovich,’ he mumbled. ‘Why don’t you let that white-eyebrowed devil go hang... How can you, with your great intelligence and your education, behave like this? You have a noble calling... You must behave so that people will respect you... But if you go around with that good-for-nothing Count and bathe in the lake in your clothes, everyone will say: “He has no sense! He’s an empty-headed fellow!” And so that reputation will be noised about the whole world! Foolhardiness is suitable for merchants, but not for noblemen... Noblemen must have regard to their place in the world...’

‘All right! Enough, enough...’

‘Sergey Petrovich, don’t keep company with that Count. If you want to have a friend, who could be better than Doctor Pavel Ivanovich? He goes about shabbily dressed, but how clever he is!’

I was melted by Polycarp’s sincerity... I wanted to say an affectionate word to him...

‘What novel are you reading now?’ I asked.

‘The Count of Monte Cristo.
That’s a Count for you! That’s a real Count! Not like that filthy Count you go around with.’

After tea I again sat down to work and worked until my eyelids began to droop and my tired eyes to close... When I went to bed I ordered Polycarp to wake me at five o’clock.

The next morning, before six o’clock, whistling gaily and knocking off the heads of the field flowers, I was walking towards Tenevo, where the church fête to which my friend ‘Screw’ had invited me to come was being celebrated that day. It was a glorious morning. Happiness itself appeared to be hanging above the earth, and, reflected in every dewdrop, enticed the soul of the passer-by to itself. The woods enwrapped in morning light were quiet and motionless as if listening to my footsteps, and the chirping brotherhood of birds met me with expressions of mistrust and alarm... The air, filled with the verdancy of spring, caressed my healthy lungs with its softness. I breathed it in, and casting my enraptured eyes over the whole distant prospect, I felt the spring and youth, and it seemed to me that the young birches, the grass at the roadside, and the ceaselessly humming cockchafers shared these feelings with me.

‘Why is it that out there in the world men crowd together in their miserable hovels, in their narrow and limited ideas,’ I thought, ‘while here they have so much space for life and thought? Why do they not come here?’

And my poetic imagination refused to be disturbed by thoughts of winter and of bread, those two sorrows that drive poets into cold, prosaic Petersburg and uncleanly Moscow, where fees are paid for verse, but no inspiration can be found.

Peasants’ carts and landowners’ britzkas hurrying to church or to market passed me constantly as I trudged along. All the time I had to take off my cap in answer to the courteous bows of the muzhiks and the landowners of my acquaintance. They all offered to give me a lift, but to walk was pleasanter than to drive, and I refused all their offers. Among others the Count’s gardener, Franz, in a blue jacket and a jockey cap, passed me on a racing droshky... He looked lazily at me with his sleepy, sour eyes and touched his cap in a still more lazy fashion. Behind him a twelve-gallon barrel with iron hoops, evidently for vodka, was tied to the droshky... Franz’s disagreeable phiz and his barrel somewhat disturbed my poetical mood, but very soon poetry triumphed again when I heard the sound of wheels behind me, and looking round I saw a heavy wagonette drawn by a pair of bays, and in the heavy wagonette, on a leathern cushion on a sort of box seat, was my new acquaintance, ‘the girl in red’, who two days before had spoken to me about the ‘electricity that had killed her mother’. Olenka’s pretty, freshly washed and somewhat sleepy face beamed and blushed slightly when she saw me striding along the footpath that separated the wood from the road. She nodded merrily to me and smiled in the affable manner of an old acquaintance.

‘Good morning!’ I shouted to her.

She kissed her hand to me and disappeared from my sight, together with her heavy wagonette, without giving me enough time to admire her fresh, pretty face. This day she was not dressed in red. She wore a sort of dark green costume with large buttons and a broad-brimmed straw hat, but even in this garb she pleased me no less than she had done before. I would have talked to her with pleasure, and I would gladly have heard her voice. I wanted to gaze into her deep eyes in the brilliancy of the sun, as I had gazed into them that night by the flashes of lightning. I wanted to take her down from the ugly wagonette and propose that she should walk beside me for the rest of the way, and I certainly would have done so if it had not been for the ‘rules of society’. For some reason it appeared to me that she would have gladly agreed to this proposal. It was not without some cause that she had twice looked back at me as the wagonette disappeared behind some old alders!

It was about six versts from the place of my abode to Tenevo — nothing of a distance for a young man on a fine morning. Shortly after six I was already making my way between loaded carts and the booths of the fair towards the Tenevo church. Notwithstanding the early hour and the fact that the liturgy in the church was not over as yet, the noise of trade was already in the air. The squeaking of cart wheels, the neighing of horses, the lowing of cattle, and the sounds of toy trumpets were intermixed with the cries OF gipsy horse-dealers and the songs of muzhiks, who had already found time to get drunk. What numbers of gay, idle faces! What types! What beauty there was in the movements of these masses, bright with brilliant coloured dresses, on which the morning sun poured its light! All this many-thousand-headed crowd swarmed, moved, made a noise in order to finish the business they had to do in a few hours, and to disperse by the evening, leaving after them, on the market place as a sort of remembrance, refuse of hay, oats spilt here and there, and nutshells... The people, in dense crowds, were going to and coming from the church.

The cross that surmounts the church emitted golden rays, bright as those of the sun. It glittered and seemed to be aflame with golden fire. Beneath it the cupola of the church was burning with the same fire, and the freshly painted green dome shone in the sun, and beyond the sparkling cross the clear blue sky stretched out in the far distance. I passed through the crowds in the churchyard and entered the church. The liturgy had only just begun and the Gospel was being read. The silence of the church was only broken by the voice of the reader and the footsteps of the incense-bearing deacon. The people stood silent and immovable, gazing with reverence through the wide-open holy gates of the altar and listening to the drawling voice of the reader. Village decorum, or, to speak more correctly, village propriety, strictly represses every inclination to violate the reverend quiet of the church. I always felt ashamed when in a church anything caused me to smile or speak. Unfortunately it is seldom that I do not meet some of my acquaintances who, I regret to say, are only too numerous, and it generally happens that I have hardly entered the church before I am accosted by one of the ‘intelligentsia’ who, after a long introduction about the weather, begins a conversation on his own trivial affairs. I answer ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but I am too considerate to refuse to give him any attention. While I talk I glance bashfully at my neighbours who are praying, fearing that my idle chatter may wound them.

This time, as usual, I did not escape from acquaintances. When I entered the church I saw my heroine standing close to the door - that same ‘girl in red’ whom I had met on the way to Tenevo.

Poor little thing! There she stood, red as a crawfish, and perspiring in the midst of the crowd, casting imploring glances on all those faces in the search for a deliverer. She had stuck fast in the densest crowd and, unable to move either forward or backward, looked like a bird who was being tightly squeezed in a fist. When she saw me she smiled bitterly and began nodding her pretty chin.

‘For God’s sake, escort me to the front!’ she said, seizing hold of my sleeve, it is terribly stuffy here - and so crowded... I beg you!’

‘In front it will be as crowded,’ I replied.

‘But there, all the people are well dressed and respectable... Here are only common people. A place is reserved for us in front... You, too, ought to be there...’

So she was red not because it was stuffy and crowded in the church. Her little head was troubled by the question of precedence. I granted the vain girl’s prayer, and by carefully pressing aside the people I was able to conduct her to the very dais near the altar on which the flower of our district
beau-monde
was collected. Having placed Olenka in a position that was in accordance with her aristocratic desires, I took up a post at the back of the
beau-monde
and began an inspection.

As usual, the men and women were whispering and giggling. The Justice of the Peace, Kalinin, gesticulating with his hands and shaking his head, was telling the landowner, Deryaev, in an undertone all about his ailments. Deryaev was abusing the doctors almost aloud and advising the justice of the peace to be treated by a certain Evstrat Ivanych. The ladies, perceiving Olenka, pounced upon her as a good subject for their criticism and began whispering. There was only one girl who evidently was praying... She was kneeling, with her black eyes fixed in front of her; she was moving her lips. She did not notice a curl of hair that had got loose under her hat and was hanging in disorder over her temple... She did not notice that Olenka and I had stopped beside her.

She was Nadezhda Nikolaevna, Justice Kalinin’s daughter. When I spoke above of the woman, who, like a black cat, had run between the doctor and me, I was speaking of her... The doctor loved her as only such noble natures as my dear ‘Screw’s’ are able to love. Now he was standing beside her, as stiff as a pikestaff, with his hands at his sides and his neck stretched out. From time to time his loving eyes glanced inquiringly at her concentrated face. He seemed to be watching her pray and in his eyes there shone a melancholy, passionate longing to be the object of her prayers. But, to his grief, he knew for whom she was praying... It was not for him...

I made a sign to Pavel Ivanovich when he looked round at me, and we both left the church.

‘Let’s stroll about the market,’ I proposed.

We lighted our cigarettes and went towards the booths.

CHAPTER IX

How is Nadezhda Nikolaevna?’ I asked the doctor as we J. -L entered a tent where toys were being sold.

‘Pretty well... I think she’s all right...’ the doctor replied, frowning at a little soldier with a lilac face and a crimson uniform. ‘She asked about you...’

‘What did she ask about me?’

‘Things in general... She is angry that you have not been to see them for so long... she wants to see you and to inquire the cause of your sudden coldness towards their household... You used to go there nearly every day and then - dropped them! As if cut off... You don’t even acknowledge them in the street.’

‘That’s not true, Screw... Want of leisure is really the cause of my ceasing to go to the Kalinins. What’s true is true! My connection with that family is as excellent as formerly... I always bow if I happen to meet any of them.’

‘However, last Thursday, when you met her father, for some reason you did not return his bow.’

‘I don’t like that old blockhead of a Justice,’ I said, ‘and I can’t look with equanimity at his phiz; but I still find myself able to bow to him and to press the hand he stretches out to me. Perhaps I didn’t notice him on Thursday, or I didn’t recognize him. You’re not in a good humour today, Screwy, and are trying to pick a quarrel.’

‘I love you, my dear boy,’ Pavel Ivanovich sighed; ‘but I don’t believe you... “Didn’t notice, didn’t recognize”! I don’t require your justifications nor your evasions... What’s the use of them when there’s so little truth in them? You’re an excellent, a good man, but there’s a kind of a screw loose in your brain that makes you - forgive me for saying it - capable of anything.’

‘I’m humbly obliged.’

‘Don’t be offended, golubchek... God grant that I may be mistaken, but you appear to me to be something of a psychopath. Sometimes, quite in spite of your will and the dictates of your excellent nature, you have attacks of such desires and commit such acts that all who know you as a respectable man are quite nonplussed. You make one marvel how your highly moral principles, which I have the honour of knowing, can exist together with your sudden impulses, which, in the end, produce the most screaming abominations! What animal is this?’ Pavel Ivanovich asked the salesman abruptly in quite another tone, lifting close to his eyes a wooden animal with a man’s nose, a mane, and a grey stripe down its back.

‘A lion,’ the salesman answered, yawning. ‘Or perhaps some other sort of creature. The deuce only knows!’

From the toy booths we went to the shops where textiles were sold and trade was already very brisk.

‘These toys only mislead children,’ the doctor said. ‘They give the falsest ideas of flora and fauna. For example, that lion... striped, purple, and squeaking... Whoever heard of a lion that squeaks?’

‘I say, Screwy,’ I began, ‘you evidently want to say something to me and you seem not to be able... Go ahead! I like to hear you, even when you tell me unpleasant things...’

‘Whether pleasant or unpleasant, friend, you must listen to me. There is much I want to talk to you about.’

‘Begin... I am transformed into one very large ear.’

I have already mentioned to you my supposition that you are a psychopath. Now have the goodness to listen to the proofs... I will speak quite frankly, perhaps sometimes sharply... My words may jar on you, but don’t be angry, friend... You know my feelings for you: I like you better than anybody else in the district I speak not to reprove, nor to blame, nor to upset you. Let us both be objective, friend... Let us examine your psyche with an unprejudiced eye, as if it were a liver or a stomach...’

‘All right, let’s be objective,’ I agreed.

‘Excellent! Then let us begin with your connection with Kalinin... If you consult your memory it will tell you that you began to visit the Kalinins immediately after your arrival in this district so favourably looked upon by the good Lord. Your acquaintance was not sought by them. At first you did not please the Justice of the Peace, owing to your arrogant manner, your sarcastic tone, and your friendship with the dissolute Count, and you would never have been in the Justice’s house if you yourself had not paid him a visit. You remember? You became acquainted with Nadezhda Nikolaevna, and you began to frequent the Justice’s house almost every day... Whenever one came to the house you were sure to be there... You were welcomed in the most cordial manner. You were shown all possible marks of friendship - by the father, the mother, and the little sister... They became as much attached to you as if you were a relative... They were enraptured by you... you were made much of, they were in fits of laughter over your slightest witticism... You were for them the acme of wisdom, nobility, gentle manners. You appeared to understand all this, and you reciprocated their attachment with attachment - you went there every day, even on the eve of holidays - the days of cleaning and bustle. Lastly, the unhappy love that you aroused in Nadezhda’s heart is no secret to you... Is that not so? Well, then, you, knowing she was over head and ears in love with you, continued to go there day after day... And what happened then, friend? A year ago, for no apparent reason, you suddenly ceased visiting the house. You were awaited for a week... a month... They are still waiting for you, and you still don’t appear... they write to you... you do not reply... You end by not even bowing... To you, who set so much store by decorum, such conduct must appear as the height of rudeness! Why did you break off your connection with the Kalinins in such a sharp and off-hand manner? Did they offend you? No... Did they bore you? In that case you might have broken off gradually, and not in such a sharp and insulting manner, for which there was no cause...’

‘I stopped visiting a house and therefore have become a psychopath!’ I laughed. ‘How naive you are, Screwy! What difference is there if you suddenly cease an acquaintance or do so gradually? It’s even more honest to do so suddenly — there’s less hypocrisy in it. But what trifles all these are!’

‘Let us admit that all this is trifling, or that the cause of your sudden rudeness is a secret that does not concern other people. But how can you explain your subsequent conduct?’

‘For instance?’

‘For instance, you appeared one day at a meeting of our Zemstvo Board -I don’t know what your business was there - and in reply to the president, who asked you how it came that you were no longer to be met at Kalinin’s, you said... Try to remember what you said! “I’m afraid they want to marry me!” Those were the words that came from your lips! And this you said during the meeting in a loud and distinct voice, so that every single man present could hear you! Pretty? In reply to your woi Is laughter and various offensive witticisms about fishing for husbands could be heard on all sides. Your words were caught up by a certain scamp, who went to Kalinin’s and repeated them to Nadenka during dinner... Why such an insult, Sergey Petrovich?’

Pavel Ivanovich barred the way. He stood before me and continued looking at me with imploring, almost tearful eyes.

‘Why such an insult? Why? Because this charming girl loves you? Let us admit that her father, like all fathers, had intentions on your person... He is like all fathers, they all have an eye on you, on me, on Markuzin... All parents are alike! There’s not the slightest doubt that she is over head and ears in love; perhaps she had hoped she would become your wife... Is that a reason to give her such a sounding box on the ear? Dyadenka, dyadenka!
 
Was it not you yourself who encouraged these intentions on your person? You went there every day; ordinary guests never go so often. In the daytime you went out fishing with her, in the evening you walked about the garden with her, jealously guarding your
tête-à-tête...
You learned that she loved you, and you made not the slightest change in your conduct... Was it possible after that not to suspect you of having good intentions? I was convinced you would marry her! And you — you complained - you laughed! Why? What had she done to you?’

‘Don’t shout, Screwy, the people are staring at us,’ I said, getting round Pavel Ivanovich. ‘Let us change this conversation.

It’s old women’s chatter. I’ll explain in a few words, and that must be enough for you. I went to the Kalinins’ house because I was bored and also because Nadenka interested me. She’s a very interesting girl... Perhaps I might even have married her. But, finding out that you had preceded me as a candidate for her heart, that you were not indifferent to her, I decided to disappear... It would have been cruel on my part to stand in the way of such a good fellow as yourself...’

‘Thanks for the favour! I never asked you for this gracious gift, and, as far as I can judge by the expression on your face, you are now not speaking the truth; you are talking nonsense, not reflecting on what you say... And besides, the fact of my being a good fellow didn’t hinder you on one of your last meetings with Nadenka from making her a proposal in the summer-house, which would have brought no good to the excellent young fellow if he had married her.’

‘O-ho! Screwy, where did you find out about this? It seems that your affairs are not going on badly, if such secrets are confided to you! However, you’ve grown white with rage and almost look as if you were going to strike me... And just now we agreed to be objective! Screwy, what a funny fellow you are! Well, we’ve had about enough of all this nonsense... Let’s go to the post office...’