The darling / Душечка. Сборник рассказов. Антон Чехов
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Tiflis13 I received a letter from my father. He wrote that Ariadne Grigoryevna had on such a day gone abroad, intending to spend the whole winter away. A month later I returned home. It was by now autumn. Every week Ariadne sent my father extremely interesting letters on scented paper, written in an excellent literary style. It is my opinion that every woman can be a writer. Ariadne described in minute detail how it had not been easy for her to make it up with her aunt and induce the latter to give her a thousand roubles for the journey, and what a long time she had spent in Moscow trying to find an old lady, a distant relation, in order to persuade her to go with her. Such a profusion of detail suggested fiction, and I realised, of course, that she had no chaperon with her.
Soon afterwards I, too, had a letter from her, also scented and literary. She wrote that she had missed me, missed my beautiful, intelligent, loving eyes. She reproached me affectionately for wasting my youth, for stagnating in the country when I might like her be living in paradise under the palms, breathing the fragrance of the orange-trees. And she signed herself “Your forsaken Ariadne.” Two days later came another letter in the same style, signed “Your forgotten Ariadne.” My mind was confused. I loved her passionately, I dreamed of her every night, and then this “your forsaken,” “your forgotten” – what did it mean? What was it for? And then the dreariness of the country, the long evenings, the disquieting thoughts of Lubkov … The uncertainty tortured me, and poisoned my days and nights; it became unendurable. I could not bear it and went abroad.
Ariadne summoned me to Abbazzia. I arrived there on a bright warm day after rain; the rain-drops were still hanging on the trees and glistening on the huge, barrack-like dépendance14 where Ariadne and Lubkov were living.
They were not at home. I went into the park; wandered about the avenues, then sat down. An Austrian General, with his hands behind him, walked past me, with red stripes on his trousers such as our generals wear. A baby was wheeled by in a perambulator and the wheels squeaked on the damp sand. A decrepit old man with jaundice passed, then a crowd of Englishwomen, a Catholic priest, then the Austrian General again. A military band, only just arrived from Fiume, with glittering brass instruments, sauntered by to the bandstand – they began playing.
Have you ever been at Abbazzia? It’s a filthy little Slav town with only one street, which stinks, and in which one can’t walk after rain without goloshes15. I had read so much and always with such intense feeling about this earthly paradise that when afterwards, holding up my trousers, I cautiously crossed the narrow street, and in my ennui16 bought some hard pears from an old peasant woman who, recognising me as a Russian, said: “Tcheeteery” for “tchetyry” (four) – “davadtsat” for “dvadtsat” (twenty), and when I wondered in perplexity where to go and what to do here, and when I inevitably met Russians as disappointed as I was, I began to feel vexed and ashamed. There is a calm bay there full of steamers and boats with coloured sails. From there I could see Fiume and the distant islands covered with lilac mist, and it would have been picturesque if the view over the bay had not been hemmed in by the hotels and their dépendances – buildings in an absurd, trivial style of architecture, with which the whole of that green shore has been covered by greedy moneygrubbers, so that for the most part you see nothing in this little paradise but windows, terraces, and little squares with tables and waiters’ black coats. There is a park such as you find now in every watering-place abroad. And the dark, motionless, silent foliage of the palms, and the bright yellow sand of the avenue, and the bright green seats, and the glitter of the braying military horns – all this made me sick in ten minutes! And yet one is obliged for some reason to spend ten days, ten weeks, there!
Having been dragged reluctantly from one of these watering-places to another, I have been more and more struck by the inconvenient and niggardly life led by the wealthy and well-fed, the dulness and feebleness of their imagination, the lack of boldness in their tastes and desires. And how much happier are those tourists, old and young, who, not having the money to stay in hotels, live where they can, admire the view of the sea from the tops of the mountains, lying on the green grass, walk instead of riding, see the forests and villages at close quarters, observe the customs of the country, listen to its songs, fall in love with its women …
While I was sitting in the park, it began to get dark, and in the twilight my Ariadne appeared, elegant and dressed like a princess; Lubkov walked after her, wearing a new loose-fitting suit, bought probably in Vienna.
“Why are you cross with me?” he was saying. “What have I done to you?”
Seeing me, she uttered a cry of joy, and probably, if we had not been in the park, would have thrown herself on my neck. She pressed my hands warmly and laughed; and I laughed too and almost cried with emotion. Questions followed, of the village, of my father, whether I had seen her brother, and so on. She insisted on my looking her straight in the face, and asked if I remembered the gudgeon, our little quarrels, the picnics …
“How really nice it all was!” she sighed. “But we’re not having a slow time here either. We have a great many acquaintances, my dear, my best of friends! Tomorrow I will introduce you to a Russian family here, but please buy yourself another hat.” She scrutinised me and frowned. “Abbazzia is not the country,” she said; “here one must be comme il faut17.”
Then we went to the restaurant. Ariadne was laughing and mischievous all the time; she kept calling me “dear,” “good,” “clever,” and seemed as though she could not believe her eyes that I was with her. We sat on till eleven o’clock, and parted very well satisfied both with the supper and with each other.
Next day Ariadne presented me to the Russian family as: “The son of a distinguished professor whose estate is next to ours.”
She talked to this family about nothing but estates and crops, and kept appealing to me. She wanted to appear to be a very wealthy landowner, and did in fact succeed in doing so. Her manner was superb like that of a real aristocrat, which indeed she was by birth.
“But what a person my aunt is!” she said suddenly, looking at me with a smile. “We had a slight tiff, and she has bolted off to Meran. What do you say to that?”
Afterwards when we were walking in the park I asked her:
“What aunt were you talking of just now? What aunt is that?”
“That was a white lie,” laughed Ariadne. “They must not know I’m without a chaperon.”
After a moment’s silence she came closer to me and said:
“My dear, my dear, do be friends with Lubkov. He is so unhappy! His wife and mother are simply awful.”
She used the formal mode of address in speaking to Lubkov, and when she was going up to bed she said good-night to him exactly as she did to me, and their rooms were on different floors. All this made me hope that it was all nonsense, and that there was no sort of love affair between them, and I felt at ease when I met him. And when one day he asked me for the loan of three hundred roubles, I gave it to him with the greatest pleasure.
Every day we spent in enjoying ourselves and did nothing else; we strolled in the park, we ate, we drank. Every day there were conversations with the Russian family. By degrees I got used to the fact that if I went into the park I should be sure to meet the old man with jaundice, the Catholic priest, and the Austrian General, who always carried a pack of little cards, and wherever it was possible sat down and played patience, nervously twitching his shoulders. And the band played the same thing over and over again.
At home in the country I used to feel ashamed to meet peasants when I was fishing or on a picnic party on a working day; here I was ashamed too at the sight of footmen, coachmen, and the workmen who met us. It always seemed to me they were looking at me and thinking: “Why are you doing nothing?” And I was conscious of this feeling of shame every day from morning till night. It was a strange, unpleasant, monotonous time; it was varied only by Lubkov’s borrowing from me now a hundred, now fifty guldens, and
Tiflis – an old name of Tbilisi, Georgia (Russia)
goloshes – rubber shoes worn over ordinary shoes when it rains or snows