The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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the dancing and singing master. Our music school is at No. 13 Five Dogs’ Lane. That is probably why my life has been so unlucky, through living in a house numbered thirteen. Again, my daughters were born on the thirteenth, and our house has thirteen windows… But, well, what’s the good dwelling on all this? My wife is at home at any hour for business interviews, and the prospectus of the school can be had from the porter here, at sixpence a copy. [Taking a few copies from his pocket.] And, if you please, I myself can let you have some. Each copy sixpence! Any one like a copy? [A pause.] No one? Well, make it fourpence. [A pause.] How very annoying! Yes, the house is number thirteen. I am a failure at everything; I have grown old, stupid. Now, I am lecturing, and to look at me I am quite jolly, but I have such a longing to shout at the top of my voice or to run away to the ends of the earth… . And there is no one I can complain to, I even want to cry… . You may say, You have your daughters… . But what are daughters? I speak to them, and they only laugh… . My wife has seven daughters… . No, I’m sorry, I believe only six… . [Vivaciously.] Sure it’s seven! The eldest, Anna is twenty-seven; the youngest seventeen. Gentlemen! [Looking round.] I am miserable, I have become a fool, a nonentity, but, after all, you see before you the happiest of fathers. After all, it ought to be like that, and I dare not say it is not. But if only you knew! I have lived with my wife for thirty-three years, and, I can say, those were the best years of my life; I mean not precisely the best, but generally speaking. They have passed, in a word, like one happy moment; but strictly speaking, curse them all. [Looking round.] I think, though, she has not come yet; she is not here, and therefore I may say what I like. … I am terribly afraid. … I am afraid when she looks at me. Well, as I was just saying; my daughters don’t get married, probably because they are shy, and also because men never have a chance of seeing them. My wife does not want to give parties, she never invites any one to dinner, she’s a very stingy, ill-tempered, quarrelsome lady and therefore no one comes to the house, but … I can tell you in confidence [Coming close to the footlights.] … My wife’s daughters can be seen on great feast days at the house of their aunt, Natalie Semionovna, that very same lady who suffers from rheumatism and always wears a yellow dress with black spots, as though she were covered all over with black beetles. There you get real food. And if my wife happens not to be there, then you can also… . [Raising his elbow.] I must observe that I get drunk on one wineglass, and on account of that I feel so happy and at the same time so sad that I cannot describe it to you. I then recall my youth, and for some reason I long to run away, to run right away… . Oh, if only you knew how I long to do it! [Enthusiastically.] To run away, to leave everything behind, to run without ever looking back… . Where to? It does not matter where … provided I could run away from that vile, mean, cheap life, which has turned me into a miserable old fool, into a miserable old idiot; to run away from that stupid, petty, ill-tempered, spiteful, malicious miser, my wife, who has been tormenting me for thirty-three years; to run away from the music, from the kitchen, from my wife’s money affairs, from all those trifles and banalities… . To run away and then to stop somewhere far, far away in a field, and to stand stock-still like a tree, like a post, like a garden scarecrow, under the wide heaven, and to look all night long at the still, bright moon over my head, and to forget, to forget… . Oh, how much I long not to remember! … How I long to tear off this old, shabby coat, which thirty-three years ago I wore at my wedding … [tearing off his frock coat] in which I always give lectures for charitable objects… . Take that! [Stamping on the coat.] Take that! I am old, poor, wretched, like this waistcoat, with its patched, shabby, ragged back… . [Showing his back.] I want nothing! I am better and cleaner than that; I was once young, I studied at the university, I had dreams, considered myself a man… . Now I want nothing! Nothing but rest … rest! [Looking back, he quickly puts on his frock coat.] Behind the platform is my wife… . She has come and is waiting for me there… . [Looking at his watch.] The time is now over. … If she asks you, please, I implore you, tell her that the lecturer was … that the scarecrow, I mean myself, behaved with dignity. [Looking aside, coughing.] She is looking in my direction… . [Raising his voice.] Starting from the premise that tobacco contains a terrible poison, of which I have just spoken, smoking should in no circumstance be permitted, and I venture to hope, so to say, that this my lecture ‘On the Harmfulness of Tobacco’ will be of some profit to you. I have finished. Dixi et animam levavi!
[Bows and walks off with dignity.]
WOOD DEMON