The Collected Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov (200+ Titles in Multiple Translations). Anton Chekhov
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you want a drink, drink, no need to philosophize as to whether it’s bad for you or not…. Damn all this philosophy and psychology!”
The guard walks through the compartment.
“My dear fellow,” the bridegroom addresses him, “when you pass through the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat with a white bird and tell her I’m here!”
“Yes, sir. Only there isn’t a No. 209 in this train; there’s 219!”
“Well, 219, then! It’s all the same. Tell that lady, then, that her husband is all right!”
Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:
“Husband…. Lady…. All in a minute! Husband…. Ha-ha! I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a husband! Ach, idiot! But think of her!… Yesterday she was a little girl, a midget… it s simply incredible!”
“Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man,” observes one of the passengers; “one as soon expects to see a white elephant.”
“Yes, and whose fault is it?” says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching his long legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed toes. “If you are not happy it’s your own fault! Yes, what else do you suppose it is? Man is the creator of his own happiness. If you want to be happy you will be, but you don’t want to be! You obstinately turn away from happiness.”
“Why, what next! How do you make that out?”
“Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his life man should love. When that time comes you should love like a house on fire, but you won’t heed the dictates of nature, you keep waiting for something. What’s more, it’s laid down by law that the normal man should enter upon matrimony. There’s no happiness without marriage. When the propitious moment has come, get married. There’s no use in shilly-shallying…. But you don’t get married, you keep waiting for something! Then the Scriptures tell us that ‘wine maketh glad the heart of man.’… If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go to the refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not to be too clever, but to follow the beaten track! The beaten track is a grand thing!”
“You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the devil is he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured motherin-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the winds? Everything depends on chance. If we had an accident at this moment you’d sing a different tune.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” retorts the bridegroom. “Railway accidents only happen once a year. I’m not afraid of an accident, for there is no reason for one. Accidents are exceptional! Confound them! I don’t want to talk of them! Oh, I believe we’re stopping at a station.”
“Where are you going now?” asks Pyotr Petrovitch. “To Moscow or somewhere further south?
“Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when I’m on my way to the north?”
“But Moscow isn’t in the north.”
“I know that, but we’re on our way to Petersburg,” says Ivan Alexyevitch.
“We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!”
“To Moscow? What do you mean?” says the bridegroom in amazement.
“It’s queer…. For what station did you take your ticket?”
“For Petersburg.”
“In that case I congratulate you. You’ve got into the wrong train.”
There follows a minute of silence. The bridegroom gets up and looks blankly round the company.
“Yes, yes,” Pyotr Petrovitch explains. “You must have jumped into the wrong train at Bologoe…. After your glass of brandy you succeeded in getting into the down-train.”
Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins pacing rapidly about the carriage.
“Ach, idiot that I am!” he says in indignation. “Scoundrel! The devil devour me! Whatever am I to do now? Why, my wife is in that train! She’s there all alone, expecting me, consumed by anxiety. Ach, I’m a motley fool!”
The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone had trodden on his corns.
“I am un-unhappy man!” he moans. “What am I to do, what am I to do?”
“There, there!” the passengers try to console him. “It’s all right…. You must telegraph to your wife and try to change into the Petersburg express. In that way you’ll overtake her.”
“The Petersburg express!” weeps the bridegroom, the creator of his own happiness. “And how am I to get a ticket for the Petersburg express? All my money is with my wife.”
The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a collection and furnish the happy man with funds.
THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR [trans. by Robert Crozier Long]
The letter received at the beginning of April, 1870, by my widowed mother, Claudia Arkhipovna — my late father was an army lieutenant — came from her brother Ivan, a Privy Councillor in St. Petersburg. “Kidney disease,” ran this letter, “compels me to spend all my summers abroad; but this year I have no ready money to spend on a visit to Marienbad, and it is very likely, dear sister, that I shall spend this summer with you at Kotchuefka. . . .”
When she had read the letter my mother turned pale and trembled. But her expression showed joy as well as grief. She wept, and she smiled. This combat of tears and laughter always reminded me of the hiss and sputter of a lighted candle when some one splashes it with water.
Having read the letter yet again, my mother summoned the whole household; and, her voice broken with emotion, explained that there had been four brothers GundasofF — the first died a child, the second served in the army, and died also, the third — more shame to him — went on the stage, and the fourth . . .
“The fourtli is at the top of the tree ! . . .” sighed my mother. “My own brother, we grew up together, yet I fear to think of him! . . . He is a Privy Councillor, a general! How shall I meet my angel? What shall I say to him — I, an uneducated fool? For fifteen long years I haven't seen him once! Andriushenka!” My mother turned to me. “Rejoice, donkey! God has sent you your uncle for your future welfare!”
Her detailed history of the Gimdasoft's heralded a household revolution hitherto witnessed only at Chi'istmas. Only the river and the firmament were spared. Everything else within reach was scoured, scrubbed, and painted, and had the sky been smaller and nearer, had the river's course been slower, they too would have been rubbed with brick-bats and scoured with bast-ribbons. The walls, already whiter than snow, were whitewashed again; the floors already shone and sparkled, but they were re-washed thenceforward every day. The old cat Kutsi, so nicknamed after I had docked his tail with a sugar-knife, was exiled to the kitchen and handed over to Anisya, and Fedka was warned that “God would punish him” if the dogs came near the stairs. But the worst sufferings were reserved for the helpless carpets and arm-chairs. Never were they beaten so fiercely as on the eve of my uncle's advent. My pigeons, hearing the swish of the beaters' sticks, shuddered, and disappeared in the sky.
From Novostroefka came Spiridon, the only tailor within reach who could make clothes for gentlemen. As a man, Spiridon was sober, laborious, and capable, not devoid of imagination and a certain plastic sense; as a tailor he was beneath contempt. His lack of faith spoiled everything. From fear that his suits were not in the latest fashion, he took them to pieces as often as five times; he tramped miles into town to study the local fops; yet despite all his strivings, we were dressed in clothes which even a caricaturist would find pretentious and exaggerated.