The Collected Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov (200+ Titles in Multiple Translations). Anton Chekhov
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protocol, was about to weep and beg my kinsman's protection, when suddenly my uncle started and opened his arms with a look of intense surprise.
“Lord in heaven, what is that?” he asked.
Down the path came Tatiana Ivanovna, wife of Feodor Petrovitch, our steward. She was carrying a white, well-starched petticoat, and a long ironing board. When passing she looked timidly at the guest through her long eyelashes, and blushed.
“Still more miracles!” cried my uncle, through his teeth, looking genially after her. “One can't walk a yard with you, sister, without a fresh surprise. . . . I swear to God!”
“That is our local beauty,” said my mother. “She was courted for Feodor in town, a hundred versts from this.”
Few would have found Tatiana Ivanovna beautiful. She was a little plump woman of about twenty, black-browed, and always rosy and pleasing. But neither face nor figure contained one striking trait, one bold stroke to catch the eye; it seemed as if Nature, creating her, had lost inspiration and confidence. Tatiana Ivanovna was timid, confused, and well-mannered; she walked quietly and smoothly, spoke little, and seldom smiled ; her whole life was as flat and eventless as her face and her smoothly dressed hair. My uncle looked after her and smiled ; and my mother looked earnestly at her smiling face, and became serious.
“And you, brother ... so you never married!” She sighed.
“Never!”
“Why?” asked my mother softly.
“It's hard to explain. Somehow it worked out that way. When young I worked hard, and thought little of such things; and when I began to feel the desire to live, I suddenly remembered that I was over fifty. . . . I never, somehow, managed to get married. But that is a tiresome subject.”
My mother and my uncle both sighed, and went on. I remained behind and sought my tutor to exchange impressions. Pobiedimsky stood in the middle of the yard and looked solemnly at the sky.
“You can see that he is a cultivated man,” he said. “I hope we shall get on with him.”
An hour later my mother returned to us.
“What a pity, my dears!” she began. “My brother has brought a servant; and a servant, God love him, whom I can't put in the kitchen, or the hall. He must have a room to himself. I don't know how to manage. The two of you must remove into the wing with Feodor, and give up your room to the valet.”
We consented readily. There was more freedom in the wing than under my mother's eyes.
“But that's not the worst!” continued my mother. “Your uncle says he will dine late, at seven o'clock, as at St. Petersburg. I'll go out of my mind! At seven the dinner will be cooked to death. In spite of their big brains, men never understand house-keeping. We must have two dinners. You, my dears, will dine early as before; I, old woman, will wait till seven for my brother's sake.”
My mother sighed deeply, advised me to please my uncle, whom God had sent for my welfare, and ran into the kitchen. Pobiedimsky and I migrated to the wing, where we made ourselves cosy in a room with two doors, between the hall and the steward's bedroom.
My uncle's arrival and our migration made little difference in our lives. Contrary to expectation, things remained as of old, drowsy and monotonous. Pobiedimsky, who read no books and had no interests in life, sat hours on his bed, moved his long nose, and thought. Occasionally he rose, tried on his new suit, and again sat, silent and thoughtful. The flies alone worried him, and he slapped them ruthlessly. After dinner when he usually “rested,” his snores caused agony to the whole household. As for me, morning to night I ran wild about the garden or sat in the wing and glued my kites. For the first few weeks we seldom even saw my uncle. All day long, ignoring the flies and the heat, he sat in his room and worked. His capacity for sitting still at his desk smacked of magic; and for us, idlers with no regular occupations, his industry was a miracle. Rising at nine o'clock, he sat at once at his desk, and worked steadily till dinner. After dinner he resumed his work, and continued it till late at night. Sometimes I peered through the keyhole; and always saw the same scene: my uncle sat at his desk and worked; and his work seemed always the same: with one hand he wrote, with the other he turned over the pages of a book; and — what seemed strangest to me — his body moved without cease; he swung his leg as a pendulum, whistled and nodded his head in time. His face expressed levity and abstraction, as if he were playing noughts and crosses. He always wore the same short, smart jacket and the same well-tied necktie, and even through the keyhole I could smell his delicate, feminine perfumes. He left his room only to dine, and then ate hardly anything.
“I can't understand your uncle,” complained my mother. “Every day for him alone we kill a turkey and pigeons, and I make compotes with my own hands; but all he touches is a plate of bouillon and a piece of bread, and then goes back to his desk. He'll die of starvation. When I argue with him about it he only smiles and jokes. No, he doesn't like our food!”
Evening was pleasanter than day. At sunset when long shadows lay across the road, Tatiana Ivanovna, Pobiedimsky, and I sat on the steps of the wing. Till dark, we kept silence — indeed, what was there fresh to say? — the one new theme, my uncle's visit, had been worn threadbare. Pobiedimsky kept his eyes on Tatiana Ivanovna's face and sighed unceasingly. At that time I misinterpreted these sighs, and missed their real meaning; afterwards they explained much.
When the long shadows merged in the general gloom, Feodor, the steward, returned from shooting or from the farm. Feodor always impressed me as a savage, terrible person. The son of a Russianised gipsy, swarthy, with big black eyes and a curly ill-kept beard, he was nicknamed "devilkin" by the Kotchuef ka peasants. His ways were as gipsy as his face. He was restless at home; and whole days wandered about, shooting game, or simply walking across country. Morose, bilious, and taciturn, he feared no one and respected no authority. To my mother he was openly rude, he addressed me as “thou,” and held my tutor's learning in contempt. Looking on him as a delicate, excitable man, we forgave him all this; and my mother liked him, because, notwithstanding his gipsy ways, he was ideally honest and hard - working. He loved his Tatiana Ivanovna with a gipsy's love, but his affection expressed itself darkly, as if it caused him pain. Indeed, in our presence he showed no regard for his wife, but stared at her steadily and viciously and contorted his mouth.
On returning from the farm he set down his gun noisily and viciously in the wing, came out to us on the stairs, and sat beside his wife. After a minute's rest, he put a few questions about housekeeping, and relapsed into silence.
“Let us have a song.”
My tutor played the guitar, and, in the thick, bass voice of a church clerk, sang “Among the level valleys.” All joined in. The tutor sang bass, Feodor in a hardly audible tenor, and I soprano, in one voice with Tatiana Ivanovna.
When the sky was covered with stars and the frogs ceased croaking, supper was brought from the kitchen. We went indoors and ate. My tutor and the gipsy ate greedily and so noisily that it was hard to judge whether they were eating bones or merely crunching their jaws. Tatiana Ivanovna and I barely finished our portions. After supper the wing sank to deep sleep.
Once — it was at the end of May — we sad on the steps and waited for supper, when a shadow fell across us, and suddenly as if sprung out of the gi'ound appeared GundasofF. For a second he looked at us steadfastly, then waved his hands, and smiled a merry smile.
“An, idyll!” he exclaimed. “They sing; they dream of the moon ! It's irresistible, I swear to God! May I sit with you and dream?”
We exchanged looks, but said nothing. My uncle seated himself on the lowest step, yawned, and looked at the sky. At first silence reigned; and it was Fobiedimskv, long watching for an opportunity to speak with some one new, who broke it. For such intellectxial conversation Pobiedimsky had only one theme — epizooty. As a man who has been in a crowd a thousand strong sometimes remembers one face in particular, so Pobiedimsky, of all he had read at the Institute during his six months' studies, retained only one phrase:
“Epizooty is the cause of untold loss to agriculture. In combating it the public must itself walk