The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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such a calling on yourself if you have so little faith and no strength? There is no end to my despair! Save me, Queen of Heaven!”
“Calm yourself, Father,” said Kunin.
“I am worn out with hunger, Pavel Mihailovitch,” Father Yakov went on. “Generously forgive me, but I am at the end of my strength…. I know if I were to beg and to bow down, everyone would help, but… I cannot! I am ashamed. How can I beg of the peasants? You are on the Board here, so you know…. How can one beg of a beggar? And to beg of richer people, of landowners, I cannot! I have pride! I am ashamed!”
Father Yakov waved his hand, and nervously scratched his head with both hands.
“I am ashamed! My God, I am ashamed! I am proud and can’t bear people to see my poverty! When you visited me, Pavel Mihailovitch, I had no tea in the house! There wasn’t a pinch of it, and you know it was pride prevented me from telling you! I am ashamed of my clothes, of these patches here…. I am ashamed of my vestments, of being hungry…. And is it seemly for a priest to be proud?”
Father Yakov stood still in the middle of the study, and, as though he did not notice Kunin’s presence, began reasoning with himself.
“Well, supposing I endure hunger and disgrace — but, my God, I have a wife! I took her from a good home! She is not used to hard work; she is soft; she is used to tea and white bread and sheets on her bed…. At home she used to play the piano…. She is young, not twenty yet…. She would like, to be sure, to be smart, to have fun, go out to see people…. And she is worse off with me than any cook; she is ashamed to show herself in the street. My God, my God! Her only treat is when I bring an apple or some biscuit from a visit… .”
Father Yakov scratched his head again with both hands.
“And it makes us feel not love but pity for each other…. I cannot look at her without compassion! And the things that happen in this life, O Lord! Such things that people would not believe them if they saw them in the newspaper…. And when will there be an end to it all!”
“Hush, Father!” Kunin almost shouted, frightened at his tone. “Why take such a gloomy view of life?”
“Generously forgive me, Pavel Mihailovitch …” muttered Father Yakov as though he were drunk, “Forgive me, all this… doesn’t matter, and don’t take any notice of it…. Only I do blame myself, and always shall blame myself… always.”
Father Yakov looked about him and began whispering:
“One morning early I was going from Sinkino to Lutchkovo; I saw a woman standing on the river bank, doing something…. I went up close and could not believe my eyes…. It was horrible! The wife of the doctor, Ivan Sergeitch, was sitting there washing her linen…. A doctor’s wife, brought up at a select boarding-school! She had got up you see, early and gone half a mile from the village that people should not see her…. She couldn’t get over her pride! When she saw that I was near her and noticed her poverty, she turned red all over…. I was flustered — I was frightened, and ran up to help her, but she hid her linen from me; she was afraid I should see her ragged chemises… .”
“All this is positively incredible,” said Kunin, sitting down and looking almost with horror at Father Yakov’s pale face.
“Incredible it is! It’s a thing that has never been! Pavel Mihailovitch, that a doctor’s wife should be rinsing the linen in the river! Such a thing does not happen in any country! As her pastor and spiritual father, I ought not to allow it, but what can I do? What? Why, I am always trying to get treated by her husband for nothing myself! It is true that, as you say, it is all incredible! One can hardly believe one’s eyes. During Mass, you know, when I look out from the altar and see my congregation, Avraamy starving, and my wife, and think of the doctor’s wife — how blue her hands were from the cold water — would you believe it, I forget myself and stand senseless like a fool, until the sacristan calls to me…. It’s awful!”
Father Yakov began walking about again.
“Lord Jesus!” he said, waving his hands, “holy Saints! I can’t officiate properly…. Here you talk to me about the school, and I sit like a dummy and don’t understand a word, and think of nothing but food…. Even before the altar…. But… what am I doing?” Father Yakov pulled himself up suddenly. “You want to go out. Forgive me, I meant nothing…. Excuse …”
Kunin shook hands with Father Yakov without speaking, saw him into the hall, and going back into his study, stood at the window. He saw Father Yakov go out of the house, pull his wide-brimmed rusty-looking hat over his eyes, and slowly, bowing his head, as though ashamed of his outburst, walk along the road.
“I don’t see his horse,” thought Kunin.
Kunin did not dare to think that the priest had come on foot every day to see him; it was five or six miles to Sinkino, and the mud on the road was impassable. Further on he saw the coachman Andrey and the boy Paramon, jumping over the puddles and splashing Father Yakov with mud, run up to him for his blessing. Father Yakov took off his hat and slowly blessed Andrey, then blessed the boy and stroked his head.
Kunin passed his hand over his eyes, and it seemed to him that his hand was moist. He walked away from the window and with dim eyes looked round the room in which he still seemed to hear the timid droning voice. He glanced at the table. Luckily, Father Yakov, in his haste, had forgotten to take the sermons. Kunin rushed up to them, tore them into pieces, and with loathing thrust them under the table.
“And I did not know!” he moaned, sinking on to the sofa. “After being here over a year as member of the Rural Board, Honorary Justice of the Peace, member of the School Committee! Blind puppet, egregious idiot! I must make haste and help them, I must make haste!”
He turned from side to side uneasily, pressed his temples and racked his brains.
“On the twentieth I shall get my salary, two hundred roubles…. On some good pretext I will give him some, and some to the doctor’s wife…. I will ask them to perform a special service here, and will get up an illness for the doctor…. In that way I shan’t wound their pride. And I’ll help Father Avraamy too… .”
He reckoned his money on his fingers, and was afraid to own to himself that those two hundred roubles would hardly be enough for him to pay his steward, his servants, the peasant who brought the meat…. He could not help remembering the recent past when he was senselessly squandering his father’s fortune, when as a puppy of twenty he had given expensive fans to prostitutes, had paid ten roubles a day to Kuzma, his cabdriver, and in his vanity had made presents to actresses. Oh, how useful those wasted rouble, three-rouble, ten-rouble notes would have been now!
“Father Avraamy lives on three roubles a month!” thought Kunin. “For a rouble the priest’s wife could get herself a chemise, and the doctor’s wife could hire a washerwoman. But I’ll help them, anyway! I must help them.”
Here Kunin suddenly recalled the private information he had sent to the bishop, and he writhed as from a sudden draught of cold air. This remembrance filled him with overwhelming shame before his inner self and before the unseen truth.
So had begun and had ended a sincere effort to be of public service on the part of a well-intentioned but unreflecting and over-comfortable person.
GRISHA [trans. by Marian Fell]
GRISHA, a chubby little boy born only two years and eight months ago, was out walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He wore a long, wadded burnoose, a large cap with a furry knob, a muffler, and wool-lined goloshes. He felt stuffy and hot, and, in addition, the waxing sun of April was beating directly into his face and making his eyelids smart.
Every inch of his awkward little figure, with its timid, uncertain steps, bespoke a boundless