The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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about the cranes, about the gurgling streams, and the corn mounting into ear?
The two of them, the cobbler and the orphan, walk about the fields, talk unceasingly, and are not weary. They could wander about the world endlessly. They walk, and in their talk of the beauty of the earth do not notice the frail little beggar-girl tripping after them. She is breathless and moves with a lagging step. There are tears in her eyes; she would be glad to stop these inexhaustible wanderers, but to whom and where can she go? She has no home or people of her own; whether she likes it or not, she must walk and listen to their talk.
Towards midday, all three sit down on the river bank. Danilka takes out of his bag a piece of bread, soaked and reduced to a mash, and they begin to eat. Terenty says a prayer when he has eaten the bread, then stretches himself on the sandy bank and falls asleep. While he is asleep, the boy gazes at the water, pondering. He has many different things to think of. He has just seen the storm, the bees, the ants, the train. Now, before his eyes, fishes are whisking about. Some are two inches long and more, others are no bigger than one’s nail. A viper, with its head held high, is swimming from one bank to the other.
Only towards the evening our wanderers return to the village. The children go for the night to a deserted barn, where the corn of the commune used to be kept, while Terenty, leaving them, goes to the tavern. The children lie huddled together on the straw, dozing.
The boy does not sleep. He gazes into the darkness, and it seems to him that he is seeing all that he has seen in the day: the storm-clouds, the bright sunshine, the birds, the fish, lanky Terenty. The number of his impressions, together with exhaustion and hunger, are too much for him; he is as hot as though he were on fire, and tosses from, side to side. He longs to tell someone all that is haunting him now in the darkness and agitating his soul, but there is no one to tell. Fyokla is too little and could not understand.
“I’ll tell Terenty tomorrow,” thinks the boy.
The children fall asleep thinking of the homeless cobbler, and, in the night, Terenty comes to them, makes the sign of the cross over them, and puts bread under their heads. And no one sees his love. It is seen only by the moon which floats in the sky and peeps caressingly through the holes in the wall of the deserted barn.
AT A SUMMER VILLA
Translation By Constance Garnett
“I LOVE YOU. You are my life, my happiness — everything to me! Forgive the avowal, but I have not the strength to suffer and be silent. I ask not for love in return, but for sympathy. Be at the old arbour at eight o’clock this evening…. To sign my name is unnecessary I think, but do not be uneasy at my being anonymous. I am young, nice-looking… what more do you want?”
When Pavel Ivanitch Vyhodtsev, a practical married man who was spending his holidays at a summer villa, read this letter, he shrugged his shoulders and scratched his forehead in perplexity.
“What devilry is this?” he thought. “I’m a married man, and to send me such a queer… silly letter! Who wrote it?”
Pavel Ivanitch turned the letter over and over before his eyes, read it through again, and spat with disgust.
“ ‘I love you’ “… he said jeeringly. “A nice boy she has pitched on! So I’m to run off to meet you in the arbour!… I got over all such romances and fleurs d’amour years ago, my girl…. Hm! She must be some reckless, immoral creature…. Well, these women are a set! What a whirligig — God forgive us! — she must be to write a letter like that to a stranger, and a married man, too! It’s real demoralisation!”
In the course of his eight years of married life Pavel Ivanitch had completely got over all sentimental feeling, and he had received no letters from ladies except letters of congratulation, and so, although he tried to carry it off with disdain, the letter quoted above greatly intrigued and agitated him.
An hour after receiving it, he was lying on his sofa, thinking:
“Of course I am not a silly boy, and I am not going to rush off to this idiotic rendezvous; but yet it would be interesting to know who wrote it! Hm…. It is certainly a woman’s writing…. The letter is written with genuine feeling, and so it can hardly be a joke…. Most likely it’s some neurotic girl, or perhaps a widow… widows are frivolous and eccentric as a rule. Hm…. Who could it be?”
What made it the more difficult to decide the question was that Pavel Ivanitch had not one feminine acquaintance among all the summer visitors, except his wife.
“It is queer …” he mused. “ ‘I love you!’… When did she manage to fall in love? Amazing woman! To fall in love like this, apropos of nothing, without making any acquaintance and finding out what sort of man I am…. She must be extremely young and romantic if she is capable of falling in love after two or three looks at me…. But… who is she?”
Pavel Ivanitch suddenly recalled that when he had been walking among the summer villas the day before, and the day before that, he had several times been met by a fair young lady with a light blue hat and a turn-up nose. The fair charmer had kept looking at him, and when he sat down on a seat she had sat down beside him….
“Can it be she?” Vyhodtsev wondered. “It can’t be! Could a delicate ephemeral creature like that fall in love with a worn-out old eel like me? No, it’s impossible!”
At dinner Pavel Ivanitch looked blankly at his wife while he meditated:
“She writes that she is young and nice-looking…. So she’s not old…. Hm…. To tell the truth, honestly I am not so old and plain that no one could fall in love with me. My wife loves me! Besides, love is blind, we all know… .”
“What are you thinking about?” his wife asked him.
“Oh… my head aches a little…” Pavel Ivanitch said, quite untruly.
He made up his mind that it was stupid to pay attention to such a nonsensical thing as a love-letter, and laughed at it and at its authoress, but — alas! — powerful is the “dacha”enemy of mankind! After dinner, Pavel Ivanitch lay down on his bed, and instead of going to sleep, reflected:
“But there, I daresay she is expecting me to come! What a silly! I can just imagine what a nervous fidget she’ll be in and how her tournure will quiver when she does not find me in the arbour! I shan’t go, though…. Bother her!”
But, I repeat, powerful is the enemy of mankind.
“Though I might, perhaps, just out of curiosity…” he was musing, half an hour later. “I might go and look from a distance what sort of a creature she is…. It would be interesting to have a look at her! It would be fun, and that’s all! After all, why shouldn’t I have a little fun since such a chance has turned up?”
Pavel Ivanitch got up from his bed and began dressing. “What are you getting yourself up so smartly for?” his wife asked, noticing that he was putting on a clean shirt and a fashionable tie.
“Oh, nothing…. I must have a walk…. My head aches…. Hm.”
Pavel Ivanitch dressed in his best, and waiting till eight o’clock, went out of the house. When the figures of gaily dressed summer visitors of both sexes began passing before his eyes against the bright green background, his heart throbbed.
“Which of them is it? …” he wondered, advancing irresolutely. “Come, what am I afraid of? Why, I am not going to the rendezvous! What… a fool! Go forward boldly! And what if I go into the arbour? Well, well… there is no reason I should.”
Pavel Ivanitch’s heart beat still more violently…. Involuntarily, with no desire to do so, he suddenly pictured to himself the half-darkness of the arbour…. A graceful fair girl with a little blue hat