The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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a cat, snatched something from the table. All this was the work of a few seconds. Watching her movements, the lieutenant saw five fingers crumple up his IOUs and caught a glimpse of the white rustling paper as it disappeared in her clenched fist. Such an extraordinary transition from goodnatured laughter to crime so appalled him that he turned pale and stepped back… .
And she, still keeping her frightened, searching eyes upon him, felt along her hip with her clenched fist for her pocket. Her fist struggled convulsively for the pocket, like a fish in the net, and could not find the opening. In another moment the IOUs would have vanished in the recesses of her feminine garments, but at that point the lieutenant uttered a faint cry, and, moved more by instinct than reflection, seized the Jewess by her arm above the clenched fist. Showing her teeth more than ever, she struggled with all her might and pulled her hand away. Then Sokolsky put his right arm firmly round her waist, and the other round her chest and a struggle followed. Afraid of outraging her sex or hurting her, he tried only to prevent her moving, and to get hold of the fist with the IOUs; but she wriggled like an eel in his arms with her supple, flexible body, struck him in the chest with her elbows, and scratched him, so that he could not help touching her all over, and was forced to hurt her and disregard her modesty.
“How unusual this is! How strange!” he thought, utterly amazed, hardly able to believe his senses, and feeling rather sick from the scent of jasmine.
In silence, breathing heavily, stumbling against the furniture, they moved about the room. Susanna was carried away by the struggle. She flushed, closed her eyes, and forgetting herself, once even pressed her face against the face of the lieutenant, so that there was a sweetish taste left on his lips. At last he caught hold of her clenched hand… . Forcing it open, and not finding the papers in it, he let go the Jewess. With flushed faces and dishevelled hair, they looked at one another, breathing hard. The spiteful, catlike expression on the Jewess’s face was gradually replaced by a goodnatured smile. She burst out laughing, and turning on one foot, went towards the room where lunch was ready. The lieutenant moved slowly after her. She sat down to the table, and, still flushed and breathing hard, tossed off half a glass of port.
“Listen” — the lieutenant broke the silence— “I hope you are joking?”
“Not a bit of it,” she answered, thrusting a piece of bread into her mouth.
“H’m! … How do you wish me to take all this?”
“As you choose. Sit down and have lunch!”
“But … it’s dishonest!”
“Perhaps. But don’t trouble to give me a sermon; I have my own way of looking at things.”
“Won’t you give them back?”
“Of course not! If you were a poor unfortunate man, with nothing to eat, then it would be a different matter. But — he wants to get married!”
“It’s not my money, you know; it’s my cousin’s!”
“And what does your cousin want with money? To get fashionable clothes for his wife? But I really don’t care whether your belle-sœur has dresses or not.”
The lieutenant had ceased to remember that he was in a strange house with an unknown lady, and did not trouble himself with decorum. He strode up and down the room, scowled and nervously fingered his waistcoat. The fact that the Jewess had lowered herself in his eyes by her dishonest action, made him feel bolder and more free-and-easy.
“The devil knows what to make of it!” he muttered. “Listen. I shan’t go away from here until I get the IOUs!”
“Ah, so much the better,” laughed Susanna. “If you stay here for good, it will make it livelier for me.”
Excited by the struggle, the lieutenant looked at Susanna’s laughing, insolent face, at her munching mouth, at her heaving bosom, and grew bolder and more audacious. Instead of thinking about the IOU he began for some reason recalling with a sort of relish his cousin’s stories of the Jewess’s romantic adventures, of her free way of life, and these reminiscences only provoked him to greater audacity. Impulsively he sat down beside the Jewess and thinking no more of the IOUs began to eat… .
“Will you have vodka or wine?” Susanna asked with a laugh. “So you will stay till you get the IOUs? Poor fellow! How many days and nights you will have to spend with me, waiting for those IOUs! Won’t your fiancée have something to say about it?”
II
Five hours had passed. The lieutenant’s cousin, Alexey Ivanovitch Kryukov was walking about the rooms of his country-house in his dressing-gown and slippers, and looking impatiently out of window. He was a tall, sturdy man, with a large black beard and a manly face; and as the Jewess had truly said, he was handsome, though he had reached the age when men are apt to grow too stout, puffy, and bald. By mind and temperament he was one of those natures in which the Russian intellectual classes are so rich: warm-hearted, goodnatured, well-bred, having some knowledge of the arts and sciences, some faith, and the most chivalrous notions about honour, but indolent and lacking in depth. He was fond of good eating and drinking, was an ideal whist-player, was a connoisseur in women and horses, but in other things he was apathetic and sluggish as a seal, and to rouse him from his lethargy something extraordinary and quite revolting was needed, and then he would forget everything in the world and display intense activity; he would fume and talk of a duel, write a petition of seven pages to a Minister, gallop at breakneck speed about the district, call some one publicly “a scoundrel,” would go to law, and so on.
“How is it our Sasha’s not back yet?” he kept asking his wife, glancing out of window. “Why, it’s dinnertime!”
After waiting for the lieutenant till six o’clock, they sat down to dinner. When supper-time came, however, Alexey Ivanovitch was listening to every footstep, to every sound of the door, and kept shrugging his shoulders.
“Strange!” he said. “The rascally dandy must have stayed on at the tenant’s.”
As he went to bed after supper, Kryukov made up his mind that the lieutenant was being entertained at the tenant’s, where after a festive evening he was staying the night.
Alexandr Grigoryevitch only returned next morning. He looked extremely crumpled and confused.
“I want to speak to you alone …” he said mysteriously to his cousin.
They went into the study. The lieutenant shut the door, and he paced for a long time up and down before he began to speak.
“Something’s happened, my dear fellow,” he began, “that I don’t know how to tell you about. You wouldn’t believe it …”
And blushing, faltering, not looking at his cousin, he told what had happened with the IOUs. Kryukov, standing with his feet wide apart and his head bent, listened and frowned.
“Are you joking?” he asked.
“How the devil could I be joking? It’s no joking matter!”
“I don’t understand!” muttered Kryukov, turning crimson and flinging up his hands. “It’s positively … immoral on your part. Before your very eyes a hussy is up to the devil knows what, a serious crime, plays a nasty trick, and you go and kiss her!”
“But I can’t understand myself how it happened!” whispered the lieutenant, blinking guiltily. “Upon my honour, I don’t understand it! It’s the first time in my life I’ve come across such a monster! It’s not her beauty that does for you, not her mind, but that … you understand … insolence, cynicism… .”
“Insolence, cynicism … it’s unclean! If you’ve such a longing for insolence and cynicism, you might have picked a sow out of the mire and have devoured her alive. It would have been cheaper, anyway! Instead of two thousand three hundred!”
“You do express yourself elegantly!” said the lieutenant, frowning. “I’ll pay you back