The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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in Petersburg and Moscow and in other centres these same skins would be bought to the… to the sum of five hundred thousand, let us suppose. That’s the minimum. Well, and if… .”
“You can tell me tomorrow… later on… .”
“Yes, that’s true. You are sleepy, pardon, I am just going… say what you like, but with capital you can do good business everywhere, wherever you go…. With capital even out of cigarette ends one may make a million…. Take your theatrical business now. Why, for example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It’s very simple. He did not go the right way to work from the very first. He had no capital and he went headlong to the dogs…. He ought first to have secured his capital, and then to have gone slowly and cautiously…. Nowadays, one can easily make money by a theatre, whether it is a private one or a people’s one…. If one produces the right plays, charges a low price for admission, and hits the public fancy, one may put a hundred thousand in one’s pocket the first year…. You don’t understand, but I am talking sense…. You see you are fond of hoarding capital; you are no better than that fool Zagvozdkin, you heap it up and don’t know what for…. You won’t listen, you don’t want to…. If you were to put it into circulation, you wouldn’t have to be rushing all over the place… . You see for a private theatre, five thousand would be enough for a beginning…. Not like Lentovsky, of course, but on a modest scale in a small way. I have got a manager already, I have looked at a suitable building…. It’s only the money I haven’t got…. If only you understood things you would have parted with your Five per cents… your Preference shares… .”
“No, merci…. You have fleeced me enough already…. Let me alone, I have been punished already… .”
“If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course …” sighs Nikitin, getting up. “Of course… .”
“Let me alone…. Come, go away and don’t keep me awake…. I am sick of listening to your nonsense.”
“H’m…. To be sure… of course! Fleeced… plundered…. What we give we remember, but we don’t remember what we take.”
“I have never taken anything from you.”
“Is that so? But when we weren’t a celebrated singer, at whose expense did we live then? And who, allow me to ask, lifted you out of beggary and secured your happiness? Don’t you remember that?”
“Come, go to bed. Go along and sleep it off.”
“Do you mean to say you think I am drunk?… if I am so low in the eyes of such a grand lady… I can go away altogether.”
“Do. A good thing too.”
“I will, too. I have humbled myself enough. And I will go.”
“Oh, my God! Oh, do go, then! I shall be delighted!”
“Very well, we shall see.”
Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs, goes out of the bedroom. Then sounds reach her from the entry of whispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. Mari d’elle has taken offence in earnest and gone out.
“Thank God, he has gone!” thinks the singer. “Now I can sleep.”
And as she falls asleep she thinks of her mari d’elle, what sort of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a bookkeeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d’elle, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become “the husband of a celebrity” he was completely transformed. The singer remembered that when first she told him she was going on the stage he had made a fuss, been indignant, complained to her parents, turned her out of the house. She had been obliged to go on the stage without his permission. Afterwards, when he learned from the papers and from various people that she was earning big sums, he had ‘forgiven her,’ abandoned bookkeeping, and become her hanger-on. The singer was overcome with amazement when she looked at her hanger-on: when and where had he managed to pick up new tastes, polish, and airs and graces? Where had he learned the taste of oysters and of different Burgundies? Who had taught him to dress and do his hair in the fashion and call her ‘Nathalie’ instead of Natasha?”
“It’s strange,” thinks the singer. “In old days he used to get his salary and put it away, but now a hundred roubles a day is not enough for him. In old days he was afraid to talk before schoolboys for fear of saying something silly, and now he is overfamiliar even with princes… wretched, contemptible little creature!”
But then the singer starts again; again there is the clang of the bell in the entry. The housemaid, scolding and angrily flopping with her slippers, goes to open the door. Again some one comes in and stamps like a horse.
“He has come back!” thinks the singer. “When shall I be left in peace? It’s revolting!” She is overcome by fury.
“Wait a bit…. I’ll teach you to get up these farces! You shall go away. I’ll make you go away!”
The singer leaps up and runs barefoot into the little drawing-room where her mari usually sleeps. She comes at the moment when he is undressing, and carefully folding his clothes on a chair.
“You went away!” she says, looking at him with bright eyes full of hatred. “What did you come back for?”
Nikitin remains silent, and merely sniffs.
“You went away! Kindly take yourself off this very minute! This very minute! Do you hear?”
Mari d’elle coughs and, without looking at his wife, takes off his braces.
“If you don’t go away, you insolent creature, I shall go,” the singer goes on, stamping her bare foot, and looking at him with flashing eyes. “I shall go! Do you hear, insolent… worthless wretch, flunkey, out you go!”
“You might have some shame before outsiders,” mutters her husband….
The singer looks round and only then sees an unfamiliar countenance that looks like an actor’s…. The countenance, seeing the singer’s uncovered shoulders and bare feet, shows signs of embarrassment, and looks ready to sink through the floor.
“Let me introduce …” mutters Nikitin, “Bezbozhnikov, a provincial manager.”
The singer utters a shriek, and runs off into her bedroom.
“There, you see …” says mari d’elle, as he stretches himself on the sofa, “it was all honey just now… my love, my dear, my darling, kisses and embraces… but as soon as money is touched upon, then…. As you see… money is the great thing…. Good night!”
A minute later there is a snore.
THE LOOKING-GLASS
Translation By Constance Garnett
NEW YEAR’S EVE. Nellie, the daughter of a landowner and general, a young and pretty girl, dreaming day and night of being married, was sitting in her room, gazing with exhausted, half-closed eyes into the looking-glass. She was pale, tense, and as motionless as the looking-glass.
The non-existent but apparent vista of a long, narrow corridor with endless rows of candles, the reflection of her face, her hands, of the frame — all this was already clouded in mist and merged into a boundless grey sea. The sea was undulating, gleaming and now and then flaring crimson….
Looking at Nellie’s motionless eyes and parted lips, one could hardly say whether she was asleep or awake, but nevertheless she was seeing. At first she saw only