The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Plays, Novellas, Short Stories, Diary & Letters. Anton Chekhov
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do let him finish his dinner first!” his wife intercedes for the boy.
“No — no dinner! Such a — such a naughty brat has no right to eat dinner!”
Fedia makes a wry face, slides down from his chair, and takes his stand in a corner.
“That’s the way to treat him,” his father continues. “If no one else will take charge of his education I must do it myself. I won’t have you being naughty and crying at dinner, sir! Spoiled brat! You ought to work, do you hear me? Your father works, and you must work, too! No one may sponge on others. Be a man, a M-A-N!”
“For Heaven’s sake, hush!” his wife beseeches him in French. “At least don’t bite our heads off in public! The old lady is listening to every word, and the whole town will know of this, thanks to her.”
“I’m not afraid of the public!” retorts Jilin in Russian. “Anfisa Pavlovna can see for herself that I’m speaking the truth. What, do you think I ought to be satisfied with that youngster there? Do you know how much he costs me? Do you know, you worthless boy, how much you cost me? Or do you think I can create money and that it falls into my lap of its own accord? Stop bawling! Shut up! Do you hear me or not? Do you want me to thrash you, little wretch?”
Fedia breaks into piercing wails and begins sobbing.
“Oh, this is absolutely unbearable!” exclaims his mother, throwing down her napkin and getting up from the table. “He never lets us have our dinner in peace. That’s where that bread of yours sticks!”
She points to her throat and, putting her handkerchief to her eyes, leaves the dining-room.
“Her feelings are hurt,” mutters Jilin, forcing a smile. “She has been too gently handled, Anfisa Pavlovna, and that’s why she doesn’t like to hear the truth. We are to blame!”
Several minutes elapse in silence. Jilin catches sight of the dinner-plates and notices that the soup has not been touched. He sighs deeply and glares at the flushed and agitated face of the governess.
“Why don’t you eat your dinner, Varvara Vasilievna?” he demands. “You’re offended, too, are you? I see, you don’t like the truth either. Forgive me, but it is my nature never to be hypocritical. I always hit straight from the shoulder. (A sigh.) I see, though, that my company is distasteful to you. No one can speak or eat in my presence. You ought to have told me that sooner so that I could have left you to yourselves. I am going now.”
Jilin rises and walks with dignity toward the door. He stops as he passes the weeping Fedia.
“After what has happened just now you are fr-ee!” he says to him with a lofty toss of the head. “I shall no longer concern myself with your education. I wash my hands of it. Forgive me if, out of sincere fatherly solicitude for your welfare, I interfered with you and your preceptresses. At the same time, I renounce forever all responsibility for your future.”
Fedia wails and sobs more loudly than ever. Jilin turns toward the door with a stately air and walks off into his bedroom.
After his noonday nap Jilin is tormented by the pangs of conscience. He is ashamed of his behaviour to his wife, his son, and Anfisa Pavlovna, and feels extremely uncomfortable on remembering what happened at dinner. But his egotism is too strong for him and he is not man enough to be truthful, so he continues to grumble and sulk.
When he wakes up the following morning he feels in the gayest of moods and whistles merrily at his ablutions. On entering the dining-room for breakfast he finds Fedia. The boy rises at the sight of his father and gazes at him with troubled eyes.
“Well, how goes it, young man?” Jilin asks cheerfully as he sits down to table. “What’s the news, old fellow? Are you all right, eh? Come here, you little roly-poly, and give papa a kiss.”
Fedia approaches his father with a pale, serious face and brushes his cheek with trembling lips. Then he silently retreats and resumes his place at the table.
THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY
[trans. by Constance Garnett]
IT is, as a rule, after losing heavily at cards or after a drinking-bout when an attack of dyspepsia is setting in that Stepan Stepanitch Zhilin wakes up in an exceptionally gloomy frame of mind. He looks sour, rumpled, and dishevelled; there is an expression of displeasure on his grey face, as though he were offended or disgusted by something. He dresses slowly, sips his Vichy water deliberately, and begins walking about the rooms.
“I should like to know what b-b-beast comes in here and does not shut the door!” he grumbles angrily, wrapping his dressing-gown about him and spitting loudly. “Take away that paper! Why is it lying about here? We keep twenty servants, and the place is more untidy than a pothouse. Who was that ringing? Who the devil is that?”
“That’s Anfissa, the midwife who brought our Fedya into the world,” answers his wife.
“Always hanging about… these cadging toadies!”
“There’s no making you out, Stepan Stepanitch. You asked her yourself, and now you scold.”
“I am not scolding; I am speaking. You might find something to do, my dear, instead of sitting with your hands in your lap trying to pick a quarrel. Upon my word, women are beyond my comprehension! Beyond my comprehension! How can they waste whole days doing nothing? A man works like an ox, like a b-beast, while his wife, the partner of his life, sits like a pretty doll, sits and does nothing but watch for an opportunity to quarrel with her husband by way of diversion. It’s time to drop these schoolgirlish ways, my dear. You are not a schoolgirl, not a young lady; you are a wife and mother! You turn away? Aha! It’s not agreeable to listen to the bitter truth!
“It’s strange that you only speak the bitter truth when your liver is out of order.”
“That’s right; get up a scene.”
“Have you been out late? Or playing cards?”
“What if I have? Is that anybody’s business? Am I obliged to give an account of my doings to any one? It’s my own money I lose, I suppose? What I spend as well as what is spent in this house belongs to me — me. Do you hear? To me!”
And so on, all in the same style. But at no other time is Stepan Stepanitch so reasonable, virtuous, stern or just as at dinner, when all his household are sitting about him. It usually begins with the soup. After swallowing the first spoonful Zhilin suddenly frowns and puts down his spoon.
“Damn it all!” he mutters; “I shall have to dine at a restaurant, I suppose.”
“What’s wrong?” asks his wife anxiously. “Isn’t the soup good?”
“One must have the taste of a pig to eat hogwash like that! There’s too much salt in it; it smells of dirty rags… more like bugs than onions…. It’s simply revolting, Anfissa Ivanovna,” he says, addressing the midwife. “Every day I give no end of money for housekeeping…. I deny myself everything, and this is what they provide for my dinner! I suppose they want me to give up the office and go into the kitchen to do the cooking myself.”
“The soup is very good to-day,” the governess ventures timidly.
“Oh, you think so?” says Zhilin, looking at her angrily from under his eyelids. “Every one to his taste, of course. It must be confessed our tastes are very different, Varvara Vassilyevna. You, for instance, are satisfied with the behaviour of this boy” (Zhilin with a tragic gesture points to his son Fedya); “you are delighted with him, while I… I am disgusted. Yes!”
Fedya, a boy of seven with a pale, sickly face, leaves off eating and drops his eyes. His face grows paler still.
“Yes, you are delighted, and I am disgusted. Which of us is right, I cannot say, but I venture to think as his