The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Plays, Novellas, Short Stories, Diary & Letters. Anton Chekhov
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lay not in this, but, as I soon understood, in subtler shades of feeling.
I remember one evening I sat on a box and fought my desire to sleep. My eyelids drooped, my body, fatigued with a day's hard exercise, fell on one side. It was nearly midnight. Tatiana Ivanovna, rosy and meek, as always, sat at a little table and mended her husband's underclothes. From one corner glared Teodor, grim and morose ; in another sat Pobiedimsky, hidden behind his high collar, and angrily snoring. My uncle, lost in thought, walked from corner to corner. No one spoke, the only sound was the rustling of the cloth in Tatiana's hands. My uncle suddenly stopped in front of Tatiana Ivanovna, and said —
“There you are; all so young, so good, living so restfiilly in this refuge that I envy you! I have got so used to this life that my heart sinks when I think I must leave you. . . . Believe in me; I am sincere.”
Slumber closed my eyes, and I lost consciousness. I was awakened by a noise, and saw that my uncle still stood before Tatiana Ivanovna, and looked at her with rapture. His cheeks burned.
“My life is past,” he said. “I have never lived. Your young face reminds me of my vanished youth. I should rejoice to sit here and look at you till the day of my death! With what joy could I take you back with me to St. Petersburg!”
“What is the meaning of this?” asked Feodor hoarsely.
“I should set you down on my desk under a glass case, and admire you, and show you to my friends. Pelageya Ivanovna, such as you we have none! We have wealth, distinction, sometimes beauty! But never this living sincerity . . . this healthy restfulness.”
My uncle sat down before Tatiana Ivanovna and took her by the hand.
“So you don't want to come to St. Petersburg,” he continued caressingly. “In that case give me here your little handy! Adorable little handy! You won't give it? Well, miser, at least let me give it a kiss ! . . .”
A chair moved noisily. Feodor leaped up, and with measured, heavy footsteps, went up to his wife. His face was pale grey, and trembled. With his whole force he banged his fist on the table, and said in a hoarse voice —
“I will not tolerate this!”
And at the same moment Pobiedimsky jumped from his chair. As pale as Feodor and looking equally vicious, he strode up to Tatiana Ivanovna, and banged his iist on the table.
“I will not . . . tolerate this!” he exclaimed.
“I don't understand. What is the matter?” asked my uncle.
“I will not tolerate this!” repeated Feodor. And again he banged his fist noisily on the table.
My uncle rose from his seat and blinked timidly. He tried to say something, but astonishment and fright prevented him uttering a word; and, leaving his hat behind, he tottered with old-man's steps out of the wing. When a little later my terrified mother ran into the wing, Feodor and Pobiedimsky, like a pair of blacksmiths, were banging their fists on the table and roaring, “I will not tolerate this!”
“What on earth has happened?” asked my mother. “Why have you insulted my brother? What is the matter?”
But seeing Tatiana Ivanovna's pale, frightened face and the glare of her raging husband, my mother quickly guessed what was the matter. She sighed and shook her head.
“Don't bang the table again! Feodor, stop! And why are you banging the table, Yegor Alexeievitch? What has this to do with you?”
Pobiedimsky staggered back in confusion. Feodor gave him a piercing glance, then looked at his wife, and walked up the room. But the moment my mother left I witnessed what at first I thought must be a dream. I saw Feodor seizing my tutor, lifting him high in the air, and flinging him violently against the door.
When I awoke next morning my tutor's bed was empty. My nurse whispered that he had been taken to hospital that morning and that his arm was broken. Saddened by this news, and with my mind full of the scandal of the night before, I went into the yard. The weather was dull. ITie sky was veiled with clouds, and a strong wind blew, carrying before it dust, papers, and feathers. I foresaw rain. The faces of men and animals expressed tedium. When I returned to the house I was ordered to walk on tip-toes as my mother had a bad headache and was lying down. What was to be done? I went out to the gate, sat on a bench, and tried to pierce to the meaning of all that I had seen and heard. From our gates ran a road, which, passing the smithy and a pond which never dried up, converged with the post-road. I looked at the telegraph posts and the clouds of dust aromid them, and at the sleepy birds perched on the trees, and felt so oppressed by tedium that I began to cry.
Down the post-road drove a dusty double droschky full of townspeople, probably on a pilgrimage. When the droschky disappeared a light victoria drawn by a pair came in sight. In this victoria, holding the coachman's belt, stood the police commissary, Akim Nikititch. To my amazement, the victoria turned up our road, and flew past me to the gate. While I was seeking the reason of the commissary's visit a troika came in sight. In the troika stood the inspector of police, and showed the coachman our gate.
“What does it all mean?” I asked myself, looking at the dust-covered inspector. Pobiedimsky, I guessed, had complained, and the police had come to arrest and carry off Feodor.
But I solved the riddle wrongly. The commissary and inspector were only heralds of another, for five minutes later yet another caniage arrived. It flashed so quickly by me that I could see only that the occupant had a red beard.
Lost in astonishment and foreboding evil, I ran into the house. I met my mother in the hall. Her face was white, and she looked with terror at the door from which came the voices of men. The visitors had caught her unawares when her headache was at its worst.
“What is it, mother?” I asked.
“Sister,” came my uncle's voice. “Let the governor have something to eat.”
“It's easy enough to say,” whispered my mother. “I have no time to get anything done. I am disgraced in my old age!”
With her hands to her head, my mother flew into the kitchen. The governor's unexpected arrival turned the whole house upside down. A merciless massacre began. Ten chickens, five turkeys, eight ducks were slaughtered at once ; and through carelessness the servants decapitated an old gander, the ancestor of our flock, and the beloved of my mother. To prepare some miserable sauce perished a pair of my pigeons, which were as dear to me as the gander to my mother. It was long before I forgave the governor their death.
That evening, when the governor, his son, and his suite, having dined to repletion, took their seats in their carriages and drove away, I went into the house to survey the remains of the feast. In the drawing-room were my uncle and my mother. My uncle walked excitedly up and down the room and shrugged his shoulders. My mother, exhausted and haggard, lay on a sofa, and followed my uncle's movements with staring eyes.
“Forgive me, sister, but this is impossible!” groaned my uncle, with a frown. “I introduced the governor to you, and you didn't even shake hands with him. . . . You made the poor man uncomfortable ! Such things are impossible. I swear to God! . . . And then this dinner? For instance, what on earth was that fourth course?”
“It was duck with sweet sauce,” answered my mother softly.
“Duck! . . . Forgive me, sister, but . . . I have got heartburn . . . I am unwell!”
My uncle made a sour and lachrymose grimace, and continued —
“The devil brought us this governor! A lot I wanted his visit ! . . . Heartburn! I can't sleep and I can't work. . . . I am altogether out of sorts. . . . I cannot understand how you exist without work . . . in this tiresome place! And I have got a pain beginning in the lower part of my chest!”
My uncle frowned, and walked still more quickly.
“Brother,” asked my mother timidly, “how much would it cost you to go abroad?”
“At least three thousand,” answered my uncle tearfully. “I should have gone, but where can I get the money?