The Essential Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Novel & Biography. Anton Chekhov
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behind me.
‘Don’t be afraid, your Excellency…’ Urbenin said lazily as he placed his foot on the first step.
‘But if it bites?’
‘It won’t bite. Besides, the danger from the bite of these snakes is much exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake, and, as you see, I didn’t die. A man’s sting is worse than a snake’s!’ Urbenin said with a sigh, wishing to point a moral.
Indeed, the bailiff had not had time to mount two or three steps before the snake stretched out to its full length, and with the speed of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When we entered the pavilion we were confronted by another creature. Lying on the torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table was an elderly man of middle height in a blue jacket, striped trousers, and a jockey cap. He was sleeping sweetly and quietly. Around his toothless gaping mouth and on his pointed nose flies were making themselves at home. Thin as a skeleton, with an open mouth, lying there immovable, he looked like a corpse that had only just been brought in from the mortuary to be dissected.
‘Franz!’ said Urbenin, poking him. ‘Franz!’
After being poked five or six times, Franz shut his mouth, sat up, looked round at us, and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was again open and the flies that were walking about his nose were again disturbed by the slight vibration of his snores.
‘He’s asleep, the dirty pig!’ Urbenin sighed.
‘Isn’t that our gardener, Tricher?’ the Count asked.
‘The very same… That’s how he is every day… He sleeps like a dead man all day and plays cards all night. I was told he gambled last night till six in the morning.’
‘What do they play?’
‘Games of hazard… Chiefly stukolka.’
‘Well, such gentlemen work badly. They draw their wages for nothing!’
‘It was not to complain, your Excellency,’ Urbenin hastened to say, ‘that I told you this, or to express my dissatisfaction; it was only… I am only sorry that so capable a man is a slave to his passions. He really is a hardworking man, capable too… He does not receive wages for nothing.’
We glanced again at the gambler Franz and left the pavilion. We then turned towards the garden gate and went into the fields.
There are few novels in which the garden gate does not play an important part. If you have not noticed this, you have only to inquire of my man Polycarp, who in his lifetime has swallowed multitudes of dreadful and not so dreadful novels, and he will doubtless confirm this insignificant but characteristic fact.
My novel has also not escaped the inevitable garden gate. But my gate is different from others in this, that my pen will have to lead through it many unfortunate and scarcely any happy people; and even this in a direction contrary to the one found in other novels. And what is worse, I had once to describe this gate not as a novel-writer but as an examining magistrate. In my novel more criminals than lovers will pass through it.
A quarter of an hour later, supporting ourselves on our walking sticks, we wound our way up the hill to what is known as the ‘Stone Grave’. In the surrounding villages there is a legend that under this heap of stones there reposes the body of a Tartar Khan, who, fearing that after his death the enemy would desecrate his ashes, had ordered that a mound of stones was to be made above his body. This legend, however, is scarcely correct. The layers of stone, their size and relative position, exclude the possibility of man’s hand having had a part in the formation of this mound. It stands solitary in the midst of fields and has the aspect of an overturned dome.
From the top of this mound we could see the whole of the lake’s magnificent extent, and grasp its indescribable beauty. The sun, no longer reflected in it, had set, leaving behind a broad purple stripe that illuminated the surroundings with a pleasing rosy-yellow tint. The Count’s manor and homestead with their houses, church and gardens, lay at our feet, and on the other side of the lake the little village where it was my fate to live looked grey in the distance. As before, the surface of the lake was without a ripple. Old Mikhey’s little boats, separated from one another, were hurrying towards the shore.
To the left of my little village the buildings of the railway station stood out dark beneath the smoke from the engines, and behind us at the foot of the Stone Grave the road was bordered on either side by towering old poplars. This road leads to the Count’s forest that extends to the very horizon.
The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole being heavy men preferred to wait for us on the road below.
‘Who’s that cove?’ I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. ‘Where did you pick him up?’
‘He’s a very nice fellow, Serezha; very nice!’ the Count said in an agitated voice. ‘You’ll soon be the best of friends.’
‘Oh, that’s not likely! Why does he never speak?’
‘He is silent by nature! But he’s very clever!’
‘But what sort of a man is he?’
‘I became acquainted with him in Moscow. He is very nice. You’ll hear all about it afterwards, Serezha; don’t ask now. Let’s go down.’
We descended the hill and went along the road towards the forest. It began to be perceptibly darker. The cry of the cuckoo, and the tired vocal warbles of a possibly youthful nightingale were heard in the forest.
‘Hollo! Hollo! Catch me!’ we heard the high-pitched voice of a child shout as we approached the forest.
A little girl of about five with hair as white as flax, dressed in a sky-blue frock, ran out of the wood. When she saw us she laughed aloud, and with a skip and a jump put her arms round Urbenin’s knee. Urbenin lifted her up and kissed her cheek.
‘My daughter Sasha!’ he said. ‘Let me introduce her!’
Sasha was pursued out of the wood by a schoolboy of about fifteen, Urbenin’s son. When he saw us he pulled off his cap hesitatingly, put it on, and pulled it off again. He was followed quietly by what looked like a patch of red, which attracted our attention. ‘What a beautiful vision!’ the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. ‘Look! How charming! Who is this girl? I did not know that my forests were inhabited by such naiads!’
I looked round at Urbenin in order to ask him who this girl was, and, strange to say, it was only at that moment I noticed that he was terribly drunk. He was as red as a crawfish, he tottered and, seizing my elbow, he whispered into my ear, exhaling the fumes of spirit on me:
‘Sergey Petrovich, I implore you prevent the Count from making any further remarks about this girl! He may from habit say too much; she is a most worthy person!’
This ‘most worthy person’ was represented by a girl of about nineteen, with beautiful fair hair, blue eyes and long curls. She was dressed in a bright red frock, made in a fashion that was neither that of a child nor of a young girl. Her legs, straight as needles, in red stockings, were shod with tiny shoes that were small as a child’s. All the time I was admiring her she moved about her well-rounded shoulders coquettishly, as if they were cold or as if my gaze disturbed her.
‘Such a young face, and what a figure!’ whispered the Count, who from his earliest youth had lost the capacity of respecting women, and never looked at them otherwise than from the point of view of a spoilt animal.
I remember that I felt a surge of warmth in my heart. I was still a poet, and in the company of the woods, of a May night, and the first twinkling of the evening stars, I could only look at a woman as a poet does… I looked at ‘the girl in red’ with the same veneration I was accustomed to look upon the forests, the hills and the blue sky. I still had a certain amount of the sentimentality I had inherited from my German mother.
‘Who is she?’ the Count asked.
‘She is the daughter of our forester Skvortsov, your Excellency!’