The Greatest Works of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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It’s better that I should give it to the poor than let it be consumed by the flames.’
I go into the house… There in every room on the sofas and the carpets the weary gipsies are lying, overcome by fatigue. My Tina is sleeping on the divan in the ‘mosaic drawing-room’.
She lies stretched out and breathing heavily. Her teeth clenched, her face pale… She is evidently dreaming of the swing… The Scops-Owl is going through all the rooms, looking with her sharp eyes sardonically at the people who had so suddenly broken into the deadly quiet of this forgotten estate… She is not doing all this without some purpose.
That is all that my memory retained after two wild nights; all the rest had escaped my drunken brain, or is not appropriate for description… But it is enough!
At no other time had Zorka borne me with so much zest as on the morning after the burning of the banknotes… She also wanted to go home… The rippling waves glinted gently in the rays of the rising sun, as the lake gradually prepared for the sleep of the day. The woods and the willows that bordered the lake stood motionless as if in morning prayer. It is difficult to describe the feelings that filled my soul at the time… Without entering into details, I will only say that I was unspeakably glad and at the same time almost consumed by shame when, turning out of the Count’s homestead, I saw on the bank of the lake the holy old face, all wrinkled by honest work and illness, of venerable Mikhey. In appearance Mikhey resembles the fishermen of the Bible. His hair and beard are white as snow, and he gazes contemplatively at the sky… When he stands motionless on the bank and his eyes follow the chasing clouds, you can imagine that he sees angels in the sky… I like such faces!.
When I saw him I reined in Zorka and gave him my hand as if I wanted to cleanse myself by the touch of his honest, horny palm… He raised his small sagacious eyes on me and smiled.
‘How do you do, good master!’ he said, giving me his hand awkwardly. ‘So you’ve ridden over again? Or has that old rake come back?’
‘Yes, he’s back.’
‘I thought so… I can see it by your face… Here I stand and look… The world’s the world. Vanity of vanities… Look there! That German ought to die, and he thinks only of vanities… Do you see?’
The old man pointed with a stick at the Count’s bathing-cabin. A boat was being rowed away quickly from it. A man in a jockey cap and a blue jacket was sitting in the boat. It was Franz, the gardener.
‘Every morning he takes money to the island and hides it there. The stupid fellow can’t understand that for him sand and money have much the same value. When he dies he can’t take it with him. Barin, give me a cigar!’
I offered him my cigar case. He took three cigarettes and put them into his breast pocket…
‘That’s for my nephew… He can smoke them.’
Zorka moved impatiently, and galloped off. I bowed to the old man in gratitude for having been allowed to rest my eyes on his face. For a long time he stood looking after me.
At home I was met by Polycarp. With a contemptuous, even a crushing glance, he measured my noble body as if he wanted to know whether this time I had bathed again in all my clothes, or not.
‘Congratulations!’ he grumbled. ‘You’ve enjoyed yourself.’
‘Hold your tongue, fool!’ I said.
His stupid face angered me. I undressed quickly, covered myself up with the bedclothes and closed my eyes.
My head became giddy and the world was enveloped in mist. Familiar figures flitted through the mist… The Count, snakes, Franz, flame-coloured dogs, ‘the girl in red’, mad Nikolai Efimych.
‘The husband killed his wife! Oh, how stupid you are!’
The ‘girl in red’ shook her finger at me, Tina obscured the light with her black eyes, and… I fell asleep.
CHAPTER VII
How sweetly and tranquilly he sleeps! When one gazes on this pale, tired face, on this childishly innocent smile, and listens to this regular breathing, one might think that it is not a magistrate who is lying here, but the personification of a quiet conscience! One might think that Count Karnév had not yet arrived, that there had been neither drunkenness nor gipsies, nor trips on the lake… Get up, you wretched man! You don’t deserve to enjoy such a blessing as peaceful sleep! Get up!’
I opened my eyes and stretched myself voluptuously… A broad sunbeam, in which countless white dust atoms were agitated and chased each other, streamed from the window on to my bed, causing the sunray itself to appear as if tinged with some dull whiteness… The ray disappeared and reappeared before my eyes, as Pavel Ivanovich Voznesensky, our charming district doctor, who was walking about my bedroom, came into or went out of the stream of light. In the long, unbuttoned frockcoat that flapped around him, as if hanging on a clothes rack, with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his unusually long trousers, the doctor went from corner to corner of my room, from chair to chair, from portrait to portrait, screwing up his shortsighted eyes as he examined whatever came in his way. In accordance with his habit of poking around and sticking his nose into everything, he either stooped down or stretched out, peeped into the washstand, into the folds of the closed blinds, into the chinks of the door, into the lamp… he seemed to be looking for something or wishing to assure himself that everything was in order… When he looked attentively through his spectacles into a chink, or at a spot on the wallpaper, he frowned, assumed an anxious expression, and smelt it with his long nose… All this he did quite mechanically, involuntarily, and from habit; but at the same time, as his eyes passed rapidly from one object to another, he had the appearance of a connoisseur making an evaluation.
‘Get up, don’t you hear!’ he called to me in his melodious tenor voice, as he looked into the soap-dish and removed a hair from the soap with his nail.
‘Ah, ah, ah! How do you do, Mr Screw!’ I yawned, when I saw him bending over the washstand. ‘We haven’t met for ages!’
The whole district knew the doctor by the name of ‘Screw’ from the habit he had of constantly screwing up his eyes. I, too, called him by that nickname. Seeing that I was awake, Voznesensky came and sat down on a corner of my bed and at once took up a box of matches and lifted it close to his screwed-up eyes.
‘Only lazy people and those with clear consciences sleep in that way,’ he said, ‘and as you are neither the one nor the other, it would be more seemly for you, my friend, to get up somewhat earlier…’
‘What o’clock is it?’
‘Almost eleven.’
‘The devil take you, Screwy! Nobody asked you to wake me so early. Do you know, I only got to sleep at past five today, and if not for you I would have slept on till evening.’
‘Indeed!’ I heard Poly carp’s bass voice say in the next room. ‘He hasn’t slept long enough yet! It’s the second day he’s been sleeping, and it’s still not enough! Do you know what day it is?’ Polycarp asked, coming into the bedroom and looking at me in the way clever people look at fools.
‘Wednesday,’ I said.
‘Of course, certainly! It’s been specially arranged for you that the week shall have two Wednesdays…’
‘Today’s Thursday!’ the doctor said. ‘So, my good fellow, you’ve been pleased to sleep through the whole of Wednesday. Fine! Very fine! Allow me to ask you how much you drank?’
‘For twice twenty-four hours I had not slept, and I drank… I don’t know how much I drank.’
Having sent Polycarp away, I began to dress and describe to the doctor what I had lately experienced of ‘Nights of madness, nights of gladness’ which