one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay or a dull life at
the station you can judge from the fact that for fifteen miles round
there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent
tavern; and in those days I was young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and
foolish. The only distraction I could possibly find was in the windows
of the passenger trains, and in the vile vodka which the Jews drugged
with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman's head
at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without
breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost
invisible speck; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome vodka
till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours
and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect
of a deserted Tatar cemetery. In the summer the steppe with its solemn
calm, the monotonous chur of the grasshoppers, the transparent moonlight
from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy; and in
the winter the irreproachable whiteness of the steppe, its cold
distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like a heavy
nightmare. There were several people living at the station: my wife and
I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three watchmen. My
assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment
to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to
me together with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children,
no cake would have tempted visitors to come and see me, and I could only
visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than once a
month.
I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table, chewed
lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously tapping on his
apparatus in the next room. I had already drunk five glasses of drugged
vodka, and, propping my heavy head on my fist, thought of my
overpowering boredom from which there was no escape, while my wife sat
beside me and did not take her eyes off me. She looked at me as no one
can look but a woman who has nothing in this world but a handsome
husband. She loved me madly, slavishly, and not merely my good looks, or
my soul, but my sins, my ill-humor and boredom, and even my cruelty
when, in drunken fury, not knowing how to vent my ill-humor, I tormented
her with reproaches.
In spite of the boredom which was consuming me, we were preparing to see
the New Year in with exceptional festiveness, and were awaiting midnight
with some impatience. The fact is, we had in reserve two bottles of
champagne, the real thing, with the label of Veuve Clicquot; this
treasure I had won the previous autumn in a bet with the station-master
of D. when I was drinking with him at a christening. It sometimes
happens during a lesson in mathematics, when the very air is still with
boredom, a butterfly flutters into the class-room; the boys toss their
heads and begin watching its flight with interest, as though they saw
before them not a butterfly but something new and strange; in the same
way ordinary champagne, chancing to come into our dreary station, roused
us. We sat in silence looking alternately at the clock and at the
bottles.
When the hands pointed to five minutes to twelve I slowly began
uncorking a bottle. I don't know whether I was affected by the vodka, or
whether the bottle was wet, but all I remember is that when the cork
flew up to the ceiling with a bang, my bottle slipped out of my hands
and fell on the floor. Not more than a glass of the wine was spilt, as I
managed to catch the bottle and put my thumb over the foaming neck.
"Well, may the New Year bring you happiness!" I said, filling two
glasses. "Drink!"
My wife took her glass and fixed her frightened eyes on me. Her face was
pale and wore a look of horror.
"Did you drop the bottle?" she asked.
"Yes. But what of that?"
"It's unlucky," she said, putting down her glass and turning paler
still. "It's a bad omen. It means that some misfortune will happen to us
this year."
"What a silly thing you are," I sighed. "You are a clever woman, and yet
you talk as much nonsense as an old nurse. Drink."
"God grant it is nonsense, but... something is sure to happen! You'll
see."
She did not even sip her glass, she moved away and sank into thought. I
uttered a few stale commonplaces about superstition, drank half a
bottle, paced up and down, and then went out of the room.
Outside there was the still frosty night in all its cold, inhospitable
beauty. The moon and two white fluffy clouds beside it hung just over
the station, motionless as though glued to the spot, and looked as
though waiting for something. A faint transparent light came from them
and touched the white earth softly, as though afraid of wounding her
modesty, and lighted up everything--the snowdrifts, the embankment.... It
was still.
I walked along the railway embankment.
"Silly woman," I thought, looking at the sky spangled with brilliant
stars. "Even if one admits that omens sometimes tell the truth, what
evil can happen to us? The misfortunes we have endured already, and
which are facing us now, are so great that it is difficult to imagine
anything worse. What further harm can you do a fish which has been
caught and fried and served up with sauce?"
A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a
giant wrapt in a shroud. It looked at me sullenly and dejectedly, as
though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking
at it.
"My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette end," I
went on musing. "My parents died when I was a little child; I was
expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble family, but I have
received neither education nor breeding, and I have no more knowledge
than the humblest mechanic. I have no refuge, no relations, no friends,
no work I like. I am not fitted for anything, and in the prime of my
powers I am good for nothing but to be stuffed into this little station;
I have known nothing but trouble and failure all my life. What can
happen worse?"
Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving towards
me. The slumbering steppe listened to the sound of it. My thoughts were
so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking aloud and that the
moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble of the train were expressing
my thoughts.
"What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?" I wondered. "Even that is
not terrible. It's no good hiding it from my conscience: I don't love my
wife. I married her when I was only a wretched boy; now I am young and
vigorous, and she has gone off and grown older and sillier, stuffed from
her head to her heels with conventional ideas. What charm is there in
her maudlin love, in her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up
with her, but I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being
wasted, as the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my
eyes only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never had
and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are going to
ruin.... Everything is being thrown away like dirt, and all my wealth
here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."
The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the glow of
its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights of the
station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After walking a mile
and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as
it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts
still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not
very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable
affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth in
what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and
conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant in my question:
"What could happen worse?"
"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have endured
everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get reprimanded by my
superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad wolf has run into the
station yard. What more is there? I have been insulted, humiliated,...
and I have insulted others in my time. I have not been a criminal, it is
true, but I don't think I am capable of crime--I am not afraid of being
hauled up for it."
The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a little
distance, looking as though they were whispering about something which
the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing across the steppe,
bringing the faint rumble of the retreating train.
My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and her
whole face was beaming with good-humor.
"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your room and
put on your new coat; we have a visitor."
"What visitor?"
"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."
"What Natalya Petrovna?"
"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She is a
very nice, good woman."
Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered rapidly:
"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross, Nikolay, and
don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know; Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch
really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it is difficult to live with him.
She says she will only stay three days with us, only till she gets a
letter from her brother."
My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her despotic
uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of young wives in
particular; about its being our duty to give shelter to all, even great
sinners, and so on. Unable to make head or tail of it, I put on my new
coat and went to make acquaintance with my "aunt."
A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My table,
the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the tiniest grain of
dust seemed to have grown younger and more cheerful in the presence of
this new, young, beautiful, and dissolute creature, who had a most
subtle perfume about her. And that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue
I could see from her smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in
which she glanced and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in
which she talked with my wife--a respectable woman. There was no need to
tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was old and
despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it all in at the
first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man in all
Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a woman of a certain
temperament.
"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding out her
hand to me and smiling.
"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.
Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the second
bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp, and when my
wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did not scruple to drain
a full glass. I was drunk both with the wine and with the presence of a
woman. Do you remember the song?
"Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion, Eyes burning bright and
beautiful, How I love you, How I fear you!"
I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how love
begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in
the words of the same silly song:
"It was an evil hour When first I met you."
Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful,
frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a feather. It lasted a
long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt
herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has
flung me, as you see, into this dark street.
Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
AFTER THE THEATRE
NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre where
she had seen a performance of "Yevgeny Onyegin." As soon as she reached
her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her
petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to
write a letter like Tatyana's.
"I love you," she wrote, "but you do not love me, do not love me!"
She wrote it and laughed.
She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that an
officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her, but now
after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love. To be unloved
and unhappy--how interesting that was. There is something beautiful,
touching, and poetical about it when one loves and the other is
indifferent. Onyegin was interesting because he was not in love at all,
and Tatyana was fascinating because she was so much in love; but if they
had been equally in love with each other and had been happy, they would
perhaps have seemed dull.
"Leave off declaring that you love me," Nadya went on writing, thinking
of Gorny. "I cannot believe it. You are very clever, cultivated,
serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a brilliant future awaits
you, while I am an uninteresting girl of no importance, and you know
very well that I should be only a hindrance in your life. It is true
that you were attracted by me and thought you had found your ideal in
me, but that was a mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair:
'Why did I meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you
from owning it to yourself...."
Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:
"It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should take a
nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you would be left free
and would love another. Oh, if I were dead!"
She could not make out what she had written through her tears; little
rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the ceiling, as
though she were looking through a prism. She could not write, she sank
back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking of Gorny.
My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled the
fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came into the
officer's face when one argued about music with him, and the effort he
made to prevent his voice from betraying his passion. In a society where
cold haughtiness and indifference are regarded as signs of good breeding
and gentlemanly bearing, one must conceal one's passions. And he did try
to conceal them, but he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well
that he had a passionate love of music. The endless discussions about
music and the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept
him always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He
played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and if he
had not been in the army he would certainly have been a famous musician.
The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had declared
his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by the hatstand
where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all directions.
"I am very glad that you have at last made the acquaintance of Gruzdev,
our student friend," she went on writing. "He is a very clever man, and
you will be sure to like him. He came to see us yesterday and stayed
till two o'clock. We were all delighted with him, and I regretted that
you had not come. He said a great deal that was remarkable."
Nadya laid her arms on the table and leaned her head on them, and her
hair covered the letter. She recalled that the student, too, loved her,
and that he had as much right to a letter from her as Gorny. Wouldn't it
be better after all to write to Gruzdev? There was a stir of joy in her
bosom for no reason whatever; at first the joy was small, and rolled in
her bosom like an india-rubber ball; then it became more massive,
bigger, and rushed like a wave. Nadya forgot Gorny and Gruzdev; her
thoughts were in a tangle and her joy grew and grew; from her bosom it
passed into her arms and legs, and it seemed as though a light, cool
breeze were breathing on her head and ruffling her hair. Her shoulders
quivered with subdued laughter, the table and the lamp chimney shook,
too, and tears from her eyes splashed on the letter. She could not stop
laughing, and to prove to herself that she was not laughing about
nothing she made haste to think of something funny.
"What a funny poodle," she said, feeling as though she would choke with
laughter. "What a funny poodle!"
She thought how, after tea the evening before, Gruzdev had played with
Maxim the poodle, and afterwards had told them about a very intelligent
poodle who had run after a crow in the yard, and the crow had looked
round at him and said: "Oh, you scamp!"
The poodle, not knowing he had to do with a learned crow, was fearfully
confused and retreated in perplexity, then began barking....
"No, I had better love Gruzdev," Nadya decided, and she tore up the
letter to Gorny.
She fell to thinking of the student, of his love, of her love; but the
thoughts in her head insisted on flowing in all directions, and she
thought about everything--about her mother, about the street, about the
pencil, about the piano.... She thought of them joyfully, and felt that
everything was good, splendid, and her joy told her that this was not
all, that in a little while it would be better still. Soon it would be
spring, summer, going with her mother to Gorbiki. Gorny would come for
his furlough, would walk about the garden with her and make love to her.
Gruzdev would come too. He would play croquet and skittles with her, and
would tell her wonderful things. She had a passionate longing for the
garden, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars. Again her shoulders shook
with laughter, and it seemed to her that there was a scent of wormwood
in the room and that a twig was tapping at the window.
She went to her bed, sat down, and not knowing what to do with the
immense joy which filled her with yearning, she looked at the holy image
hanging at the back of her bed, and said:
"Oh, Lord God! Oh, Lord God!"
A LADY'S STORY
NINE years ago Pyotr Sergeyitch, the deputy prosecutor, and I were
riding towards evening in hay-making time to fetch the letters from the
station.
The weather was magnificent, but on our way back we heard a peal of
thunder, and saw an angry black storm-cloud which was coming straight
towards us. The storm-cloud was approaching us and we were approaching
it.
Against the background of it our house and church looked white and the
tall poplars shone like silver. There was a scent of rain and mown hay.
My companion was in high spirits. He kept laughing and talking all sorts
of nonsense. He said it would be nice if we could suddenly come upon a
medieval castle with turreted towers, with moss on it and owls, in which
we could take shelter from the rain and in the end be killed by a
thunderbolt....
Then the first wave raced through the rye and a field of oats, there was
a gust of wind, and the dust flew round and round in the air. Pyotr
Sergeyitch laughed and spurred on his horse.
"It's fine!" he cried, "it's splendid!"
Infected by his gaiety, I too began laughing at the thought that in a
minute I should be drenched to the skin and might be struck by
lightning.
Riding swiftly in a hurricane when one is breathless with the wind, and
feels like a bird, thrills one and puts one's heart in a flutter. By the
time we rode into our courtyard the wind had gone down, and big drops of
rain were pattering on the grass and on the roofs. There was not a soul
near the stable.
Pyotr Sergeyitch himself took the bridles off, and led the horses to
their stalls. I stood in the doorway waiting for him to finish, and
watching the slanting streaks of rain; the sweetish, exciting scent of
hay was even stronger here than in the fields; the storm-clouds and the
rain made it almost twilight.
"What a crash!" said Pyotr Sergeyitch, coming up to me after a very loud
rolling peal of thunder when it seemed as though the sky were split in
two. "What do you say to that?"
He stood beside me in the doorway and, still breathless from his rapid
ride, looked at me. I could see that he was admiring me.
"Natalya Vladimirovna," he said, "I would give anything only to stay
here a little longer and look at you. You are lovely to-day."
His eyes looked at me with delight and supplication, his face was pale.
On his beard and mustache were glittering raindrops, and they, too,
seemed to be looking at me with love.
"I love you," he said. "I love you, and I am happy at seeing you. I know
you cannot be my wife, but I want nothing, I ask nothing; only know that
I love you. Be silent, do not answer me, take no notice of it, but only
know that you are dear to me and let me look at you."
His rapture affected me too; I looked at his enthusiastic face, listened
to his voice which mingled with the patter of the rain, and stood as
though spellbound, unable to stir.
I longed to go on endlessly looking at his shining eyes and listening.
"You say nothing, and that is splendid," said Pyotr Sergeyitch. "Go on
being silent."
I felt happy. I laughed with delight and ran through the drenching rain
to the house; he laughed too, and, leaping as he went, ran after me.
Both drenched, panting, noisily clattering up the stairs like children,
we dashed into the room. My father and brother, who were not used to
seeing me laughing and light-hearted, looked at me in surprise and began
laughing too.
The storm-clouds had passed over and the thunder had ceased, but the
raindrops still glittered on Pyotr Sergeyitch's beard. The whole evening
till supper-time he was singing, whistling, playing noisily with the dog
and racing about the room after it, so that he nearly upset the servant
with the samovar. And at supper he ate a great deal, talked nonsense,
and maintained that when one eats fresh cucumbers in winter there is the
fragrance of spring in one's mouth.
When I went to bed I lighted a candle and threw my window wide open, and
an undefined feeling took possession of my soul. I remembered that I was
free and healthy, that I had rank and wealth, that I was beloved; above
all, that I had rank and wealth, rank and wealth, my God! how nice that
was!... Then, huddling up in bed at a touch of cold which reached me
from the garden with the dew, I tried to discover whether I loved Pyotr
Sergeyitch or not,... and fell asleep unable to reach any conclusion.
And when in the morning I saw quivering patches of sunlight and the
shadows of the lime trees on my bed, what had happened yesterday rose
vividly in my memory. Life seemed to me rich, varied, full of charm.
Humming, I dressed quickly and went out into the garden....
And what happened afterwards? Why--nothing. In the winter when we lived
in town Pyotr Sergeyitch came to see us from time to time. Country
acquaintances are charming only in the country and in summer; in the
town and in winter they lose their charm. When you pour out tea for them
in the town it seems as though they are wearing other people's coats,
and as though they stirred their tea too long. In the town, too, Pyotr
Sergeyitch spoke sometimes of love, but the effect was not at all the
same as in the country. In the town we were more vividly conscious of
the wall that stood between us. I had rank and wealth, while he was
poor, and he was not even a nobleman, but only the son of a deacon and a
deputy public prosecutor; we both of us--I through my youth and he for
some unknown reason--thought of that wall as very high and thick, and
when he was with us in the town he would criticize aristocratic society
with a forced smile, and maintain a sullen silence when there was anyone
else in the drawing-room. There is no wall that cannot be broken
through, but the heroes of the modern romance, so far as I know them,
are too timid, spiritless, lazy, and oversensitive, and are too ready to
resign themselves to the thought that they are doomed to failure, that
personal life has disappointed them; instead of struggling they merely
criticize, calling the world vulgar and forgetting that their criticism
passes little by little into vulgarity.
I was loved, happiness was not far away, and seemed to be almost
touching me; I went on living in careless ease without trying to
understand myself, not knowing what I expected or what I wanted from
life, and time went on and on.... People passed by me with their love,
bright days and warm nights flashed by, the nightingales sang, the hay
smelt fragrant, and all this, sweet and overwhelming in remembrance,
passed with me as with everyone rapidly, leaving no trace, was not
prized, and vanished like mist.... Where is it all?
My father is dead, I have grown older; everything that delighted me,
caressed me, gave me hope--the patter of the rain, the rolling of the
thunder, thoughts of happiness, talk of love--all that has become nothing
but a memory, and I see before me a flat desert distance; on the plain
not one living soul, and out there on the horizon it is dark and
terrible....
A ring at the bell.... It is Pyotr Sergeyitch. When in the winter I see
the trees and remember how green they were for me in the summer I
whisper:
"Oh, my darlings!"
And when I see people with whom I spent my spring-time, I feel sorrowful
and warm and whisper the same thing.