officially, and I had never been to his house. I only just went to my
hotel room to change and went off to dinner. And here it was my lot to
meet Anna Alexyevna, Luganovitch's wife. At that time she was still very
young, not more than twenty-two, and her first baby had been born just
six months before. It is all a thing of the past; and now I should find
it difficult to define what there was so exceptional in her, what it was
in her attracted me so much; at the time, at dinner, it was all
perfectly clear to me. I saw a lovely young, good, intelligent,
fascinating woman, such as I had never met before; and I felt her at
once some one close and already familiar, as though that face, those
cordial, intelligent eyes, I had seen somewhere in my childhood, in the
album which lay on my mother's chest of drawers.
"Four Jews were charged with being incendiaries, were regarded as a gang
of robbers, and, to my mind, quite groundlessly. At dinner I was very
much excited, I was uncomfortable, and I don't know what I said, but
Anna Alexyevna kept shaking her head and saying to her husband:
"'Dmitry, how is this?'
"Luganovitch is a good-natured man, one of those simple-hearted people
who firmly maintain the opinion that once a man is charged before a
court he is guilty, and to express doubt of the correctness of a
sentence cannot be done except in legal form on paper, and not at dinner
and in private conversation.
"'You and I did not set fire to the place,' he said softly, 'and you see
we are not condemned, and not in prison.'
"And both husband and wife tried to make me eat and drink as much as
possible. From some trifling details, from the way they made the coffee
together, for instance, and from the way they understood each other at
half a word, I could gather that they lived in harmony and comfort, and
that they were glad of a visitor. After dinner they played a duet on the
piano; then it got dark, and I went home. That was at the beginning of
spring.
"After that I spent the whole summer at Sofino without a break, and I
had no time to think of the town, either, but the memory of the graceful
fair-haired woman remained in my mind all those days; I did not think of
her, but it was as though her light shadow were lying on my heart.
"In the late autumn there was a theatrical performance for some
charitable object in the town. I went into the governor's box (I was
invited to go there in the interval); I looked, and there was Anna
Alexyevna sitting beside the governor's wife; and again the same
irresistible, thrilling impression of beauty and sweet, caressing eyes,
and again the same feeling of nearness. We sat side by side, then went
to the foyer.
"'You've grown thinner,' she said; 'have you been ill?'
"'Yes, I've had rheumatism in my shoulder, and in rainy weather I can't
sleep.'
"'You look dispirited. In the spring, when you came to dinner, you were
younger, more confident. You were full of eagerness, and talked a great
deal then; you were very interesting, and I really must confess I was a
little carried away by you. For some reason you often came back to my
memory during the summer, and when I was getting ready for the theatre
today I thought I should see you.'
"And she laughed.
"'But you look dispirited today,' she repeated; 'it makes you seem
older.'
"The next day I lunched at the Luganovitchs'. After lunch they drove out
to their summer villa, in order to make arrangements there for the
winter, and I went with them. I returned with them to the town, and at
midnight drank tea with them in quiet domestic surroundings, while the
fire glowed, and the young mother kept going to see if her baby girl was
asleep. And after that, every time I went to town I never failed to
visit the Luganovitchs. They grew used to me, and I grew used to them.
As a rule I went in unannounced, as though I were one of the family.
"'Who is there?' I would hear from a faraway room, in the drawling voice
that seemed to me so lovely.
"'It is Pavel Konstantinovitch,' answered the maid or the nurse.
"Anna Alexyevna would come out to me with an anxious face, and would ask
every time:
"'Why is it so long since you have been? Has anything happened?'
"Her eyes, the elegant refined hand she gave me, her indoor dress, the
way she did her hair, her voice, her step, always produced the same
impression on me of something new and extraordinary in my life, and very
important. We talked together for hours, were silent, thinking each our
own thoughts, or she played for hours to me on the piano. If there were
no one at home I stayed and waited, talked to the nurse, played with the
child, or lay on the sofa in the study and read; and when Anna Alexyevna
came back I met her in the hall, took all her parcels from her, and for
some reason I carried those parcels every time with as much love, with
as much solemnity, as a boy.
"There is a proverb that if a peasant woman has no troubles she will buy
a pig. The Luganovitchs had no troubles, so they made friends with me.
If I did not come to the town I must be ill or something must have
happened to me, and both of them were extremely anxious. They were
worried that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, should,
instead of devoting myself to science or literary work, live in the
country, rush round like a squirrel in a rage, work hard with never a
penny to show for it. They fancied that I was unhappy, and that I only
talked, laughed, and ate to conceal my sufferings, and even at cheerful
moments when I felt happy I was aware of their searching eyes fixed upon
me. They were particularly touching when I really was depressed, when I
was being worried by some creditor or had not money enough to pay
interest on the proper day. The two of them, husband and wife, would
whisper together at the window; then he would come to me and say with a
grave face:
"'If you really are in need of money at the moment, Pavel
Konstantinovitch, my wife and I beg you not to hesitate to borrow from
us.'
"And he would blush to his ears with emotion. And it would happen that,
after whispering in the same way at the window, he would come up to me,
with red ears, and say:
"'My wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this present.'
"And he would give me studs, a cigar-case, or a lamp, and I would send
them game, butter, and flowers from the country. They both, by the way,
had considerable means of their own. In early days I often borrowed
money, and was not very particular about it--borrowed wherever I
could--but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the
Luganovitchs. But why talk of it?
"I was unhappy. At home, in the fields, in the barn, I thought of her; I
tried to understand the mystery of a beautiful, intelligent young
woman's marrying some one so uninteresting, almost an old man (her
husband was over forty), and having children by him; to understand the
mystery of this uninteresting, good, simple-hearted man, who argued with
such wearisome good sense, at balls and evening parties kept near the
more solid people, looking listless and superfluous, with a submissive,
uninterested expression, as though he had been brought there for sale,
who yet believed in his right to be happy, to have children by her; and
I kept trying to understand why she had met him first and not me, and
why such a terrible mistake in our lives need have happened.
"And when I went to the town I saw every time from her eyes that she was
expecting me, and she would confess to me herself that she had had a
peculiar feeling all that day and had guessed that I should come. We
talked a long time, and were silent, yet we did not confess our love to
each other, but timidly and jealously concealed it. We were afraid of
everything that might reveal our secret to ourselves. I loved her
tenderly, deeply, but I reflected and kept asking myself what our love
could lead to if we had not the strength to fight against it. It seemed
to be incredible that my gentle, sad love could all at once coarsely
break up the even tenor of the life of her husband, her children, and
all the household in which I was so loved and trusted. Would it be
honourable? She would go away with me, but where? Where could I take
her? It would have been a different matter if I had had a beautiful,
interesting life--if, for instance, I had been struggling for the
emancipation of my country, or had been a celebrated man of science, an
artist or a painter; but as it was it would mean taking her from one
everyday humdrum life to another as humdrum or perhaps more so. And how
long would our happiness last? What would happen to her in case I was
ill, in case I died, or if we simply grew cold to one another?
"And she apparently reasoned in the same way. She thought of her
husband, her children, and of her mother, who loved the husband like a
son. If she abandoned herself to her feelings she would have to lie, or
else to tell the truth, and in her position either would have been
equally terrible and inconvenient. And she was tormented by the question
whether her love would bring me happiness--would she not complicate my
life, which, as it was, was hard enough and full of all sorts of
trouble? She fancied she was not young enough for me, that she was not
industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often
talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of
intelligence and merit who would be a capable housewife and a help to
me--and she would immediately add that it would be difficult to find such
a girl in the whole town.
"Meanwhile the years were passing. Anna Alexyevna already had two
children. When I arrived at the Luganovitchs' the servants smiled
cordially, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinovitch had
come, and hung on my neck; every one was overjoyed. They did not
understand what was passing in my soul, and thought that I, too, was
happy. Every one looked on me as a noble being. And grown-ups and
children alike felt that a noble being was walking about their rooms,
and that gave a peculiar charm to their manner towards me, as though in
my presence their life, too, was purer and more beautiful. Anna
Alexyevna and I used to go to the theatre together, always walking
there; we used to sit side by side in the stalls, our shoulders
touching. I would take the opera-glass from her hands without a word,
and feel at that minute that she was near me, that she was mine, that we
could not live without each other; but by some strange misunderstanding,
when we came out of the theatre we always said good-bye and parted as
though we were strangers. Goodness knows what people were saying about
us in the town already, but there was not a word of truth in it all!
"In the latter years Anna Alexyevna took to going away for frequent
visits to her mother or to her sister; she began to suffer from low
spirits, she began to recognize that her life was spoilt and
unsatisfied, and at times she did not care to see her husband nor her
children. She was already being treated for neurasthenia.
"We were silent and still silent, and in the presence of outsiders she
displayed a strange irritation in regard to me; whatever I talked about,
she disagreed with me, and if I had an argument she sided with my
opponent. If I dropped anything, she would say coldly:
"'I congratulate you.'
"If I forgot to take the opera-glass when we were going to the theatre,
she would say afterwards:
"'I knew you would forget it.'
"Luckily or unluckily, there is nothing in our lives that does not end
sooner or later. The time of parting came, as Luganovitch was appointed
president in one of the western provinces. They had to sell their
furniture, their horses, their summer villa. When they drove out to the
villa, and afterwards looked back as they were going away, to look for
the last time at the garden, at the green roof, every one was sad, and I
realized that I had to say goodbye not only to the villa. It was
arranged that at the end of August we should see Anna Alexyevna off to
the Crimea, where the doctors were sending her, and that a little later
Luganovitch and the children would set off for the western province.
"We were a great crowd to see Anna Alexyevna off. When she had said
good-bye to her husband and her children and there was only a minute
left before the third bell, I ran into her compartment to put a basket,
which she had almost forgotten, on the rack, and I had to say good-bye.
When our eyes met in the compartment our spiritual fortitude deserted us
both; I took her in my arms, she pressed her face to my breast, and
tears flowed from her eyes. Kissing her face, her shoulders, her hands
wet with tears--oh, how unhappy we were!--I confessed my love for her, and
with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, how petty,
and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I understood
that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about that love,
start from what is highest, from what is more important than happiness
or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or you must not
reason at all.
"I kissed her for the last time, pressed her hand, and parted for ever.
The train had already started. I went into the next compartment--it was
empty--and until I reached the next station I sat there crying. Then I
walked home to Sofino...."
While Alehin was telling his story, the rain left off and the sun came
out. Burkin and Ivan Ivanovitch went out on the balcony, from which
there was a beautiful view over the garden and the mill-pond, which was
shining now in the sunshine like a mirror. They admired it, and at the
same time they were sorry that this man with the kind, clever eyes, who
had told them this story with such genuine feeling, should be rushing
round and round this huge estate like a squirrel on a wheel instead of
devoting himself to science or something else which would have made his
life more pleasant; and they thought what a sorrowful face Anna
Alexyevna must have had when he said good-bye to her in the railway-
carriage and kissed her face and shoulders. Both of them had met her in
the town, and Burkin knew her and thought her beautiful.
THE LOTTERY TICKET
IVAN DMITRITCH, a middle-class man who lived with his family on an
income of twelve hundred a year and was very well satisfied with his
lot, sat down on the sofa after supper and began reading the newspaper.
"I forgot to look at the newspaper today," his wife said to him as she
cleared the table. "Look and see whether the list of drawings is there."
"Yes, it is," said Ivan Dmitritch; "but hasn't your ticket lapsed?"
"No; I took the interest on Tuesday."
"What is the number?"
"Series 9,499, number 26."
"All right... we will look... 9,499 and 26."
Ivan Dmitritch had no faith in lottery luck, and would not, as a rule,
have consented to look at the lists of winning numbers, but now, as he
had nothing else to do and as the newspaper was before his eyes, he
passed his finger downwards along the column of numbers. And
immediately, as though in mockery of his scepticism, no further than the
second line from the top, his eye was caught by the figure 9,499! Unable
to believe his eyes, he hurriedly dropped the paper on his knees without
looking to see the number of the ticket, and, just as though some one
had given him a douche of cold water, he felt an agreeable chill in the
pit of the stomach; tingling and terrible and sweet!
"Masha, 9,499 is there!" he said in a hollow voice.
His wife looked at his astonished and panic-stricken face, and realized
that he was not joking.
"9,499?" she asked, turning pale and dropping the folded tablecloth on
the table.
"Yes, yes... it really is there!"
"And the number of the ticket?"
"Oh, yes! There's the number of the ticket too. But stay... wait! No, I
say! Anyway, the number of our series is there! Anyway, you
understand...."
Looking at his wife, Ivan Dmitritch gave a broad, senseless smile, like
a baby when a bright object is shown it. His wife smiled too; it was as
pleasant to her as to him that he only mentioned the series, and did not
try to find out the number of the winning ticket. To torment and
tantalize oneself with hopes of possible fortune is so sweet, so
thrilling!
"It is our series," said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence. "So there
is a probability that we have won. It's only a probability, but there it
is!"
"Well, now look!"
"Wait a little. We have plenty of time to be disappointed. It's on the
second line from the top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand. That's
not money, but power, capital! And in a minute I shall look at the list,
and there--26! Eh? I say, what if we really have won?"
The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in
silence. The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have
said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed that seventy-five
thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go. They thought
only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their
imagination, while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself
which was so possible.
Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from
corner to corner, and only when he had recovered from the first
impression began dreaming a little.
"And if we have won," he said--"why, it will be a new life, it will be a
transformation! The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first
of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on real property in the
shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new
furnishing... travelling... paying debts, and so on.... The other forty
thousand I would put in the bank and get interest on it."
"Yes, an estate, that would be nice," said his wife, sitting down and
dropping her hands in her lap.
"Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces.... In the first place we
shouldn't need a summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an
income."
And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and
poetical than the last. And in all these pictures he saw himself well-
fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot! Here, after eating a summer
soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close to a
stream or in the garden under a lime-tree.... It is hot.... His little
boy and girl are crawling about near him, digging in the sand or
catching ladybirds in the grass. He dozes sweetly, thinking of nothing,
and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow,
or the day after. Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or
to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the peasants catching fish with
a net. When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the
bathing-shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare
chest with his hands, and goes into the water. And in the water, near
the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-
weeds nod their heads. After bathing there is tea with cream and milk
rolls.... In the evening a walk or vint with the neighbours.
"Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate," said his wife, also dreaming,
and from her face it was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.
Ivan Dmitritch pictured to himself autumn with its rains, its cold
evenings, and its St. Martin's summer. At that season he would have to
take longer walks about the garden and beside the river, so as to get
thoroughly chilled, and then drink a big glass of vodka and eat a salted
mushroom or a soused cucumber, and then--drink another.... The children
would come running from the kitchen-garden, bringing a carrot and a
radish smelling of fresh earth.... And then, he would lie stretched full
length on the sofa, and in leisurely fashion turn over the pages of some
illustrated magazine, or, covering his face with it and unbuttoning his
waistcoat, give himself up to slumber.
The St. Martin's summer is followed by cloudy, gloomy weather. It rains
day and night, the bare trees weep, the wind is damp and cold. The dogs,
the horses, the fowls--all are wet, depressed, downcast. There is nowhere
to walk; one can't go out for days together; one has to pace up and down
the room, looking despondently at the grey window. It is dreary!
Ivan Dmitritch stopped and looked at his wife.
"I should go abroad, you know, Masha," he said.
And he began thinking how nice it would be in late autumn to go abroad
somewhere to the South of France... to Italy.... to India!
"I should certainly go abroad too," his wife said. "But look at the
number of the ticket!"
"Wait, wait!..."
He walked about the room and went on thinking. It occurred to him: what
if his wife really did go abroad? It is pleasant to travel alone, or in
the society of light, careless women who live in the present, and not
such as think and talk all the journey about nothing but their children,
sigh, and tremble with dismay over every farthing. Ivan Dmitritch
imagined his wife in the train with a multitude of parcels, baskets, and
bags; she would be sighing over something, complaining that the train
made her head ache, that she had spent so much money.... At the stations
he would continually be having to run for boiling water, bread and
butter.... She wouldn't have dinner because of its being too dear....
"She would begrudge me every farthing," he thought, with a glance at his
wife. "The lottery ticket is hers, not mine! Besides, what is the use of
her going abroad? What does she want there? She would shut herself up in
the hotel, and not let me out of her sight.... I know!"
And for the first time in his life his mind dwelt on the fact that his
wife had grown elderly and plain, and that she was saturated through and
through with the smell of cooking, while he was still young, fresh, and
healthy, and might well have got married again.
"Of course, all that is silly nonsense," he thought; "but... why should
she go abroad? What would she make of it? And yet she would go, of
course.... I can fancy... In reality it is all one to her, whether it is
Naples or Klin. She would only be in my way. I should be dependent upon
her. I can fancy how, like a regular woman, she will lock the money up
as soon as she gets it.... She will hide it from me.... She will look
after her relations and grudge me every farthing."
Ivan Dmitritch thought of her relations. All those wretched brothers and
sisters and aunts and uncles would come crawling about as soon as they
heard of the winning ticket, would begin whining like beggars, and
fawning upon them with oily, hypocritical smiles. Wretched, detestable
people! If they were given anything, they would ask for more; while if
they were refused, they would swear at them, slander them, and wish them
every kind of misfortune.
Ivan Dmitritch remembered his own relations, and their faces, at which
he had looked impartially in the past, struck him now as repulsive and
hateful.
"They are such reptiles!" he thought.
And his wife's face, too, struck him as repulsive and hateful. Anger
surged up in his heart against her, and he thought malignantly:
"She knows nothing about money, and so she is stingy. If she won it she
would give me a hundred roubles, and put the rest away under lock and
key."
And he looked at his wife, not with a smile now, but with hatred. She
glanced at him too, and also with hatred and anger. She had her own
daydreams, her own plans, her own reflections; she understood perfectly
well what her husband's dreams were. She knew who would be the first to
try and grab her winnings.
"It's very nice making daydreams at other people's expense!" is what her
eyes expressed. "No, don't you dare!"
Her husband understood her look; hatred began stirring again in his
breast, and in order to annoy his wife he glanced quickly, to spite her
at the fourth page on the newspaper and read out triumphantly:
"Series 9,499, number 46! Not 26!"
Hatred and hope both disappeared at once, and it began immediately to
seem to Ivan Dmitritch and his wife that their rooms were dark and small
and low-pitched, that the supper they had been eating was not doing them
good, but lying heavy on their stomachs, that the evenings were long and
wearisome....
"What the devil's the meaning of it?" said Ivan Dmitritch, beginning to
be ill-humoured. "Wherever one steps there are bits of paper under one's
feet, crumbs, husks. The rooms are never swept! One is simply forced to
go out. Damnation take my soul entirely! I shall go and hang myself on
the first aspen-tree!"
The Witch and Other Stories
THE WITCH