 |
| Подпись_Антон_Чехов, Signature of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov |
LiteraryJoint is proud to present the full text edition of "The Chorus Girl and other stories," a collection of short stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, many of them not yet very well known by the general public. Every month, we will commit one of our weekly post to these stories, in their English translation by Constance Garnett, starting with On
the Road, followed by: The
Chorus Girl, Verotchka, My
Life, At a Country House, A
Father, Rothschild's Fiddle, Ivan
Matveyitch,
Zinotchka, Bad
Weather, A
Gentleman Friend, and A
Trivial Incident.
On
the Road
"Upon the breast of a gigantic crag,
A golden cloudlet rested for one night."
LERMONTOV.
In the room which the tavern keeper, the Cossack Semyon Tchistopluy,
called the "travellers' room," that is kept exclusively for travellers, a
tall, broad-shouldered man of forty was sitting at the big unpainted
table. He was asleep with his elbows on the table and his head leaning
on his fist. An end of tallow candle, stuck into an old pomatum pot,
lighted up his light brown beard, his thick, broad nose, his sunburnt
cheeks, and the thick, black eyebrows overhanging his closed eyes. . . .
The nose and the cheeks and the eyebrows, all the features, each taken
separately, were coarse and heavy, like the furniture and the stove in
the "travellers' room," but taken all together they gave the effect of
something harmonious and even beautiful. Such is the lucky star, as it
is called, of the Russian face: the coarser and harsher its features the
softer and more good-natured it looks. The man was dressed in a
gentleman's reefer jacket, shabby, but bound with wide new braid, a
plush waistcoat, and full black trousers thrust into big high boots.
On one of the benches, which stood in a continuous row along the
wall, a girl of eight, in a brown dress and long black stockings, lay
asleep on a coat lined with fox. Her face was pale, her hair was flaxen,
her shoulders were narrow, her whole body was thin and frail, but her
nose stood out as thick and ugly a lump as the man's. She was sound
asleep, and unconscious that her semi-circular comb had fallen off her
head and was cutting her cheek.
The "travellers' room" had a festive appearance. The air was full of
the smell of freshly scrubbed floors, there were no rags hanging as
usual on the line that ran diagonally across the room, and a little lamp
was burning in the corner over the table, casting a patch of red light
on the ikon of St. George the Victorious. From the ikon stretched on
each side of the corner a row of cheap oleographs, which maintained a
strict and careful gradation in the transition from the sacred to the
profane. In the dim light of the candle end and the red ikon lamp the
pictures looked like one continuous stripe, covered with blurs of black.
When the tiled stove, trying to sing in unison with the weather, drew
in the air with a howl, while the logs, as though waking up, burst into
bright flame and hissed angrily, red patches began dancing on the log
walls, and over the head of the sleeping man could be seen first the
Elder Seraphim, then the Shah Nasir-ed-Din, then a fat, brown baby with
goggle eyes, whispering in the ear of a young girl with an
extraordinarily blank, and indifferent face. . . .
Outside a storm was raging. Something frantic and wrathful, but
profoundly unhappy, seemed to be flinging itself about the tavern with
the ferocity of a wild beast and trying to break in. Banging at the
doors, knocking at the windows and on the roof, scratching at the walls,
it alternately threatened and besought, then subsided for a brief
interval, and then with a gleeful, treacherous howl burst into the
chimney, but the wood flared up, and the fire, like a chained dog, flew
wrathfully to meet its foe, a battle began, and after it--sobs, shrieks,
howls of wrath. In all of this there was the sound of angry misery and
unsatisfied hate, and the mortified impatience of something accustomed
to triumph.
Bewitched by this wild, inhuman music the "travellers' room" seemed
spellbound for ever, but all at once the door creaked and the potboy, in
a new print shirt, came in. Limping on one leg, and blinking his sleepy
eyes, he snuffed the candle with his fingers, put some more wood on the
fire and went out. At once from the church, which was three hundred
paces from the tavern, the clock struck midnight. The wind played with
the chimes as with the snowflakes; chasing the sounds of the clock it
whirled them round and round over a vast space, so that some strokes
were cut short or drawn out in long, vibrating notes, while others were
completely lost in the general uproar. One stroke sounded as distinctly
in the room as though it had chimed just under the window. The child,
sleeping on the fox-skin, started and raised her head. For a minute she
stared blankly at the dark window, at Nasir-ed-Din over whom a crimson
glow from the fire flickered at that moment, then she turned her eyes
upon the sleeping man.
"Daddy," she said.
But the man did not move. The little girl knitted her brow angrily,
lay down, and curled up her legs. Someone in the tavern gave a loud,
prolonged yawn. Soon afterwards there was the squeak of the swing door
and the sound of indistinct voices. Someone came in, shaking the snow
off, and stamping in felt boots which made a muffled thud.
"What is it?" a woman s voice asked languidly.
"Mademoiselle Ilovaisky has come, . . ." answered a bass voice.
Again there was the squeak of the swing door. Then came the roar of
the wind rushing in. Someone, probably the lame boy, ran to the door
leading to the "travellers' room," coughed deferentially, and lifted the
latch.
"This way, lady, please," said a woman's voice in dulcet tones. "It's clean in here, my beauty. . . ."
The door was opened wide and a peasant with a beard appeared in the
doorway, in the long coat of a coachman, plastered all over with snow
from head to foot, and carrying a big trunk on his shoulder. He was
followed into the room by a feminine figure, scarcely half his height,
with no face and no arms, muffled and wrapped up like a bundle and also
covered with snow. A damp chill, as from a cellar, seemed to come to the
child from the coachman and the bundle, and the fire and the candles
flickered.
"What nonsense!" said the bundle angrily, "We could go perfectly
well. We have only nine more miles to go, mostly by the forest, and we
should not get lost. . . ."
"As for getting lost, we shouldn't, but the horses can't go on,
lady!" answered the coachman. "And it is Thy Will, O Lord! As though I
had done it on purpose!"
"God knows where you have brought me. . . . Well, be quiet. . . . There are people asleep here, it seems. You can go. . . ."
The coachman put the portmanteau on the floor, and as he did so, a
great lump of snow fell off his shoulders. He gave a sniff and went out.
Then the little girl saw two little hands come out from the middle of
the bundle, stretch upwards and begin angrily disentangling the network
of shawls, kerchiefs, and scarves. First a big shawl fell on the
ground, then a hood, then a white knitted kerchief. After freeing her
head, the traveller took off her pelisse and at once shrank to half the
size. Now she was in a long, grey coat with big buttons and bulging
pockets. From one pocket she pulled out a paper parcel, from the other a
bunch of big, heavy keys, which she put down so carelessly that the
sleeping man started and opened his eyes. For some time he looked
blankly round him as though he didn't know where he was, then he shook
his head, went to the corner and sat down. . . . The newcomer took off
her great coat, which made her shrink to half her size again, she took
off her big felt boots, and sat down, too.
By now she no longer resembled a bundle: she was a thin little
brunette of twenty, as slim as a snake, with a long white face and curly
hair. Her nose was long and sharp, her chin, too, was long and sharp,
her eyelashes were long, the corners of her mouth were sharp, and,
thanks to this general sharpness, the expression of her face was biting.
Swathed in a closely fitting black dress with a mass of lace at her
neck and sleeves, with sharp elbows and long pink fingers, she recalled
the portraits of mediaeval English ladies. The grave concentration of
her face increased this likeness.
The lady looked round at the room, glanced sideways at the man and
the little girl, shrugged her shoulders, and moved to the window. The
dark windows were shaking from the damp west wind. Big flakes of snow
glistening in their whiteness, lay on the window frame, but at once
disappeared, borne away by the wind. The savage music grew louder and
louder. . . .
After a long silence the little girl suddenly turned over, and said angrily, emphasizing each word:
"Oh, goodness, goodness, how unhappy I am! Unhappier than anyone!"
The man got up and moved with little steps to the child with a guilty
air, which was utterly out of keeping with his huge figure and big
beard.
"You are not asleep, dearie?" he said, in an apologetic voice. "What do you want?"
"I don't want anything, my shoulder aches! You are a wicked man, Daddy, and God will punish you! You'll see He will punish you."
"My darling, I know your shoulder aches, but what can I do, dearie?"
said the man, in the tone in which men who have been drinking excuse
themselves to their stern spouses. "It's the journey has made your
shoulder ache, Sasha. Tomorrow we shall get there and rest, and the
pain will go away. . ."
"To-morrow, to-morrow. . . . Every day you say to-morrow. We shall be going on another twenty days."
"But we shall arrive to-morrow, dearie, on your father's word of
honour. I never tell a lie, but if we are detained by the snowstorm it
is not my fault."
"I can't bear any more, I can't, I can't!"
Sasha jerked her leg abruptly and filled the room with an unpleasant
wailing. Her father made a despairing gesture, and looked hopelessly
towards the young lady. The latter shrugged her shoulders, and
hesitatingly went up to Sasha.
"Listen, my dear," she said, "it is no use crying. It's really naughty; if your shoulder aches it can't be helped."
"You see, Madam," said the man quickly, as though defending himself,
"we have not slept for two nights, and have been travelling in a
revolting conveyance. Well, of course, it is natural she should be ill
and miserable, . . . and then, you know, we had a drunken driver, our
portmanteau has been stolen . . . the snowstorm all the time, but what's
the use of crying, Madam? I am exhausted, though, by sleeping in a
sitting position, and I feel as though I were drunk. Oh, dear! Sasha,
and I feel sick as it is, and then you cry!"
The man shook his head, and with a gesture of despair sat down.
"Of course you mustn't cry," said the young lady. "It's only little
babies cry. If you are ill, dear, you must undress and go to sleep. . . .
Let us take off your things!"
When the child had been undressed and pacified a silence reigned
again. The young lady seated herself at the window, and looked round
wonderingly at the room of the inn, at the ikon, at the stove. . . .
Apparently the room and the little girl with the thick nose, in her
short boy's nightgown, and the child's father, all seemed strange to
her. This strange man was sitting in a corner; he kept looking about him
helplessly, as though he were drunk, and rubbing his face with the palm
of his hand. He sat silent, blinking, and judging from his
guilty-looking figure it was difficult to imagine that he would soon
begin to speak. Yet he was the first to begin. Stroking his knees, he
gave a cough, laughed, and said: "It's a comedy, it really is. . . . I look and I cannot believe my
eyes: for what devilry has destiny driven us to this accursed inn? What
did she want to show by it? Life sometimes performs such _'salto
mortale,'_ one can only stare and blink in amazement. Have you come from
far, Madam?"
"No, not from far," answered the young lady. "I am going from our
estate, fifteen miles from here, to our farm, to my father and brother.
My name is Ilovaisky, and the farm is called Ilovaiskoe. It's nine miles
away. What unpleasant weather!"
"It couldn't be worse."
The lame boy came in and stuck a new candle in the pomatum pot.
"You might bring us the samovar, boy," said the man, addressing him.
"Who drinks tea now?" laughed the boy. "It is a sin to drink tea before mass. . . ."
"Never mind boy, you won't burn in hell if we do. . . ."
Over the tea the new acquaintances got into conversation.
Mlle. Ilovaisky learned that her companion was called Grigory
Petrovitch Liharev, that he was the brother of the Liharev who was
Marshal of Nobility in one of the neighbouring districts, and he himself
had once been a landowner, but had "run through everything in his
time." Liharev learned that her name was Marya Mihailovna, that her
father had a huge estate, but that she was the only one to look after it
as her father and brother looked at life through their fingers, were
irresponsible, and were too fond of harriers.
"My father and brother are all alone at the farm," she told him,
brandishing her fingers (she had the habit of moving her fingers before
her pointed face as she talked, and after every sentence moistened her
lips with her sharp little tongue). "They, I mean men, are an
irresponsible lot, and don't stir a finger for themselves. I can fancy
there will be no one to give them a meal after the fast! We have no
mother, and we have such servants that they can't lay the tablecloth
properly when I am away. You can imagine their condition now! They will
be left with nothing to break their fast, while I have to stay here all
night. How strange it all is."
She shrugged her shoulders, took a sip from her cup, and said: "There are festivals that have a special fragrance: at Easter,
Trinity and Christmas there is a peculiar scent in the air. Even
unbelievers are fond of those festivals. My brother, for instance,
argues that there is no God, but he is the first to hurry to Matins at
Easter."
Liharev raised his eyes to Mlle. Ilovaisky and laughed.
"They argue that there is no God," she went on, laughing too, "but
why is it, tell me, all the celebrated writers, the learned men, clever
people generally, in fact, believe towards the end of their life?"
"If a man does not know how to believe when he is young, Madam, he
won't believe in his old age if he is ever so much of a writer."
Judging from Liharev's cough he had a bass voice, but, probably from
being afraid to speak aloud, or from exaggerated shyness, he spoke in a
tenor. After a brief pause he heaved a sign and said: "The way I look at it is that faith is a faculty of the spirit. It is
just the same as a talent, one must be born with it. So far as I can
judge by myself, by the people I have seen in my time, and by all that
is done around us, this faculty is present in Russians in its highest
degree. Russian life presents us with an uninterrupted succession of
convictions and aspirations, and if you care to know, it has not yet the
faintest notion of lack of faith or scepticism. If a Russian does not
believe in God, it means he believes in something else."
Liharev took a cup of tea from Mlle. Ilovaisky, drank off half in one gulp, and went on: "I will tell you about myself. Nature has implanted in my breast an
extraordinary faculty for belief. Whisper it not to the night, but half
my life I was in the ranks of the Atheists and Nihilists, but there was
not one hour in my life in which I ceased to believe. All talents, as a
rule, show themselves in early childhood, and so my faculty showed
itself when I could still walk upright under the table. My mother liked
her children to eat a great deal, and when she gave me food she used to
say: 'Eat! Soup is the great thing in life!' I believed, and ate the
soup ten times a day, ate like a shark, ate till I was disgusted and
stupefied. My nurse used to tell me fairy tales, and I believed in
house-spirits, in wood-elves, and in goblins of all kinds. I used
sometimes to steal corrosive sublimate from my father, sprinkle it on
cakes, and carry them up to the attic that the house-spirits, you see,
might eat them and be killed. And when I was taught to read and
understand what I read, then there was a fine to-do. I ran away to
America and went off to join the brigands, and wanted to go into a
monastery, and hired boys to torture me for being a Christian. And note
that my faith was always active, never dead. If I was running away to
America I was not alone, but seduced someone else, as great a fool as I
was, to go with me, and was delighted when I was nearly frozen outside
the town gates and when I was thrashed; if I went to join the brigands I
always came back with my face battered. A most restless childhood, I
assure you! And when they sent me to the high school and pelted me with
all sorts of truths--that is, that the earth goes round the sun, or that
white light is not white, but is made up of seven colours--my poor
little head began to go round! Everything was thrown into a whirl in me:
Navin who made the sun stand still, and my mother who in the name of
the Prophet Elijah disapproved of lightning conductors, and my father
who was indifferent to the truths I had learned. My enlightenment
inspired me. I wandered about the house and stables like one possessed,
preaching my truths, was horrified by ignorance, glowed with hatred for
anyone who saw in white light nothing but white light. . . . But all
that's nonsense and childishness. Serious, so to speak, manly
enthusiasms began only at the university. You have, no doubt, Madam,
taken your degree somewhere?"
"I studied at Novotcherkask at the Don Institute."
"Then you have not been to a university? So you don't know what
science means. All the sciences in the world have the same passport,
without which they regard themselves as meaningless . . . the striving
towards truth! Every one of them, even pharmacology, has for its aim not
utility, not the alleviation of life, but truth. It's remarkable! When
you set to work to study any science, what strikes you first of all is
its beginning. I assure you there is nothing more attractive and
grander, nothing is so staggering, nothing takes a man's breath away
like the beginning of any science. From the first five or six lectures
you are soaring on wings of the brightest hopes, you already seem to
yourself to be welcoming truth with open arms. And I gave myself up to
science, heart and soul, passionately, as to the woman one loves. I was
its slave; I found it the sun of my existence, and asked for no other. I
studied day and night without rest, ruined myself over books, wept when
before my eyes men exploited science for their own personal ends. But
my enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a
beginning but not an end, like a recurring decimal. Zoology has
discovered 35,000 kinds of insects, chemistry reckons 60 elements. If in
time tens of noughts can be written after these figures. Zoology and
chemistry will be just as far from their end as now, and all
contemporary scientific work consists in increasing these numbers. I saw
through this trick when I discovered the 35,001-st and felt no
satisfaction. Well, I had no time to suffer from disillusionment, as I
was soon possessed by a new faith. I plunged into Nihilism, with its
manifestoes, its 'black divisions,' and all the rest of it. I 'went to
the people,' worked in factories, worked as an oiler, as a barge hauler.
Afterwards, when wandering over Russia, I had a taste of Russian life, I
turned into a fervent devotee of that life. I loved the Russian people
with poignant intensity; I loved their God and believed in Him, and in
their language, their creative genius. . . . And so on, and so on. . . .
I have been a Slavophile in my time, I used to pester Aksakov with
letters, and I was a Ukrainophile, and an archaeologist, and a collector
of specimens of peasant art. . . . I was enthusiastic over ideas,
people, events, places . . . my enthusiasm was endless! Five years ago I
was working for the abolition of private property; my last creed was
non-resistance to evil."
Sasha gave an abrupt sigh and began moving. Liharev got up and went to her.
"Won't you have some tea, dearie?" he asked tenderly.
"Drink it yourself," the child answered rudely. Liharev was disconcerted, and went back to the table with a guilty step.
"Then you have had a lively time," said Mlle. Ilovaisky; "you have something to remember."
"Well, yes, it's all very lively when one sits over tea and chatters
to a kind listener, but you should ask what that liveliness has cost me!
What price have I paid for the variety of my life? You see, Madam, I
have not held my convictions like a German doctor of philosophy,
_zierlichmaennerlich_, I have not lived in solitude, but every
conviction I have had has bound my back to the yoke, has torn my body to
pieces. Judge, for yourself. I was wealthy like my brothers, but now I
am a beggar. In the delirium of my enthusiasm I smashed up my own
fortune and my wife's--a heap of other people's money. Now I am
forty-two, old age is close upon me, and I am homeless, like a dog that
has dropped behind its waggon at night. All my life I have not known
what peace meant, my soul has been in continual agitation, distressed
even by its hopes . . . I have been wearied out with heavy irregular
work, have endured privation, have five times been in prison, have
dragged myself across the provinces of Archangel and of Tobolsk . . .
it's painful to think of it! I have lived, but in my fever I have not
even been conscious of the process of life itself. Would you believe it,
I don't remember a single spring, I never noticed how my wife loved me,
how my children were born. What more can I tell you? I have been a
misfortune to all who have loved me. . . . My mother has worn mourning
for me all these fifteen years, while my proud brothers, who have had to
wince, to blush, to bow their heads, to waste their money on my
account, have come in the end to hate me like poison."
Liharev got up and sat down again.
"If I were simply unhappy I should thank God," he went on without
looking at his listener. "My personal unhappiness sinks into the
background when I remember how often in my enthusiasms I have been
absurd, far from the truth, unjust, cruel, dangerous! How often I have
hated and despised those whom I ought to have loved, and _vice versa_, I
have changed a thousand times. One day I believe, fall down and
worship, the next I flee like a coward from the gods and friends of
yesterday, and swallow in silence the 'scoundrel!' they hurl after me.
God alone has seen how often I have wept and bitten my pillow in shame
for my enthusiasms. Never once in my life have I intentionally lied or
done evil, but my conscience is not clear! I cannot even boast, Madam,
that I have no one's life upon my conscience, for my wife died before my
eyes, worn out by my reckless activity. Yes, my wife! I tell you they
have two ways of treating women nowadays. Some measure women's skulls to
prove woman is inferior to man, pick out her defects to mock at her, to
look original in her eyes, and to justify their sensuality. Others do
their utmost to raise women to their level, that is, force them to learn
by heart the 35,000 species, to speak and write the same foolish things
as they speak and write themselves."
Liharev's face darkened.
"I tell you that woman has been and always will be the slave of man,"
he said in a bass voice, striking his fist on the table. "She is the
soft, tender wax which a man always moulds into anything he likes. . . .
My God! for the sake of some trumpery masculine enthusiasm she will cut
off her hair, abandon her family, die among strangers! . . . among the
ideas for which she has sacrificed herself there is not a single
feminine one. . . . An unquestioning, devoted slave! I have not measured
skulls, but I say this from hard, bitter experience: the proudest, most
independent women, if I have succeeded in communicating to them my
enthusiasm, have followed me without criticism, without question, and
done anything I chose; I have turned a nun into a Nihilist who, as I
heard afterwards, shot a gendarme; my wife never left me for a minute in
my wanderings, and like a weathercock changed her faith in step with my
changing enthusiasms."
Liharev jumped up and walked up and down the room.
"A noble, sublime slavery!" he said, clasping his hands. "It is just
in it that the highest meaning of
woman's life lies! Of all the fearful
medley of thoughts and impressions accumulated in my brain from my
association with women my memory, like a filter, has retained no ideas,
no clever saying, no philosophy, nothing but that extraordinary,
resignation to fate, that wonderful mercifulness, forgiveness of
everything."
Liharev clenched his fists, stared at a fixed point, and with a sort
of passionate intensity, as though he were savouring each word as he
uttered it, hissed through his clenched teeth: "That . . . that great-hearted fortitude, faithfulness unto death,
poetry of the heart. . . . The meaning of life lies in just that
unrepining martyrdom, in the tears which would soften a stone, in the
boundless, all-forgiving love which brings light and warmth into the
chaos of life. . . ."
Mlle. Ilovaisky got up slowly, took a step towards Liharev, and fixed
her eyes upon his face. From the tears that glittered on his eyelashes,
from his quivering, passionate voice, from the flush on his cheeks, it
was clear to her that women were not a chance, not a simple subject of
conversation. They were the object of his new enthusiasm, or, as he said
himself, his new faith! For the first time in her life she saw a man
carried away, fervently believing. With his gesticulations, with his
flashing eyes he seemed to her mad, frantic, but there was a feeling of
such beauty in the fire of his eyes, in his words, in all the movements
of his huge body, that without noticing what she was doing she stood
facing him as though rooted to the spot, and gazed into his face with
delight.
"Take my mother," he said, stretching out his hand to her with an
imploring expression on his face, "I poisoned her existence, according
to her ideas disgraced the name of Liharev, did her as much harm as the
most malignant enemy, and what do you think? My brothers give her little
sums for holy bread and church services, and outraging her religious
feelings, she saves that money and sends it in secret to her erring
Grigory. This trifle alone elevates and ennobles the soul far more than
all the theories, all the clever sayings and the 35,000 species. I can
give you thousands of instances. Take you, even, for instance! With
tempest and darkness outside you are going to your father and your
brother to cheer them with your affection in the holiday, though very
likely they have forgotten and are not thinking of you. And, wait a bit,
and you will love a man and follow him to the North Pole. You would,
wouldn't you?"
"Yes, if I loved him."
"There, you see," cried Liharev delighted, and he even stamped with
his foot. "Oh dear! How glad I am that I have met you! Fate is kind to
me, I am always meeting splendid people. Not a day passes but one makes
acquaintance with somebody one would give one's soul for. There are ever
so many more good people than bad in this world. Here, see, for
instance, how openly and from our hearts we have been talking as though
we had known each other a hundred years. Sometimes, I assure you, one
restrains oneself for ten years and holds one's tongue, is reserved with
one's friends and one's wife, and meets some cadet in a train and
babbles one's whole soul out to him. It is the first time I have the
honour of seeing you, and yet I have confessed to you as I have never
confessed in my life. Why is it?"
Rubbing his hands and smiling good-humouredly Liharev walked up and
down the room, and fell to talking about women again. Meanwhile they
began ringing for matins.
"Goodness," wailed Sasha. "He won't let me sleep with his talking!"
"Oh, yes!" said Liharev, startled. "I am sorry, darling, sleep,
sleep. . . . I have two boys besides her," he whispered. "They are
living with their uncle, Madam, but this one can't exist a day without
her father. She's wretched, she complains, but she sticks to me like a
fly to honey. I have been chattering too much, Madam, and it would do
you no harm to sleep. Wouldn't you like me to make up a bed for you?"
Without waiting for permission he shook the wet pelisse, stretched it
on a bench, fur side upwards, collected various shawls and scarves, put
the overcoat folded up into a roll for a pillow, and all this he did in
silence with a look of devout reverence, as though he were not handling
a woman's rags, but the fragments of holy vessels. There was something
apologetic, embarrassed about his whole figure, as though in the
presence of a weak creature he felt ashamed of his height and strength. .
. .
When Mlle. Ilovaisky had lain down, he put out the candle and sat down on a stool by the stove.
"So, Madam," he whispered, lighting a fat cigarette and puffing the
smoke into the stove. "Nature has put into the Russian an extraordinary
faculty for belief, a searching intelligence, and the gift of
speculation, but all that is reduced to ashes by irresponsibility,
laziness, and dreamy frivolity. . . . Yes. . . ."
She gazed wonderingly into the darkness, and saw only a spot of red
on the ikon and the flicker of the light of the stove on Liharev's face.
The darkness, the chime of the bells, the roar of the storm, the lame
boy, Sasha with her fretfulness, unhappy Liharev and his sayings--all
this was mingled together, and seemed to grow into one huge impression,
and God's world seemed to her fantastic, full of marvels and magical
forces. All that she had heard was ringing in her ears, and human life
presented itself to her as a beautiful poetic fairy-tale without an end.
The immense impression grew and grew, clouded consciousness, and
turned into a sweet dream. She was asleep, though she saw the little
ikon lamp and a big nose with the light playing on it.
She heard the sound of weeping.
"Daddy, darling," a child's voice was tenderly entreating, "let's go
back to uncle! There is a Christmas-tree there! Styopa and Kolya are
there!"
"My darling, what can I do?" a man's bass persuaded softly. "Understand me! Come, understand!"
And the man's weeping blended with the child's. This voice of human
sorrow, in the midst of the howling of the storm, touched the girl's ear
with such sweet human music that she could not bear the delight of it,
and wept too. She was conscious afterwards of a big, black shadow coming
softly up to her, picking up a shawl that had dropped on to the floor
and carefully wrapping it round her feet.
Mile. Ilovaisky was awakened by a strange uproar. She jumped up and
looked about her in astonishment. The deep blue dawn was looking in at
the window half-covered with snow. In the room there was a grey
twilight, through which the stove and the sleeping child and
Nasir-ed-Din stood out distinctly. The stove and the lamp were both out.
Through the wide-open door she could see the big tavern room with a
counter and chairs. A man, with a stupid, gipsy face and astonished
eyes, was standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of melting
snow, holding a big red star on a stick. He was surrounded by a group of
boys, motionless as statues, and plastered over with snow. The light
shone through the red paper of the star, throwing a glow of red on their
wet faces. The crowd was shouting in disorder, and from its uproar
Mile. Ilovaisky could make out only one couplet: "Hi, you Little Russian lad, Bring your sharp knife, We will kill the Jew, we will kill him, The son of tribulation. . ."
Liharev was standing near the counter, looking feelingly at the
singers and tapping his feet in time. Seeing Mile. Ilovaisky, he smiled
all over his face and came up to her. She smiled too.
"A happy Christmas!" he said. "I saw you slept well."
She looked at him, said nothing, and went on smiling.
After the conversation in the night he seemed to her not tall and
broad shouldered, but little, just as the biggest steamer seems to us a
little thing when we hear that it has crossed the ocean.
"Well, it is time for me to set off," she said. "I must put on my things. Tell me where you are going now?"
"I? To the station of Klinushki, from there to Sergievo, and from
Sergievo, with horses, thirty miles to the coal mines that belong to a
horrid man, a general called Shashkovsky. My brothers have got me the
post of superintendent there. . . . I am going to be a coal miner."
"Stay, I know those mines. Shashkovsky is my uncle, you know. But . .
. what are you going there for?" asked Mlle. Ilovaisky, looking at
Liharev in surprise.
"As superintendent. To superintend the coal mines."
"I don't understand!" she shrugged her shoulders. "You are going to
the mines. But you know, it's the bare steppe, a desert, so dreary that
you couldn't exist a day there! It's horrible coal, no one will buy it,
and my uncle's a maniac, a despot, a bankrupt . . . . You won't get your
salary!"
"No matter," said Liharev, unconcernedly, "I am thankful even for coal mines."
She shrugged her shoulders, and walked about the room in agitation.
"I don't understand, I don't understand," she said, moving her
fingers before her face. "It's impossible, and . . . and irrational! You
must understand that it's . . . it's worse than exile. It is a living
tomb! O Heavens!" she said hotly, going up to Liharev and moving her
fingers before his smiling face; her upper lip was quivering, and her
sharp face turned pale, "Come, picture it, the bare steppe, solitude.
There is no one to say a word to there, and you . . . are enthusiastic
over women! Coal mines . . . and women!"
Mlle. Ilovaisky was suddenly ashamed of her heat and, turning away from Liharev, walked to the window.
"No, no, you can't go there," she said, moving her fingers rapidly over the pane.
Not only in her heart, but even in her spine she felt that behind her
stood an infinitely unhappy man, lost and outcast, while he, as though
he were unaware of his unhappiness, as though he had not shed tears in
the night, was looking at her with a kindly smile. Better he should go
on weeping! She walked up and down the room several times in agitation,
then stopped short in a corner and sank into thought. Liharev was saying
something, but she did not hear him. Turning her back on him she took
out of her purse a money note, stood for a long time crumpling it in her
hand, and looking round at Liharev, blushed and put it in her pocket.
The coachman's voice was heard through the door. With a stern,
concentrated face she began putting on her things in silence. Liharev
wrapped her up, chatting gaily, but every word he said lay on her heart
like a weight. It is not cheering to hear the unhappy or the dying jest.
When the transformation of a live person into a shapeless bundle had
been completed, Mlle. Ilovaisky looked for the last time round the
"travellers' room," stood a moment in silence, and slowly walked out.
Liharev went to see her off. . . .
Outside, God alone knows why, the winter was raging still. Whole
clouds of big soft snowflakes were whirling restlessly over the earth,
unable to find a resting-place. The horses, the sledge, the trees, a
bull tied to a post, all were white and seemed soft and fluffy.
"Well, God help you," muttered Liharev, tucking her into the sledge. "Don't remember evil against me . . . ."
She was silent. When the sledge started, and had to go round a huge
snowdrift, she looked back at Liharev with an expression as though she
wanted to say something to him. He ran up to her, but she did not say a
word to him, she only looked at him through her long eyelashes with
little specks of snow on them.
Whether his finely intuitive soul were really able to read that look,
or whether his imagination deceived him, it suddenly began to seem to
him that with another touch or two that girl would have forgiven him his
failures, his age, his desolate position, and would have followed him
without question or reasonings. He stood a long while as though rooted
to the spot, gazing at the tracks left by the sledge runners. The
snowflakes greedily settled on his hair, his beard, his shoulders. . . .
Soon the track of the runners had vanished, and he himself covered with
snow, began to look like a white rock, but still his eyes kept seeking
something in the clouds of snow.
