Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (254 page)

Faust: of the many versions of the story, Chekhov probably had in mind the opera “Faust” (1859) by Charles Gounod (1818-1893)

seventh commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery”

Turgenev teaches: I. S. Turgenev (1818-1883), the well-known Russian novelist; for example, the heroine of
On the Eve
(1860) offers to follow the hero to “the ends of the earth”

Three Meetings: Turgenev’s 1852 story

Vieni pensando a me segretamente
: Come, thinking of me in secret (Turgenev used this as the epigram of the story “Three Meetings”)

free Bulgaria: in Turgenev’s novel
On the Eve
(1860), the hero is a Bulgarian trying to gain his country’s freedom

sous
: French coins worth 1/100 franc each

Othello: in Shakespeare’s play
Othello
the title hero is a needlessly jealous husband

Shtchedrin’s heroes: one of the comic civil servants who form the main targets of the satirist Shchedrin

cutting a book: in the 19th century the pages of books, particularly French books, were not always cut, so the reader had to do it

Sidors and the Nikitas: typical Russian peasant names

Saint-Saëns’s “Swan Song: French composer (1835-1921); “Le Cygne” is from
Le Carnaval des animaux
(1886)

Samson: see Judges 16:3

novel of Dostoevsky’s: the incident occurs in
The Insulted and Injured
(1861), Part I, Chapter 13

thief: Luke 23:39-43

Petersburg Side: the older part of the city, to the north of the Neva River

driving on wheels: as opposed to the sleigh-runners used in winter

“The Parisian Beggars”: the 1859 drama
Les Pauvres de Paris
by Brisebarre and Nus was acted in Chekhov’s hometown when he was a boy

bijoux
: jewels

Père Goriot:
Le Père Goriot,
by Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

Desdemona: the murdered heroine of Shakespeare’s
Othello
has traditionally been associated with the Palazzo Contarini-Fasan in Venice

Canova: Antonio Canova (1757-1822) was an Italian sculptor

Marino Faliero: Marino Faliero (1274-1355) was a Doge of Venice who rebelled against the nobility; he was beheaded and his portrait defaced

Jam-mo! Jam-mo!
: fragments of Italian words

cocottes: prostitutes

what a job it is to be the father of a little daughter: allusion to Famusov’s exit lines at the end of Act I of A. S. Griboyedov’s play
Woe from Wit

raison d’être
: reason for existing

THE TELEPHONE

Translated by Constance Garnett 1888-1895

“Operator; may I help you?” speaks a woman’s voice.

“Get me the Slavyansky Bazaar Hotel”

“Attempting to connect you”.

After a few minutes I hear a ringing sound.
 
I stick the earpiece to my ear and hear a sound of a rather indeterminate character: it could be the wind blowing, or dried peas being scattered across the floor. Somebody seems to be whispering.

“Do you have any rooms available?” I ask.

“No one is at home”, replies a faltering, childish little voice. “Mummy and Daddy have gone to see Serpahima Petrovna and Louisa Frantsevna has got flu”.

“And who are you? Are you from The Slavyansky Bazaar Hotel?”

“I’m Seryozha. My daddy’s a doctor. He sees people in the morning.”

“Ah. Listen sweetheart, I don’t need a doctor. I want the Slavyansky Bazaar.”

“What Bazaar?” (Laughter) “Now I know who you are. You’re Pavel Andreich. We got a letter from Katya!” (Laughter). “She’s going to marry an officer. When are you going to buy me some paints?”

I leave the telephone and after ten minutes I try again.

“Give me the Slavyansky Bazaar”.

“At last!” replies a hoarse, base voice. “Is Fuchs with you?”

“Who on earth is Fuchs? I want the Slavyansky Bazaar Hotel!”

“You’re at the Slavyansky Bazaar! That’s wonderful!. We can finish all our business today. I’ll be right there. Do me a favour, would you, and order me a portion of spiced sturgeon. I haven’t yet had any lunch.”

“Phhh. God knows what is going on!” I think to myself, and once again abandon the telephone. “Perhaps I don’t really know how to use a telephone, I am just getting it all confused. Wait a minute. Let me think carefully how you do it. First you have to turn this thing here, then you unhook this thing and hold it to your ear.... Then.... What next? You have to hang this thing on this one and then turn this widget round three times. It seems to me that that’s just exactly how it’s done.”

I ring again. No reply. I ring with a sort of fury, almost risking breaking the apparatus. There is a sound in the earpiece, rather like the sound of mice running over a piece of paper.

“Who am I speaking to?” I bellow into the phone. “Speak up. Louder!”

“Timothy Vaksin and Sons. Manufacturers of --.”

“Thank you, thank you very much. I don’t need any of your goods.”

“Is that Sitchov? Mitchell already told us that --.”

I hang up and once more subject myself to a close examination. Could I be doing it all wrong? I read through the instructions again, smoke a cigarette and then try once more. No reply.

“I suppose it must be that the telephones at The Slavyansky Bazaar are out of order.” I think to myself. “I’ll try The Hermitage instead.”

I carefully read through the instructions on how to get through to the exchange, and then ring.

“Give me The Hermitage!” I shout at the top of my voice. “THE HER-MIT- AGE.”

Five minutes go by. Ten minutes. My endurance is close to breaking point, then suddenly, Hooray!, I hear a ringing sound.

“Who’s there?”

“This is the Exchange.”

“Prrrrr! Give me ‘The Hermitage’. For God’s sake!!”

“Fereynah?”

“THE HER-MIT-A-GE.”

“Trying to connect you.”

At last it appears my sufferings are about to come to an end. I am breaking out into a sweat.

The bell rings. I seize the mouthpiece and screech into it “Have you got a single room?”

“Mummy and Daddy have gone to see Seraphima Petrovna and Louisa Fratsovna has got flu. No one is at home.”

“Is that you Seryozha?”

“It’s me. Who’s that?” (Laughter) “Pavel Andreich? Why didn’t you come to us yesterday evening?” (Laughter) “Daddy gave us a Chinese Lantern show. He put on Mummy’s hat and pretended to be Avdotya Nikolaevna....”

Suddenly Seryozha’s voice breaks off and silence descends. I hang up the earpiece and ring for three minutes without stopping, until my fingers start to ache. I shout into the machine “Give me the Hermitage! The Restaurant on Trubniy Square. Can you hear me or not?!”

“Certainly I can hear you Sir. But this is not The Hermitage. This is The Slavyansky Bazaar.”

“Is it really The Slavyansky Bazaar?”

“Indeed it is Sir. The Slavyansky Bazaar at your service.”

“Whew! I cannot understand it. Do you have any free rooms?”

“I will just check for you Sir.”

A minute passes. Several minutes pass. Through the earpiece there is a light noise like voices in a shower of rain.

“Tell me. Do you have free rooms or not?”

“What exactly is it you want?” a woman’s voice asks me.

“Is that The Slavyansky Bazaar?”

“This is The Exchange. How may I help you?”

(Continuation ad infinitum).

THE TWO VOLODYAS

Translated by Constance Garnett 1888-1895

“LET me; I want to drive myself! I’ll sit by the driver!” Sofya Lvovna said in a loud voice. “Wait a minute, driver; I’ll get up on the box beside you.”

She stood up in the sledge, and her husband, Vladimir Nikititch, and the friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mihalovitch, held her arms to prevent her falling. The three horses were galloping fast.

“I said you ought not to have given her brandy,” Vladimir Nikititch whispered to his companion with vexation. “What a fellow you are, really!”

The Colonel knew by experience that in women like his wife, Sofya Lvovna, after a little too much wine, turbulent gaiety was followed by hysterical laughter and then tears. He was afraid that when they got home, instead of being able to sleep, he would have to be administering compresses and drops.

“Wo!” cried Sofya Lvovna. “I want to drive myself!”

She felt genuinely gay and triumphant. For the last two months, ever since her wedding, she had been tortured by the thought that she had married Colonel Yagitch from worldly motives and, as it is said,
par dépit;
but that evening, at the restaurant, she had suddenly become convinced that she loved him passionately. In spite of his fifty-four years, he was so slim, agile, supple, he made puns and hummed to the gipsies’ tunes so charmingly. Really, the older men were nowadays a thousand times more interesting than the young. It seemed as though age and youth had changed parts. The Colonel was two years older than her father, but could there be any importance in that if, honestly speaking, there were infinitely more vitality, go, and freshness in him than in herself, though she was only twenty-three?

“Oh, my darling!” she thought. “You are wonderful!”

She had become convinced in the restaurant, too, that not a spark of her old feeling remained. For the friend of her childhood, Vladimir Mihalovitch, or simply Volodya, with whom only the day before she had been madly, miserably in love, she now felt nothing but complete indifference. All that evening he had seemed to her spiritless, torpid, uninteresting, and insignificant, and the
sangfroid
with which he habitually avoided paying at restaurants on this occasion revolted her, and she had hardly been able to resist saying, “If you are poor, you should stay at home.” The Colonel paid for all.

Perhaps because trees, telegraph posts, and drifts of snow kept flitting past her eyes, all sorts of disconnected ideas came rushing into her mind. She reflected: the bill at the restaurant had been a hundred and twenty roubles, and a hundred had gone to the gipsies, and to-morrow she could fling away a thousand roubles if she liked; and only two months ago, before her wedding, she had not had three roubles of her own, and had to ask her father for every trifle. What a change in her life!

Her thoughts were in a tangle. She recalled, how, when she was a child of ten, Colonel Yagitch, now her husband, used to make love to her aunt, and every one in the house said that he had ruined her. And her aunt had, in fact, often come down to dinner with her eyes red from crying, and was always going off somewhere; and people used to say of her that the poor thing could find no peace anywhere. He had been very handsome in those days, and had an extraordinary reputation as a lady-killer. So much so that he was known all over the town, and it was said of him that he paid a round of visits to his adorers every day like a doctor visiting his patients. And even now, in spite of his grey hair, his wrinkles, and his spectacles, his thin face looked handsome, especially in profile.

Sofya Lvovna’s father was an army doctor, and had at one time served in the same regiment with Colonel Yagitch. Volodya’s father was an army doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same regiment as her father and Colonel Yagitch. In spite of many amatory adventures, often very complicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly at the university, and had taken a very good degree. Now he was specialising in foreign literature, and was said to be writing a thesis. He lived with his father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had no means of his own, though he was thirty. As children Sofya and he had lived under the same roof, though in different flats. He often came to play with her, and they had dancing and French lessons together. But when he grew up into a graceful, remarkably handsome young man, she began to feel shy of him, and then fell madly in love with him, and had loved him right up to the time when she was married to Yagitch. He, too, had been renowned for his success with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the ladies who deceived their husbands on his account excused themselves by saying that he was only a boy. Some one had told a story of him lately that when he was a student living in lodgings so as to be near the university, it always happened if one knocked at his door, that one heard his footstep, and then a whispered apology: “
Pardon, je ne suis pas setul.
” Yagitch was delighted with him, and blessed him as a worthy successor, as Derchavin blessed Pushkin; he appeared to be fond of him. They would play billiards or picquet by the hour together without uttering a word, if Yagitch drove out on any expedition he always took Volodya with him, and Yagitch was the only person Volodya initiated into the mysteries of his thesis. In earlier days, when Yagitch was rather younger, they had often been in the position of rivals, but they had never been jealous of one another. In the circle in which they moved Yagitch was nicknamed Big Volodya, and his friend Little Volodya.

Besides Big Volodya, Little Volodya, and Sofya Lvovna, there was a fourth person in the sledge -- Margarita Alexandrovna, or, as every one called her, Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagitch -- a very pale girl over thirty, with black eyebrows and a pince-nez, who was for ever smoking cigarettes, even in the bitterest frost, and who always had her knees and the front of her blouse covered with cigarette ash. She spoke through her nose, drawling every word, was of a cold temperament, could drink any amount of wine and liquor without being drunk, and used to tell scandalous anecdotes in a languid and tasteless way. At home she spent her days reading thick magazines, covering them with cigarette ash, or eating frozen apples.

“Sonia, give over fooling,” she said, drawling. “It’s really silly.”

As they drew near the city gates they went more slowly, and began to pass people and houses. Sofya Lvovna subsided, nestled up to her husband, and gave herself up to her thoughts. Little Volodya sat opposite. By now her light-hearted and cheerful thoughts were mingled with gloomy ones. She thought that the man sitting opposite knew that she loved him, and no doubt he believed the gossip that she married the Colonel
par dépit.
She had never told him of her love; she had not wanted him to know, and had done her best to hide her feeling, but from her face she knew that he understood her perfectly -- and her pride suffered. But what was most humiliating in her position was that, since her wedding, Volodya had suddenly begun to pay her attention, which he had never done before, spending hours with her, sitting silent or chattering about trifles; and even now in the sledge, though he did not talk to her, he touched her foot with his and pressed her hand a little. Evidently that was all he wanted, that she should be married; and it was evident that he despised her and that she only excited in him an interest of a special kind as though she were an immoral and disreputable woman. And when the feeling of triumph and love for her husband were mingled in her soul with humiliation and wounded pride, she was overcome by a spirit of defiance, and longed to sit on the box, to shout and whistle to the horses.

Just as they passed the nunnery the huge hundred-ton bell rang out. Rita crossed herself.

“Our Olga is in that nunnery,” said Sofya Lvovna, and she, too, crossed herself and shuddered.

“Why did she go into the nunnery?” said the Colonel.

“
Par dépit,
” Rita answered crossly, with obvious allusion to Sofya’s marrying Yagitch. “
Par dépit
is all the fashion nowadays. Defiance of all the world. She was always laughing, a desperate flirt, fond of nothing but balls and young men, and all of a sudden off she went -- to surprise every one!”

“That’s not true,” said Volodya, turning down the collar of his fur coat and showing his handsome face. “It wasn’t a case of
par dépit;
it was simply horrible, if you like. Her brother Dmitri was sent to penal servitude, and they don’t know where he is now. And her mother died of grief.”

He turned up his collar again.

“Olga did well,” he added in a muffled voice. “Living as an adopted child, and with such a paragon as Sofya Lvovna, -- one must take that into consideration too!”

Sofya Lvovna heard a tone of contempt in his voice, and longed to say something rude to him, but she said nothing. The spirit of defiance came over her again; she stood up again and shouted in a tearful voice:

“I want to go to the early service! Driver, back! I want to see Olga.”

They turned back. The nunnery bell had a deep note, and Sofya Lvovna fancied there was something in it that reminded her of Olga and her life. The other church bells began ringing too. When the driver stopped the horses, Sofya Lvovna jumped out of the sledge and, unescorted and alone, went quickly up to the gate.

“Make haste, please!” her husband called to her. “It’s late already.”

She went in at the dark gateway, then by the avenue that led from the gate to the chief church. The snow crunched under her feet, and the ringing was just above her head, and seemed to vibrate through her whole being. Here was the church door, then three steps down, and an ante-room with ikons of the saints on both sides, a fragrance of juniper and incense, another door, and a dark figure opening it and bowing very low. The service had not yet begun. One nun was walking by the ikon-screen and lighting the candles on the tall standard candlesticks, another was lighting the chandelier. Here and there, by the columns and the side chapels, there stood black, motionless figures. “I suppose they must remain standing as they are now till the morning,” thought Sofya Lvovna, and it seemed to her dark, cold, and dreary -- drearier than a graveyard. She looked with a feeling of dreariness at the still, motionless figures and suddenly felt a pang at her heart. For some reason, in one short nun, with thin shoulders and a black kerchief on her head, she recognised Olga, though when Olga went into the nunnery she had been plump and had looked taller. Hesitating and extremely agitated, Sofya Lvovna went up to the nun, and looking over her shoulder into her face, recognised her as Olga.

“Olga!” she cried, throwing up her hands, and could not speak from emotion. “Olga!”

The nun knew her at once; she raised her eyebrows in surprise, and her pale, freshly washed face, and even, it seemed, the white headcloth that she wore under her wimple, beamed with pleasure.

“What a miracle from God!” she said, and she, too, threw up her thin, pale little hands.

Sofya Lvovna hugged her and kissed her warmly, and was afraid as she did so that she might smell of spirits.

“We were just driving past, and we thought of you,” she said, breathing hard, as though she had been running. “Dear me! How pale you are! I... I’m very glad to see you. Well, tell me how are you? Are you dull?”

Sofya Lvovna looked round at the other nuns, and went on in a subdued voice:

“There’ve been so many changes at home... you know, I’m married to Colonel Yagitch. You remember him, no doubt.... I am very happy with him.”

“Well, thank God for that. And is your father quite well?

“Yes, he is quite well. He often speaks of you. You must come and see us during the holidays, Olga, won’t you?”

“I will come,” said Olga, and she smiled. “I’ll come on the second day.”

Sofya Lvovna began crying, she did not know why, and for a minute she shed tears in silence, then she wiped her eyes and said:

“Rita will be very sorry not to have seen you. She is with us too. And Volodya’s here. They are close to the gate. How pleased they’d be if you’d come out and see them. Let’s go out to them; the service hasn’t begun yet.’’

“Let us,” Olga agreed. She crossed herself three times and went out with Sofya Lvovna to the entrance.

“So you say you’re happy, Sonitchka?” she asked when they came out at the gate.