Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (72 page)

IN THE DARK

Translated by Constance Garnett 1886

A FLY of medium size made its way into the nose of the assistant procurator, Gagin. It may have been impelled by curiosity, or have got there through frivolity or accident in the dark; anyway, the nose resented the presence of a foreign body and gave the signal for a sneeze. Gagin sneezed, sneezed impressively and so shrilly and loudly that the bed shook and the springs creaked. Gagin’s wife, Marya Mihalovna, a full, plump, fair woman, started, too, and woke up. She gazed into the darkness, sighed, and turned over on the other side. Five minutes afterwards she turned over again and shut her eyes more firmly but she could not get to sleep again. After sighing and tossing from side to side for a time, she got up, crept over her husband, and putting on her slippers, went to the window.

It was dark outside. She could see nothing but the outlines of the trees and the roof of the stables. There was a faint pallor in the east, but this pallor was beginning to be clouded over. There was perfect stillness in the air wrapped in slumber and darkness. Even the watchman, paid to disturb the stillness of night, was silent; even the corncrake -- the only wild creature of the feathered tribe that does not shun the proximity of summer visitors -- was silent.

The stillness was broken by Marya Mihalovna herself. Standing at the window and gazing into the yard, she suddenly uttered a cry. She fancied that from the flower garden with the gaunt, clipped poplar, a dark figure was creeping towards the house. For the first minute she thought it was a cow or a horse, then, rubbing her eyes, she distinguished clearly the outlines of a man.

Then she fancied the dark figure approached the window of the kitchen and, standing still a moment, apparently undecided, put one foot on the window ledge and disappeared into the darkness of the window.

“A burglar!” flashed into her mind and a deathly pallor overspread her face.

And in one instant her imagination had drawn the picture so dreaded by lady visitors in country places -- a burglar creeps into the kitchen, from the kitchen into the dining-room . . . the silver in the cupboard . . . next into the bedroom . . . an axe . . . the face of a brigand . . . jewelry. . . . Her knees gave way under her and a shiver ran down her back.

“Vassya!” she said, shaking her husband, “
Basile!
Vassily Prokovitch! Ah! mercy on us, he might be dead! Wake up,
Basile,
I beseech you!”

“W-well?” grunted the assistant procurator, with a deep inward breath and a munching sound.

“For God’s sake, wake up! A burglar has got into the kitchen! I was standing at the window looking out and someone got in at the window. He will get into the dining-room next . . . the spoons are in the cupboard!
Basile!
They broke into Mavra Yegorovna’s last year.”

“Wha--what’s the matter?”

“Heavens! he does not understand. Do listen, you stupid! I tell you I’ve just seen a man getting in at the kitchen window! Pelagea will be frightened and . . . and the silver is in the cupboard!”

“Stuff and nonsense!”

“
Basile,
this is unbearable! I tell you of a real danger and you sleep and grunt! What would you have? Would you have us robbed and murdered?”

The assistant procurator slowly got up and sat on the bed, filling the air with loud yawns.

“Goodness knows what creatures women are! he muttered. “Can’t leave one in peace even at night! To wake a man for such nonsense!”

“But,
Basile,
I swear I saw a man getting in at the window!”

“Well, what of it? Let him get in. . . . That’s pretty sure to be Pelagea’s sweetheart, the fireman.”

“What! what did you say?”

“I say it’s Pelagea’s fireman come to see her.”

“Worse than ever!” shrieked Marya Mihalovna. “That’s worse than a burglar! I won’t put up with cynicism in my house!”

“Hoity-toity! We are virtuous! . . . Won’t put up with cynicism? As though it were cynicism! What’s the use of firing off those foreign words? My dear girl, it’s a thing that has happened ever since the world began, sanctified by tradition. What’s a fireman for if not to make love to the cook?”

“No,
Basile!
It seems you don’t know me! I cannot face the idea of such a . . . such a . . . in my house. You must go this minute into the kitchen and tell him to go away! This very minute! And to-morrow I’ll tell Pelagea that she must not dare to demean herself by such proceedings! When I am dead you may allow immorality in your house, but you shan’t do it now! . . . Please go!”

“Damn it,” grumbled Gagin, annoyed. “Consider with your microscopic female brain, what am I to go for?”

“
Basile,
I shall faint! . . .”

Gagin cursed, put on his slippers, cursed again, and set off to the kitchen. It was as dark as the inside of a barrel, and the assistant procurator had to feel his way. He groped his way to the door of the nursery and waked the nurse.

“Vassilissa,” he said, “you took my dressing-gown to brush last night -- where is it?”

“I gave it to Pelagea to brush, sir.”

“What carelessness! You take it away and don’t put it back -- now I’ve to go without a dressing-gown!”

On reaching the kitchen, he made his way to the corner in which on a box under a shelf of saucepans the cook slept.

“Pelagea,” he said, feeling her shoulder and giving it a shake, “Pelagea! Why are you pretending? You are not asleep! Who was it got in at your window just now?”

“Mm . . . m . . . good morning! Got in at the window? Who could get in?”

“Oh come, it’s no use your trying to keep it up! You’d better tell your scamp to clear out while he can! Do you hear? He’s no business to be here!”

“Are you out of your senses, sir, bless you? Do you think I’d be such a fool? Here one’s running about all day long, never a minute to sit down and then spoken to like this at night! Four roubles a month . . . and to find my own tea and sugar and this is all the credit I get for it! I used to live in a tradesman’s house, and never met with such insult there!”

“Come, come -- no need to go over your grievances! This very minute your grenadier must turn out! Do you understand?”

“You ought to be ashamed, sir,” said Pelagea, and he could hear the tears in her voice. “Gentlefolks . . . educated, and yet not a notion that with our hard lot . . . in our life of toil” -- she burst into tears. “It’s easy to insult us. There’s no one to stand up for us.”

“Come, come . . . I don’t mind! Your mistress sent me. You may let a devil in at the window for all I care!”

There was nothing left for the assistant procurator but to acknowledge himself in the wrong and go back to his spouse.

“I say, Pelagea,” he said, “you had my dressing-gown to brush. Where is it?”

“Oh, I am so sorry, sir; I forgot to put it on your chair. It’s hanging on a peg near the stove.”

Gagin felt for the dressing-gown by the stove, put it on, and went quietly back to his room.

When her husband went out Marya Mihalovna got into bed and waited. For the first three minutes her mind was at rest, but after that she began to feel uneasy.

“What a long time he’s gone,” she thought. “It’s all right if he is there . . . that immoral man . . . but if it’s a burglar?”

And again her imagination drew a picture of her husband going into the dark kitchen . . . a blow with an axe . . . dying without uttering a single sound . . . a pool of blood! . . .

Five minutes passed . . . five and a half . . . at last six. . . . A cold sweat came out on her forehead.

“
Basile!
” she shrieked, “
Basile!
”

“What are you shouting for? I am here.” She heard her husband’s voice and steps. “Are you being murdered?”

The assistant procurator went up to the bedstead and sat down on the edge of it.

“There’s nobody there at all,” he said. “It was your fancy, you queer creature. . . . You can sleep easy, your fool of a Pelagea is as virtuous as her mistress. What a coward you are! What a . . . .”

And the deputy procurator began teasing his wife. He was wide awake now and did not want to go to sleep again.

“You are a coward!” he laughed. “You’d better go to the doctor to-morrow and tell him about your hallucinations. You are a neurotic!”

“What a smell of tar,” said his wife -- “tar or something . . . onion . . . cabbage soup!”

“Y-yes! There is a smell . . . I am not sleepy. I say, I’ll light the candle. . . . Where are the matches? And, by the way, I’ll show you the photograph of the procurator of the Palace of Justice. He gave us all a photograph when he said good-bye to us yesterday, with his autograph.”

Gagin struck a match against the wall and lighted a candle. But before he had moved a step from the bed to fetch the photographs he heard behind him a piercing, heartrending shriek. Looking round, he saw his wife’s large eyes fastened upon him, full of amazement, horror, and wrath. . . .

“You took your dressing-gown off in the kitchen?” she said, turning pale.

“Why?”

“Look at yourself!”

The deputy procurator looked down at himself, and gasped.

Flung over his shoulders was not his dressing-gown, but the fireman’s overcoat. How had it come on his shoulders? While he was settling that question, his wife’s imagination was drawing another picture, awful and impossible: darkness, stillness, whispering, and so on, and so on.

A TRIFLE FROM REAL LIFE

Translated by
Marian Fell 1915

NIKOLAI ILITCH BIELAYEFF was a young gentleman of St. Petersburg, aged thirty-two, rosy, well fed, and a patron of the race-tracks. Once, toward evening, he went to pay a call on Olga Ivanovna with whom, to use his own expression, he was dragging through a long and tedious love-affair. And the truth was that the first thrilling, inspiring pages of this romance had long since been read, and that the story was now dragging wearily on, presenting nothing that was either interesting or novel.

Not finding Olga at home, my hero threw himself upon a couch and prepared to await her return.

“Good evening, Nikolai Ilitch!” he heard a child’s voice say. “Mamma will soon be home. She has gone to the dressmaker’s with Sonia.”

On the divan in the same room lay Aliosha, Olga’s son, a small boy of eight, immaculately and picturesquely dressed in a little velvet suit and long black stockings. He had been lying on a satin pillow, mimicking the antics of an acrobat he had seen at the circus. First he stretched up one pretty leg, then another; then, when they were tired, he brought his arms into play, and at last jumped up galvanically, throwing himself on all fours in an effort to stand on his head. He went through all these motions with the most serious face in the world, puffing like a martyr, as if he himself regretted that God had given him such a restless little body.

“Ah, good evening, my boy!” said Belayeff. “Is that you? I did not know you were here. Is mamma well?”

Aliosha seized the toe of his left shoe in his right hand, assumed the most unnatural position in the world, rolled over, jumped up, and peeped out at Bielayeff from under the heavy fringes of the lampshade.

“Not very,” he said shrugging his shoulders. “Mamma is never really well. She is a woman, you see, and women always have something the matter with them.”

From lack of anything better to do, Belayeff began scrutinizing Aliosha’s face. During all his acquaintance with Olga he had never bestowed any consideration upon the boy or noticed his existence at all. He had seen the child about, but what he was doing there Belayeff, somehow, had never cared to think.

Now, in the dusk of evening, Aliosha’s pale face and fixed, dark eyes unexpectedly reminded Belayeff of Olga as she had appeared in the first pages of their romance. He wanted to pet the boy.

“Come here, little monkey,” he said, “and let me look at you!”

The boy jumped down from the sofa and ran to Bielayeff.

“Well,” the latter began, laying his hand on the boy’s thin shoulder. “And how are you? Is everything all right with you?”

“No, not very. It used to be much better.”

“In what way?”

“That’s easy to answer. Sonia and I used to learn only music and reading before, but now we have French verses, too. You have cut your beard!”

“Yes.”

“So I noticed. It is shorter than it was. Please let me touch it--does that hurt?”

“No, not a bit.”

“Why does it hurt if you pull one hair at a time, and not a bit if you pull lots? Ha! Ha! I’ll tell you something. You ought to wear whiskers! You could shave here on the sides, here, and here you could let the hair grow--”

The boy nestled close to Belayeff and began to play with his watch-chain.

“Mamma is going to give me a watch when I go to school, and I am going to ask her to give me a chain just like yours-- Oh, what a lovely locket! Papa has a locket just like that; only yours has little stripes on it, and papa’s has letters. He has a portrait of mamma in his locket. Papa wears another watch-chain now made of ribbon.”

“How do you know? Do you ever see your papa?”

“I--n-no--I--”

Aliosha blushed deeply at being caught telling a fib and began to scratch the locket furiously with his nail. Belayeff looked searchingly into his face and repeated:

“Do you ever see your papa?”

“N--no !”

“Come, tell me honestly! I can see by your face that you are not telling the truth. It’s no use quibbling now that the cat is out of the bag. Tell me, do you see him? Now then, as between friends!”

Aliosha reflected.

“You won’t tell mamma?” he asked.

“What an idea!”

“Honour bright?”

“Honour bright!”

“Promise!”

“Oh, you insufferable child! What do you take me for?”

Aliosha glanced around, opened his eyes wide, and said:

“For heaven’s sake don’t tell mamma! Don’t tell a soul, because it’s a secret. I don’t know what would happen to Sonia and Pelagia and me if mamma should find out. Now, listen. Sonia and I see papa every Thursday and every Friday. When Pelagia takes us out walking before dinner we go to Anfel’s confectionery and there we find papa already waiting for us. He is always sitting in the little private room with the marble table and the ash-tray that’s made like a goose without a back.”

“What do you do in there?”

“We don’t do anything. First we say how do you do, and then papa orders coffee and pasties for us. Sonia likes pasties with meat, you know, but I can’t abide them with meat. I like mine with cabbage or eggs. We eat so much that we have a hard time eating our dinner afterward so that mamma won’t guess anything.”

“What do you talk about?”

“With papa? Oh, about everything. He kisses us and hugs us and tells us the funniest jokes. Do you know what? He says that when we grow bigger he is going to take us to live with him. Sonia doesn’t want to go, but I wouldn’t mind. Of course it would be lonely without mamma, but I could write letters to her. Isn’t it funny, we might go and see her then on Sundays, mightn’t we? Papa says, too, he is going to buy me a pony. He is such a nice man! I don’t know why mamma doesn’t ask him to live with her and why she won’t let us see him. He loves mamma very much. He always asks how she is and what she has been doing. When she was ill he took hold of his head just like this--and ran about the room. He always asks us whether we are obedient and respectful to her. Tell me, is it true that we are unfortunate?”

“H’m--why do you ask?”

“Because papa says we are. He says we are unfortunate children, and that he is unfortunate, and that mamma is unfortunate. He tells us to pray to God for her and for ourselves.”

Aliosha fixed his eyes on the figure of a stuffed bird, and became lost in thought.

“Well, I declare--” muttered Belayeff. “So, that’s what you do, you hold meetings at a confectioner’s? And your mamma doesn’t know it?”

“N-no. How could she? Pelagia wouldn’t tell her for the world. Day before yesterday papa gave us pears. They were as sweet as sugar. I ate two!”

“H’m. But--listen to me, does papa ever say anything about me?”

“About you? What shall I say?” Aliosha looked searchingly into Belayeff’s face and shrugged his shoulders. “Nothing special,” he answered.

“Well, what does he say, for instance?”

“You won’t be angry if I tell you?”

“What an idea! Does he abuse me?”

“No, he doesn’t abuse you, but, you know, he is angry with you. He says that it is your fault that mamma is unhappy, and that you have ruined mamma. He is such a funny man! I tell him that you are kind and that you never scold mamma, but he only shakes his head.”

“So he says I have ruined her?”

“Yes--don’t be angry, Nikolai Ilitch !”

Belayeff rose and began pacing up and down the room.

“How strange this is--and how ridiculous!” he muttered shrugging his shoulders and smiling sarcastically. “It is all his fault and yet he says I have ruined her! What an innocent baby this is! And so he told you I had ruined your mother?”

“Yes, but--you promised not to be angry!”

“I’m not angry and--and it is none of your business anyway. Yes, this is--this is really ridiculous! Here I have been caught like a mouse in a trap, and now it seems it is all my fault!”

The door-bell rang. The boy tore himself from Belayeff’s arms and ran out of the room. A moment later a lady entered with a little girl. It was Aliosha’s mother, Olga Ivanovna. Aliosha skipped into the room behind her, singing loudly and clapping his hands. Belayeff nodded and continued to walk up and down.

“Of course!” he muttered. “Whom should he blame but me? He has right on his side! He is the injured husband.”

“What is that you are saying?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“What am I saying? Just listen to what your young hopeful here has been preaching. It appears that I am a wicked scoundrel and that I have ruined you and your children. You are all unhappy, and I alone am frightfully happy. Frightfully, frightfully happy!”

“I don’t understand you, Nikolai. What is the matter?”

“Just listen to what this young gentleman here has to say!” cried Belayeff pointing to Aliosha.

Aliosha flushed and then grew suddenly pale and his face became distorted with fear.

“Nikolai Ilitch!” he whispered loudly. “Hush!” Olga Ivanovna looked at Aliosha in surprise, and then at Belayeff, and then back again at Aliosha.

“Ask him!” Belayeff continued. “That idiot of yours, Pelagia, takes them to a confectioner’s and arranges meetings there between them and their papa. But that isn’t the point. The point is that papa is the victim, and that I am an abandoned scoundrel who has wrecked the lives of both of you!”

“Nikolai Ilitch!” groaned Aliosha. “You gave me your word of honour!”

“Leave me alone!” Belayeff motioned to him impatiently. “This is more important than words of honour. This hypocrisy, these lies are intolerable!”

“I don’t understand!” cried Olga Ivanovna, the tears glistening in her eyes. “Listen, Aliosha,” she asked, turning to her son. “Do you really see your father?”

But Aliosha did not hear her, his eyes were fixed with horror on Belayeff.

“It cannot be possible!” his mother exclaimed, “I must go and ask Pelagia.”

Olga Ivanovna left the room.

“But Nikolai Ilitch, you gave me your word of honour!” cried Aliosha trembling all over.

Belayeff made an impatient gesture and went on pacing the floor. He was absorbed in thoughts of the wrong that had been done him, and, as before, was unconscious of the boy’s presence: a serious, grown-up person like him could not be bothered with little boys. But Aliosha crept into a corner and told Sonia with horror how he had been deceived. He trembled and hiccoughed and cried. This was the first time in his life that he had come roughly face to face with deceit; he had never imagined till now that there were things in this world besides pasties and watches and sweet pears, things for which no name could be found in the vocabulary of childhood.