The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
gate, sat on a bench, and tried to pierce to the meaning of all that I had seen and heard. From our gates ran a road, which, passing the smithy and a pond which never dried up, converged with the post-road. I looked at the telegraph posts and the clouds of dust aromid them, and at the sleepy birds perched on the trees, and felt so oppressed by tedium that I began to cry.
Down the post-road drove a dusty double droschky full of townspeople, probably on a pilgrimage. When the droschky disappeared a light victoria drawn by a pair came in sight. In this victoria, holding the coachman's belt, stood the police commissary, Akim Nikititch. To my amazement, the victoria turned up our road, and flew past me to the gate. While I was seeking the reason of the commissary's visit a troika came in sight. In the troika stood the inspector of police, and showed the coachman our gate.
“What does it all mean?” I asked myself, looking at the dust-covered inspector. Pobiedimsky, I guessed, had complained, and the police had come to arrest and carry off Feodor.
But I solved the riddle wrongly. The commissary and inspector were only heralds of another, for five minutes later yet another caniage arrived. It flashed so quickly by me that I could see only that the occupant had a red beard.
Lost in astonishment and foreboding evil, I ran into the house. I met my mother in the hall. Her face was white, and she looked with terror at the door from which came the voices of men. The visitors had caught her unawares when her headache was at its worst.
“What is it, mother?” I asked.
“Sister,” came my uncle's voice. “Let the governor have something to eat.”
“It's easy enough to say,” whispered my mother. “I have no time to get anything done. I am disgraced in my old age!”
With her hands to her head, my mother flew into the kitchen. The governor's unexpected arrival turned the whole house upside down. A merciless massacre began. Ten chickens, five turkeys, eight ducks were slaughtered at once ; and through carelessness the servants decapitated an old gander, the ancestor of our flock, and the beloved of my mother. To prepare some miserable sauce perished a pair of my pigeons, which were as dear to me as the gander to my mother. It was long before I forgave the governor their death.
That evening, when the governor, his son, and his suite, having dined to repletion, took their seats in their carriages and drove away, I went into the house to survey the remains of the feast. In the drawing-room were my uncle and my mother. My uncle walked excitedly up and down the room and shrugged his shoulders. My mother, exhausted and haggard, lay on a sofa, and followed my uncle's movements with staring eyes.
“Forgive me, sister, but this is impossible!” groaned my uncle, with a frown. “I introduced the governor to you, and you didn't even shake hands with him. . . . You made the poor man uncomfortable ! Such things are impossible. I swear to God! . . . And then this dinner? For instance, what on earth was that fourth course?”
“It was duck with sweet sauce,” answered my mother softly.
“Duck! . . . Forgive me, sister, but . . . I have got heartburn . . . I am unwell!”
My uncle made a sour and lachrymose grimace, and continued —
“The devil brought us this governor! A lot I wanted his visit ! . . . Heartburn! I can't sleep and I can't work. . . . I am altogether out of sorts. . . . I cannot understand how you exist without work . . . in this tiresome place! And I have got a pain beginning in the lower part of my chest!”
My uncle frowned, and walked still more quickly.
“Brother,” asked my mother timidly, “how much would it cost you to go abroad?”
“At least three thousand,” answered my uncle tearfully. “I should have gone, but where can I get the money? I have not a kopeck. . . . Heartburn!”
My uncle stopped, looked with disgust at the big, dull window, and resumed his walk. My mother looked earnestly at the ikon, broke out into tears, and said with an effort —
“I will let you have the three thousand, brother!”
Three days afterwards the majestic portmanteaux were sent to the railway station, and away after them whirled the Privy Councillor. Taking leave of my mother, he wept, and pressed his lips to her hand; but once seated in the carriage his face grew radiant with infantile joy. Smiling, complacent, he seated himself comfortably, waved his hand to my weeping mother, and suddenly turned his eyes on me. On his face appeared a look of extreme astonishment.
“And who is this little boy?” he asked.
My mother, who had assured me that God had sent my vmcle for my welfare, was struck dumb by the question. But it had no import for me. I looked at my uncle's smiling face and suddenly felt for him sincere compassion. Unable to contain my feelings, I climbed on the carriage, and warmly embraced my weak and frivolous relative. I looked into his eyes, and wishing to say something pleasant, asked —
“Uncle, did you ever fight in a war?”
“Akh, darling boy!” smiled my uncle, kissing me tenderly. “Dear little boy ! I swear to God. All this is so natural, so true to life. I swear to God!”
The carriage started. I gazed after it earnestly, and long continued to hear the farewell exclamation, “I swear to God!”q
THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR [trans. by Marian Fell]
EARLY in April in the year 1870, my mother, Klavdia Arhipovna, the widow of a lieutenant, received a letter from her brother Ivan, a privy councillor in St. Petersburg. Among other things the letter said:
"An affection of the liver obliges me to spend every summer abroad, but as I have no funds this year with which to go to Marienbad, it is very probable that I may spend the coming summer with you at Kotchneffka, dear sister—"
My mother turned pale and trembled from head to foot as she perused this epistle, and an expression both smiling and tearful came into her face. She began to weep and to laugh. This conflict between laughter and tears always reminds me of the glitter and shimmer that follow when water is spilled on a brightly burning candle. Having read the letter through twice, my mother summoned her whole household together, and in a voice quivering with excitement began explaining to them that there had been four brothers in the Gundasoff family; one had died when he was a baby; a second had been a soldier, and had also died; a third, she meant no offence to him in saying it, had become an actor, and a fourth—
"The fourth brother is not of our world," sobbed my mother. "He is my own brother, we grew up together, and yet I am trembhng all over at the thought of him. He is a privy councillor, a general ! How can I meet my darling ? What can a poor, uneducated woman like me find to talk to him about ? It is fifteen years since I saw him last. Andrusha, darling !" cried my mother turning to me, "Rejoice little stupid, it is for your sake that God is sending him here ! "
When we had all heard the history of the Gundasoff family down to the smallest detail, there arose an uproar on the farm such as I had not been accustomed to hearing except before weddings. Only the vault of heaven, and the water in the river escaped; everything else was subjected to a process of cleaning, scrubbing, and painting. If the sky had been smaller and lower, and the river had not been so swift, they too would have been scalded with boiling water and polished with cloths. The walls were white as snow already, but they were whitewashed again. The floors shone and glistened, but they were scrubbed every day. Bobtail, the cat (so-called because I had chopped off a good portion of his tail with a carving-knife when I was a baby), was taken from the house into the kitchen and put in charge of Anfisa. Fedia was told that if the dogs came anywhere near the front porch, " God would punish him." But nothing caught it so cruelly as did the unfortunate sofas and carpets and chairs ! Never before had they been so unmercifully beaten with sticks as they now were in expectation of our guest's arrival. Hearing the blows, my doves fluttered anxiously about, and