Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Diary & Letters (Collected Edition). Anton Chekhov

       THE PRIVY COUNCILLOR [trans. by Robert Crozier Long]

       Table of Contents

      The letter received at the beginning of April, 1870, by my widowed mother, Claudia Arkhipovna — my late father was an army lieutenant — came from her brother Ivan, a Privy Councillor in St. Petersburg. “Kidney disease,” ran this letter, “compels me to spend all my summers abroad; but this year I have no ready money to spend on a visit to Marienbad, and it is very likely, dear sister, that I shall spend this summer with you at Kotchuefka. . . .”

      When she had read the letter my mother turned pale and trembled. But her expression showed joy as well as grief. She wept, and she smiled. This combat of tears and laughter always reminded me of the hiss and sputter of a lighted candle when some one splashes it with water.

      Having read the letter yet again, my mother summoned the whole household; and, her voice broken with emotion, explained that there had been four brothers GundasofF — the first died a child, the second served in the army, and died also, the third — more shame to him — went on the stage, and the fourth . . .

      “The fourtli is at the top of the tree ! . . .” sighed my mother. “My own brother, we grew up together, yet I fear to think of him! . . . He is a Privy Councillor, a general! How shall I meet my angel? What shall I say to him — I, an uneducated fool? For fifteen long years I haven't seen him once! Andriushenka!” My mother turned to me. “Rejoice, donkey! God has sent you your uncle for your future welfare!”

      Her detailed history of the Gimdasoft's heralded a household revolution hitherto witnessed only at Chi'istmas. Only the river and the firmament were spared. Everything else within reach was scoured, scrubbed, and painted, and had the sky been smaller and nearer, had the river's course been slower, they too would have been rubbed with brick-bats and scoured with bast-ribbons. The walls, already whiter than snow, were whitewashed again; the floors already shone and sparkled, but they were re-washed thenceforward every day. The old cat Kutsi, so nicknamed after I had docked his tail with a sugar-knife, was exiled to the kitchen and handed over to Anisya, and Fedka was warned that “God would punish him” if the dogs came near the stairs. But the worst sufferings were reserved for the helpless carpets and arm-chairs. Never were they beaten so fiercely as on the eve of my uncle's advent. My pigeons, hearing the swish of the beaters' sticks, shuddered, and disappeared in the sky.

      From Novostroefka came Spiridon, the only tailor within reach who could make clothes for gentlemen. As a man, Spiridon was sober, laborious, and capable, not devoid of imagination and a certain plastic sense; as a tailor he was beneath contempt. His lack of faith spoiled everything. From fear that his suits were not in the latest fashion, he took them to pieces as often as five times; he tramped miles into town to study the local fops; yet despite all his strivings, we were dressed in clothes which even a caricaturist would find pretentious and exaggerated. We spent our youth in such impossibly tight trousers and such short coats that the presence of girls always made us blush.

      Spiridon spared no pains in measuring me. He measured me vertically and horizontally, as if he were about to hoop a barrel; he noted the details with a fat pencil ; adorned his note-book with triangular signs; and, having done with me, seized hold of my tutor, Yegor Alekseievitch Fobiedimsky. My unforgotten tutor was then at the age when sprouting moustaches are a serious question and clothes are a problem of gravity, so you may imagine Spiridon's sacred terror as he began his measurements. He forced Fobiedimsky to throw back his head and spread his legs in an inverted V, to raise his arms on high, and again to lower them. Spiridon measured him again and again, marching round him as a love-sick dove round its mate; and then fell upon his knees, and doubled himself into a hook. My exhausted mother, tortured by the noise, red from prolonged ironing, watched the endless measuring, and said with gravity —

      “Be careful, Spiridon, God will punish you if you spoil the cloth! If you make a failure you will never be happy again!”

      Spiridon got red in the face and sweated, because he was firmly convinced already that he would make a failure. For making my suit he charged one rouble and twenty kopecks, for Pobiedimsky's two roubles, we supplying cloth, lining, and buttons; and this seems moderate enough when you learn that Novostroefka was ten versts away, and that the tailor came to try on at least four times. When during these operations we dragged on the tight trousers and skimpy jackets, still decked with basting threads, my mother frowned critically, and exclaimed —

      “God knows what the fashions nowadays are like! They're painful even to look at! If it weren't for your uncle's visit, I'd ignore the fashion,” And Spiridon, rejoiced that the fashions, not he, were guilty, shrugged his shoulders, and sighed as if to say —

      “What are you to do? It's the spirit of the age.”

      The tension in which we waited our guest can be compared only with the emotion of spirit-rappers expecting a ghost. . . . My mother complained of headache, cried all day, and, as for me, I could neither eat nor sleep; and I neglected my lessons. Even in dreams I thirsted to see a general, that is, a man with epaulets, a braided collar up to his ears, and a. naked sword — just such a general as hung above the drawing-room sofa, and glared from his threatening black eyes at all who dared to fece him. Alone Pobiedimsky felt at ease. He showed neither fright nor elation ; and sometimes, listening to mother's history of the Gundasoffs, said indifferently —

      “Yes; it will be nice to have a new man to talk to.” All of us looked on ray tutor as an exceptional man. He was young — about twenty — pimpled and untidy, and he had a small forehead and an extraordinarily long nose. His nose indeed was so long that to look intently at anything he had to turn his head aside, as a bird. Despite these defects, the household believed that the whole province could not produce an abler, more cultivated, more gallant man. He had been through all six classes of the gymnasium, but was expelled from a veterinary institute before he had been there half a year. As the cause of his - expulsion was carefully concealed, those who liked him regarded him as a martyred, somewhat mysterious man. He spoke little, always on serious themes, ate meat during fasts, and looked with hauteur and contempt on the society around. This, indeed, did not hinder him accepting presents of clothes from my mother, or painting on my kites ugly faces with red teeth. My mother condemned his pride, but respected him for his brains.

      Our guest arrived soon after his letter. At the beginning of May two carts laden with portmanteaux came from the railway station. So majestic were these portmanteaux that, unloading the carts, the drivers mechanically doffed their caps.

      “I suppose,” I reasoned, “all these are full of uniforms and powder.” My conception of a general was indissolubly bound with cannons and powder.

      On the morning of the 10th of May my nurse informed me in a whisper that uncle had come. I dressed quickly, washed myself recklessly,