The Collected Works of Anton Chekhov: Plays, Novellas, Short Stories, Diary & Letters. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ Ha! Isn't that beautiful?" laughed my uncle. "Look at him. He has put on his wings, and is thinking what a clever fellow he is ! I like that, upon my word and honour, I do ! What youthful aplomb, what life there is in those silly wings ! And who is this boy?" he asked, suddenly turning round and catching sight of me.

      "This is my little Andrusha," said my mother blushing. "The comfort of my life."

      I put my foot behind me and bowed deeply.

      "A fine little fellow, a fine little fellow!" murmured my uncle taking his hand away from my lips, and patting my head. "So your name is Andrusha? Well, well—yes—upon my word and honour. Do you go to school?"

      My mother began to enumerate my triumphs of learning and behaviour, adding to them and exaggerating as all mothers do, while I walked at my uncle's side and did not cease from bowing deeply according to the ceremonial we had agreed upon. When my mother began hinting that with my remarkable attainments it would not be amiss for me to enter the military academy at the expense of the state, and when, according to our plan, I should have burst into tears and implored the patronage of my uncle, that relative suddenly stopped short and threw up his hands in astonishment.

      "Heavens and earth, who is that?" he exclaimed.

      Down the garden path came Tatiana, the wife of our manager, Theodore Petrovitch. She was carrying a white starched skirt and a long ironing board, and as she passed us she blushed and glanced shyly at our guest from under her long lashes.

      "Worse and worse !" said my uncle under his breath, looking tenderly after her. "Why, sister, one can't take a step here without encountering some surprise, upon my word and honour !"

      Not every one would have called Tatiana beautiful. She was a small, plump woman of twenty, graceful, black-eyed, and always rosy and sweet, but in all her face and figure there was not one strong feature, not one bold line for the eye to rest upon. It was as if in making her Nature had lacked confidence and inspiration. Tatiana was shy and timid and well behaved. She glided quietly along, saying little, seldom laughing; her life was as even and smooth as her face and her neatly brushed hair. My uncle half closed his eyes and smiled as he watched her. My mother looked intently at his smiling face and grew serious.

      "Oh, brother, why have you never married?" she sighed.

      "I have never married because—"

      "Why not?" asked my mother softly.

      "What shall I say? Because things did not turn out that way. When I was young I worked too hard to have time for enjoying life, and then, when I wanted to live— behold ! I had put fifty years behind me ! I was too slow. However, this is a tedious subject for conversation !"

      My mother and uncle sighed simultaneously, and walked on together while I stayed behind, and ran to find my tutor in order to share my impressions with him. Pobedimski was standing in the middle of the courtyard gazing majestically at the sky.

      "He is obviously an enlightened man," he said, wagging his head. "I hope we shall become friends."

      An hour later my mother came to us.

      "Oh, boys, I'm in terrible trouble !" she began with a sigh. "My brother has brought a valet with him, you know, and he is not the sort of man, heaven help him, whom one can put in the hall or the kitchen, he absolutely must have a room of his own. Look here, my children, couldn't you move into the wing with Theodore and give the valet your room?"

      We answered that we should be delighted to do so, for, we thought, life in the wing would be much freer than in the house under the eyes of my mother.

      "Yes, I'm terribly worried!" my mother continued. "My brother says he doesn't want to have his dinner at noon, but at seven as they do in the city. I am almost distracted. Why, by seven the dinner in the stove will be burned to a crisp. The truth is men know nothing about housekeeping, even if they are very clever. Oh, misery me, I shall have to have two dinners cooked every day ! You must have yours at noon as you always do, children, and let the old lady wait until seven for her brother."

      My mother breathed a profound sigh, told me to please my uncle whom God had brought here especially for my benefit, and ran into the kitchen. Pobedimski and I moved into the wing that very same day. We were put in a passage between the hall and the manager's bedroom.

      In spite of my uncle's arrival and our change of quarters, our days continued to trickle by in their usual way, more drowsily and monotonously than we had expected. We were excused from our lessons "because of our guest." Pobedimski, who never read or did anything, now spent most of his time sitting on his bed absorbed in thought, with his long nose in the air. Every now and then he would get up, try on his new suit, sit down again, and continue his meditations. One thing only disturbed him, and that was the flies, whom he slapped unmercifully with the palms of his hands. After dinner he would generally "rest," causing keen anguish to the whole household by his snores. I played in the garden from morning till night, or else sat in my room making kites. During the first two or three weeks we saw little of my uncle. He stayed in his room and worked for days on end, heeding neither the flies nor the heat.

      His extraordinary power of sitting as if glued to his desk appeared to us something in the nature of an inexplicable trick. To lazybones like ourselves, who did not know the meaning of systematic work, his industry appeared positively miraculous. Getting up at nine, he would sit down at his desk, and not move until dinner time. After dinner he would go to work once more, and work until late at night. Whenever I peeped into his room through the keyhole I invariably saw the same scene. My uncle would be sitting at his desk and working. His work consisted of writing with one hand while turning over the pages of a book with the other, and strange as it may seem, he constantly wriggled all over, swinging one foot like a pendulum, whistling and nodding his head in time to the music he made. His appearance at these times was extraordinarily frivolous and careless, more as if he were playing at naughts and crosses than working. Each time I looked in I saw him wearing a dashing little coat and a dandified necktie, and each time, even through the keyhole, I could smell a sweet feminine perfume. He emerged from his room only to dine, and then ate scarcely anything.

      "I can't understand my brother," my mother complained. "Every day I have a turkey or some pigeons killed especially for him, and stew some fruits for him myself, and yet he drinks a little bouillon and eats a piece of meat no larger than my finger, after which he leaves the table at once. If I beg him to eat more he comes back and drinks a little milk. What is there in milk ? It is slop, nothing more ! He will die of eating that kind of food ! If I try to persuade him to change his ways, he only laughs and makes a joke of it! No, children, our fare doesn't suit him!"

      Our evenings passed much more pleasantly than our days. As a rule the setting sun and the long shadows falling across the courtyard found Tatiana, Pobedimski, and me seated on the porch of our wing. We did not speak until darkness fell—what could we talk about when everything had already been said? There had been one novelty, my uncle's arrival, but that theme had soon become exhausted as well as the others. My tutor constantly kept his eyes fixed on Tatiana's face and fetched one deep sigh after another. At that time I did not understand the meaning of those sighs, and did not seek to inquire into their cause, but they explain much to me now.

      When the shadows had merged into thick, black darkness Theodore would come home from the hunt or the field. This Theodore seemed to me to be a wild and even fearsome man. He was the son of a Russian-ised gipsy, and was swarthy and dark with large black eyes and a tangled curly beard, and he was never spoken of by our peasants as anything but "the demon." There was a great deal of the gipsy in him beside his appearance. For instance, he never could stay at home, and would vanish for days at a time, hunting in the forest or roaming in the fields. He was gloomy, passionate, СКАЧАТЬ