Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov
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Название: Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov
Автор: Anton Chekhov
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Публицистика: прочее
isbn: 9781420950588
isbn:
"That's true," said the student in confusion; "but Anyuta has had no time today to tidy up; she's been busy all the while."
When Anyuta and the artist had gone out Klotchkov lay down on the sofa and began learning, lying down; then he accidentally dropped asleep, and waking up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and sank into gloomy reflection. He recalled the artist's words that an educated man was in duty bound to have taste, and his surroundings actually struck him now as loathsome and revolting. He saw, as it were in his mind's eye, his own future, when he would see his patients in his consulting-room, drink tea in a large dining-room in the company of his wife, a real lady. And now that slop-pail in which the cigarette ends were swimming looked incredibly disgusting. Anyuta, too, rose before his imagination—a plain, slovenly, pitiful figure... and he made up his mind to part with her at once, at all costs.
When, on coming back from the artist's, she took off her coat, he got up and said to her seriously:
"Look here, my good girl... sit down and listen. We must part! The fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer."
Anyuta had come back from the artist's worn out and exhausted. Standing so long as a model had made her face look thin and sunken, and her chin sharper than ever. She said nothing in answer to the student's words, only her lips began to tremble.
"You know we should have to part sooner or later, anyway," said the student. "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool; you'll understand..."
Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped up her embroidery in paper, gathered together her needles and thread: she found the screw of paper with the four lumps of sugar in the window, and laid it on the table by the books.
"That's... your sugar..." she said softly, and turned away to conceal her tears.
"Why are you crying?" asked Klotchkov.
He walked about the room in confusion, and said:
"You are a strange girl, really... Why, you know we shall have to part. We can't stay together forever."
She had gathered together all her belongings, and turned to say good-bye to him, and he felt sorry for her.
"Shall I let her stay on here another week?" he thought. "She really may as well stay, and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and vexed at his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly:
"Come, why are you standing there? If you are going, go; and if you don't want to, take off your coat and stay! You can stay!"
Anyuta took off her coat, silently, stealthily, then blew her nose also stealthily, sighed, and noiselessly returned to her invariable position on her stool by the window.
The student drew his textbook to him and began again pacing from corner to corner. "The right lung consists of three parts," he repeated; "the upper part, on anterior wall of thorax, reaches the fourth or fifth rib..."
In the passage someone shouted at the top of his voice: "Grigory! The samovar!"
EASTER EVE
I was standing on the bank of the River Goltva, waiting for the ferry-boat from the other side. At ordinary times the Goltva is a humble stream of moderate size, silent and pensive, gently glimmering from behind thick reeds; but now a regular lake lay stretched out before me. The waters of spring, running riot, had overflowed both banks and flooded both sides of the river for a long distance, submerging vegetable gardens, hayfields and marshes, so that it was no unusual thing to meet poplars and bushes sticking out above the surface of the water and looking in the darkness like grim solitary crags.
The weather seemed to me magnificent. It was dark, yet I could see the trees, the water and the people.... The world was lighted by the stars, which were scattered thickly all over the sky. I don't remember ever seeing so many stars. Literally one could not have put a finger in between them. There were some as big as a goose's egg, others tiny as hempseed.... They had come out for the festival procession, every one of them, little and big, washed, renewed and joyful, and everyone of them was softly twinkling its beams. The sky was reflected in the water; the stars were bathing in its dark depths and trembling with the quivering eddies. The air was warm and still.... Here and there, far away on the further bank in the impenetrable darkness, several bright red lights were gleaming....
A couple of paces from me I saw the dark silhouette of a peasant in a high hat, with a thick knotted stick in his hand.
"How long the ferry-boat is in coming!" I said.
"It is time it was here," the silhouette answered.
"You are waiting for the ferry-boat, too?"
"No I am not," yawned the peasant—"I am waiting for the illumination. I should have gone, but to tell you the truth, I haven't the five kopecks for the ferry."
"I'll give you the five kopecks."
"No; I humbly thank you.... With that five kopecks put up a candle for me over there in the monastery.... That will be more interesting, and I will stand here. What can it mean, no ferry-boat, as though it had sunk in the water!"
The peasant went up to the water's edge, took the rope in his hands, and shouted; "Ieronim! Ieron—im!"
As though in answer to his shout, the slow peal of a great bell floated across from the further bank. The note was deep and low, as from the thickest string of a double bass; it seemed as though the darkness itself had hoarsely uttered it. At once there was the sound of a cannon shot. It rolled away in the darkness and ended somewhere in the far distance behind me. The peasant took off his hat and crossed himself.
'"Christ is risen," he said.
Before the vibrations of the first peal of the bell had time to die away in the air a second sounded, after it at once a third, and the darkness was filled with an unbroken quivering clamour. Near the red lights fresh lights flashed, and all began moving together and twinkling restlessly.
"Ieron—im!" we heard a hollow prolonged shout.
"They are shouting from the other bank," said the peasant, "so there is no ferry there either. Our Ieronim has gone to sleep."
The lights and the velvety chimes of the bell drew one towards them.... I was already beginning to lose patience and grow anxious, but behold at last, staring into the dark distance, I saw the outline of something very much like a gibbet. It was the long-expected ferry. It moved towards us with such deliberation that if it had not been that its lines grew gradually more definite, one might have supposed that it was standing still or moving to the other bank.
"Make haste! Ieronim!" shouted my peasant. "The gentleman's tired of waiting!"
The ferry crawled to the bank, gave a lurch and stopped with a creak. A tall man in a monk's cassock and a conical cap stood on it, holding the rope.
"Why have you been so long?" I asked jumping upon the ferry.
"Forgive me, for Christ's sake," Ieronim answered gently. "Is СКАЧАТЬ