The Chekhov Collection: Novellas, Short Stories, Plays, Letters & Diary. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ taciturn, and fearless, and could never be brought to acknowledge the authority of any one. He spoke gruffly to my mother, addressed me familiarly as "thou," and treated Pobedimski's learning with contempt, but we forgave him everything, because we considered that he had a morbidly excitable nature. My mother liked him in spite of his gipsy ways, for he was ideally honest and hard working. He loved his Tatiana passionately, in gipsy style, but his love was a thing of gloom, almost of suffering. He never caressed her in our presence, and only stared at her fiercely with his mouth all awry.

      On coming back from the fields he would furiously slam down his gun on the floor of his room, and come out on the porch to take his seat beside his wife. When he had rested a while he would ask her a few questions about the housekeeping, and then relapse into silence.

      "Let's sing !" I used to suggest.

      My tutor would tune his guitar, and in a thick, deaconly voice would drone: "In Level Valleys." We would all chime in. My tutor sang bass, Theodore an almost inaudible tenor, and I contralto in tune with Tatiana.

      When all the sky was strewn with stars, and the frogs' voices were hushed, our supper would be brought to us from the kitchen, and we would go into the house and fall to. My tutor and the gipsy ate ravenously, munching so loudly that it was hard to tell whether the noise came from the bones they were crunching or the cracking of their jaws. Tatiana and I, on the contrary, could scarcely manage to finish our portions. After supper our wing of the house would sink into deep slumber.

      One evening at the end of May we were sitting on the porch waiting for our supper. Suddenly a shadow flitted toward us, and Gundasoff appeared as if he had sprung from the ground. He stared at us for a long time, and then waved his hands and laughed gaily.

      "How idyllic!" he cried. "Singing and dreaming under the moon ! It is beautiful, upon my word and honour ! May I sit here and dream with you?"

      We silently looked at one another. My uncle sat down on the lowest step, yawned, and gazed at the sky. Pobedimski, who had long been intending to have a conversation with this "new person," was delighted at the opportunity that now presented itself, and was the first to break the silence. He had only one subject for learned discussions, and that was the epizooty. It sometimes happens that, out of a crowd of thousands of persons with whom one is thrown, one face alone remains fixed in the memory, and so it was with Pobedimski. Out of all he had learned at the Veterinary College he remembered only one sentence :

      "Epizooty is the cause of much loss to the peasant farmers. Every community should join hands with the state in fighting this disease."

      Before saying this to Gundasoff, my tutor cleared his throat three times, and excitedly wrapped his cape around him. When my uncle had been informed concerning the epizooty, he made a noise in his nose that sounded like a laugh.

      "How charming, upon my word and honour!" he said under his breath, staring at us as if we were maniacs. "This is indeed life ! This is real nature ! Why don't you say something, Pelagia ? " he asked of Tatiana.

      Tatiana grew confused and coughed.

      "Go on talking, friends ! Sing ! Play ! Don't waste a moment ! That rascal time goes fast and waits for no man. Upon my word and honour, old age will be upon you before you know it. It will be too late to enjoy life then; so come, Pelagia, don't sit there and say nothing!"

      At this point our supper was brought from the kitchen. My uncle went into the house with us, and ate five curd fritters and a duck's wing for company. He kept his eyes fixed on us while he despatched his supper; we all filled his heart with enthusiasm and emotion. Whatever silliness that unforgettable tutor of mine was guilty of, whatever Tatiana did, was lovely and charming in his eyes. When Tatiana quietly took her knitting into a corner after supper, his eyes never left her little fingers, and he babbled without a moment's pause.

      "Friends, you must hurry and begin to enjoy life as fast as you can!" he said. "For heaven's sake, don't sacrifice the present to the future ! You have youth and health and passion now, and the future is deceitful—a vapour ! As soon as your twentieth year knocks at the door, then begin to live ! "

      Tatiana dropped a needle. My uncle jumped up, picked it up, and handed it to her with a bow, at which I realised for the first time that there was some one in the world with manners more polished than Pobedimski's.

      "Yes," my uncle continued. "Fall in love! Marry! Be silly ! Silliness is much more healthy and natural than our toiling and striving to be sensible."

      My uncle talked much and long, and I sat on a trunk in a corner listening to him and dozing. I felt hurt because he had never once paid the least attention to me. He left our wing of the house at two o'clock that night, when I had given up the battle, and sunk into profound slumber.

      From that time on my uncle came to us every evening. He sang with us and sat with us each night until two o'clock, chatting without end always of the same thing. He ceased his evening and nocturnal labours, and by the end of July, when the privy councillor had learned to eat my mother's turkeys and stewed fruits, his daytime toil was also abandoned. My uncle had torn himself away from his desk and had entered into "real life." By day he walked about the garden whistling and keeping the workmen from their work by making them tell him stories. If he caught sight of Tatiana he would run up to her, and, if she were carrying anything, would offer to carry it for her, which always embarrassed her dreadfully.

      The farther summer advanced toward autumn the more absent-minded and frivolous and lively my uncle became. Pobedimski lost all his illusions about him.

      "He is too one-sided," he used to say. "Nothing about him shows that he stands on the highest rung of the official hierarchic ladder. He can't even talk properly. He says 'upon my word and honour' after every word. No, I don't like him!"

      A distinct change came over my tutor and Theodore from the time that my uncle began to visit us in our wing. Theodore stopped hunting and began to come home early. He grew more silent and stared more ferociously than ever at his wife. My tutor stopped talking of the epizooty in my uncle's presence, and now frowned and even smiled derisively at sight of him.

      "Here comes our little hop o'my thumb ! " he once growled, seeing my uncle coming toward our part of the house.

      This change in the behaviour of both men I explained by the theory that Gundasoff had hurt their feelings. My absent-minded uncle always confused their names, and on the day of his departure had not learned which was my tutor, and which was Tatiana's husband. Tatiana herself he sometimes called Nastasia, sometimes Pelagia, sometimes Evdokia. Full of affectionate enthusiasm as he was for us all, he laughed at us and treated us as if we had been children. All this, of course, might easily have offended the young men. But, as I now see, this was not a question of lacerated feelings; sentiments much more delicate were involved.

      One night, I remember, I was sitting on the trunk contending with my longing for sleep. A heavy glue seemed to have fallen on my eyelids, and my body was drooping sideways, exhausted by a long day's playing, but I tried to conquer my sleepiness, for I wanted to see what was going on. It was nearly midnight. Gentle, rosy, and meek as ever, Tatlana was sitting at a little table sewing a shirt for her husband. From one corner of the room Theodore was staring sternly and gloomily at her, in another corner sat Pobedimski snorting angrily, his head half buried in his high coat collar. My uncle was walking up and down plunged in thought. Silence reigned, broken only by the rustling of the linen in Tatiana's hands. Suddenly my uncle stopped In front of Tatiana, and said:

      "Oh, you are all so young and fresh and good, and you live so peacefully in this quiet place that I envy you ! I have grown so fond of this life of yours that, upon my honour, my heart aches when I remember that some day I shall have to leave СКАЧАТЬ