THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ANTON CHEKHOV. Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ next to me, and whispered in my ear. ‘Golubchek, don’t be offended… Of course, you will understand my position, and you won’t find my request strange or rude.’

      ‘Tell me quickly. No need to mince matters.’

      ‘You see how things stand… how… Go away, golubchek!

      You are interfering with us..,. She will remain with me… Forgive me for sending you away, but… you will understand my impatience!’

      ‘All right!’

      My friend was loathsome. If I had not been fastidious, perhaps I would have crushed him like a beetle, when he, shivering as if with fever, asked me to leave him alone with Urbenin’s wife. He, the debilitated anchorite, steeped through and through with spirits and disease, wanted to take the poetic ‘girl in red’ who dreamed of a dramatic death and had been nurtured by the forests and the angry lake! Surely not, she must be miles above him!

      I went up to her.

      ‘I am going,’ I said.

      She nodded her head.

      ‘Am I to go away? Yes?’ I asked, trying to read the truth in her lovely, blushing little face. ‘Yes?’

      With the very slightest movement of her long black eyelashes she answered ‘Yes.’

      ‘You have considered well?’

      She turned away from me, as one turns away from an annoying wind. She did not want to speak. Why should she speak? It is impossible to answer a difficult question briefly, and there was neither time nor place for long speeches.

      I took up my hat and left the room without taking leave. Afterwards, Olga told me that immediately after my departure, as soon as the sound of my steps became mingled with the noise of the wind in the garden, the drunken Count was pressing her in his embrace. And she, closing her eyes and stopping up her mouth and nostrils, was scarcely able to keep her feet from a feeling of disgust. There was even a moment when she had almost torn herself away from his embraces and rushed into the lake. There were moments when she tore her hair and wept. It is not easy to sell oneself.

      When I left the house and went towards the stables, I had to pass the bailiff’s house. I looked in at the window. Pëtr Egorych was seated at a table by the dim light of a smoking oil lamp that had been turned up too high. I did not see his face. It was covered by his hands. But the whole of his robust, awkward figure displayed so much sorrow, anguish and despair that it was not necessary to see the face to understand the condition of his soul. Two bottles stood before him; one was empty, the other only just begun. They were both vodka bottles. The poor devil was seeking peace not in himself, nor in other people, but in alcohol.

      Five minutes later I was riding home. The darkness was terrible. The lake blustered wrathfully and seemed to be angry that I, such a sinner, who had just been the witness of a sinful deed, should dare to infringe its austere peace. I could not see the lake for the darkness. It seemed as if an unseen monster was roaring, that the very darkness which enveloped me was roaring too.

      I pulled up Zorka, closed my eyes, and meditated to the roaring of the monster.

      ‘What if I returned at once and destroyed them?’

      Terrible anger raged in my soul… All the little of goodness and honesty that remained in me after long years of a depraved life, all that corruption had left, all that I guarded and cherished, that I was proud of, was insulted, spat upon, splashed with filth!

      I had known venal women before, I had bought them, studied them, but they had not had the innocent rosy cheeks and sincere blue eyes that I had seen on the May morning when I walked through the wood to the Tenevo fair… I myself, corrupt to the marrow of my bones, had forgiven, had preached tolerance of everything vicious, and I was indulgent to weakness… I was convinced that it was impossible to demand of dirt that it should not be dirt, and that one cannot blame those ducats which from the force of circumstances have fallen into the mire. But I had not known before that ducats could melt in the mire and be blended with it into a single mass. So gold too could dissolve!

      A strong gust of wind blew off my hat and bore it into the surrounding darkness. In its flight my hat touched Zorka’s head. She took fright, reared on her hind legs and galloped off along the familiar road.

      When I reached home I threw myself on the bed. Polycarp suggested that I should undress, and he got sworn at and called a ‘devil’ for no earthly reason.

      ‘Devil yourself!’ Polycarp grumbled as he went away from my bed.

      ‘What did you say? What did you say?’ I shouted.

      ‘None so deaf as those who will not hear!’

      ‘Oh, ho! You dare to be impudent!’ I thundered and poured out all my bile on my poor lackey. ‘Get out! Let me see no more of you, scoundrel! Out with you!’

      And without waiting for my man to leave the room, I fell on the bed and began to sob like a boy. My overstrained nerves could bear no more. Powerless wrath, wounded feelings, jealousy — all found vent in one way or another.

      ‘The husband killed his wife!’ squalled my parrot, raising his yellow feathers.

      Under the influence of this cry the thought entered my head that Urbenin might really kill his wife.

      Falling asleep, I dreamed of murders. My nightmare was suffocating and painful… It appeared to me that my hands were stroking something cold, and I had only to open my eyes to see a corpse. I dreamed that Urbenin was standing at the head of my bed, looking at me with imploring eyes.

      CHAPTER XIX

       Table of Contents

      After the night that is described above a calm set in. I remained at home, only allowing myself to leave the house or ride about on business. Heaps of work had accumulated, so it was impossible for me to be idle. From morning till night I sat at my writing-table scribbling, or examining people who had fallen into my magisterial claws. I was no longer drawn to Karnéevka, the Count’s estate.

      I thought no more of Olga. That which falls from the load is lost; and she it was who had fallen from my load and was, as I thought, irrecoverably lost. I thought no more about her and did not want to think about her.

      ‘Silly, vicious trash!’ I said to myself whenever her memory arose in my mind in the midst of my strenuous labours.

      Occasionally, however, when I lay down to sleep or when I awoke in the morning, I remembered various moments of our acquaintance, and the short connection I had had with Olga. I remembered the ‘Stone Grave’, the little house in the wood in which ‘the girl in red’ lived, the road to Tenevo, the meeting in the grotto… and my heart began to beat faster… I experienced bitter heartache… But it was not for long. The bright memories were soon obliterated under the weight of the gloomy ones. What poetry of the past could withstand the filth of the present? And now, when I had finished with Olga, I looked upon this ‘poetry’ quite differently… Now I looked upon it as an optical illusion, a lie, hypocrisy… and it lost half its charm in my eyes.

      The Count had become quite repugnant to me. I was glad not to see him, and I was always angry when his moustachioed СКАЧАТЬ