The Greatest Novellas & Short Stories of Anton Chekhov. Anton Chekhov

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      “How the devil could I be joking? It’s no joking matter!”

      “I don’t understand!” muttered Kryukov, turning crimson and flinging up his hands. “It’s positively … immoral on your part. Before your very eyes a hussy is up to the devil knows what, a serious crime, plays a nasty trick, and you go and kiss her!”

      “But I can’t understand myself how it happened!” whispered the lieutenant, blinking guiltily. “Upon my honour, I don’t understand it! It’s the first time in my life I’ve come across such a monster! It’s not her beauty that does for you, not her mind, but that … you understand … insolence, cynicism… .”

      “Insolence, cynicism … it’s unclean! If you’ve such a longing for insolence and cynicism, you might have picked a sow out of the mire and have devoured her alive. It would have been cheaper, anyway! Instead of two thousand three hundred!”

      “You do express yourself elegantly!” said the lieutenant, frowning. “I’ll pay you back the two thousand three hundred!”

      “I know you’ll pay it back, but it’s not a question of money! Damn the money! What revolts me is your being such a limp rag … such filthy feebleness! And engaged! With a fiancée!”

      “Don’t speak of it …” said the lieutenant, blushing. “I loathe myself as it is. I should like to sink into the earth. It’s sickening and vexatious that I shall have to bother my aunt for that five thousand… .”

      Kryukov continued for some time longer expressing his indignation and grumbling, then, as he grew calmer, he sat down on the sofa and began to jeer at his cousin.

      “You young officers!” he said with contemptuous irony. “Nice bridegrooms.”

      Suddenly he leapt up as though he had been stung, stamped his foot, and ran about the study.

      “No, I’m not going to leave it like that!” he said, shaking his fist. “I will have those IOUs, I will! I’ll give it her! One doesn’t beat women, but I’ll break every bone in her body… . I’ll pound her to a jelly! I’m not a lieutenant! You won’t touch me with insolence or cynicism! No-o-o, damn her! Mishka!” he shouted, “run and tell them to get the racing droshky out for me!”

      Kryukov dressed rapidly, and, without heeding the agitated lieutenant, got into the droshky, and with a wave of his hand resolutely raced off to Susanna Moiseyevna. For a long time the lieutenant gazed out of window at the clouds of dust that rolled after his cousin’s droshky, stretched, yawned, and went to his own room. A quarter of an hour later he was sound asleep.

      At six o’clock he was waked up and summoned to dinner.

      “How nice this is of Alexey!” his cousin’s wife greeted him in the dining-room. “He keeps us waiting for dinner.”

      “Do you mean to say he’s not come back yet?” yawned the lieutenant. “H’m! … he’s probably gone round to see the tenant.”

      But Alexey Ivanovitch was not back by supper either. His wife and Sokolsky decided that he was playing cards at the tenant’s and would most likely stay the night there. What had happened was not what they had supposed, however.

      Kryukov returned next morning, and without greeting any one, without a word, dashed into his study.

      “Well?” whispered the lieutenant, gazing at him round-eyed.

      Kryukov waved his hand and gave a snort.

      “Why, what’s the matter? What are you laughing at?”

      Kryukov flopped on the sofa, thrust his head in the pillow, and shook with suppressed laughter. A minute later he got up, and looking at the surprised lieutenant, with his eyes full of tears from laughing, said:

      “Close the door. Well … she is a fe-e-male, I beg to inform you!”

      “Did you get the IOUs?”

      Kryukov waved his hand and went off into a peal of laughter again.

      “Well! she is a female!” he went on. “Merci for the acquaintance, my boy! She’s a devil in petticoats. I arrived; I walked in like such an avenging Jove, you know, that I felt almost afraid of myself… . I frowned, I scowled, even clenched my fists to be more awe-inspiring… . ‘Jokes don’t pay with me, madam!’ said I, and more in that style. And I threatened her with the law and with the Governor. To begin with she burst into tears, said she’d been joking with you, and even took me to the cupboard to give me the money. Then she began arguing that the future of Europe lies in the hands of the French, and the Russians, swore at women… . Like you, I listened, fascinated, ass that I was… . She kept singing the praises of my beauty, patted me on the arm near the shoulder, to see how strong I was, and … and as you see, I’ve only just got away from her! Ha, ha! She’s enthusiastic about you!”

      “You’re a nice fellow!” laughed the lieutenant. “A married man! highly respected… . Well, aren’t you ashamed? Disgusted? Joking apart though, old man, you’ve got your Queen Tamara in your own neighbourhood… .”

      “In my own neighbourhood! Why, you wouldn’t find another such chameleon in the whole of Russia! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, though I know a good bit about women, too. I have known regular devils in my time, but I never met anything like this. It is, as you say, by insolence and cynicism she gets over you. What is so attractive in her is the diabolical suddenness, the quick transitions, the swift shifting hues… . Brrr! And the IOU — phew! Write it off for lost. We are both great sinners, we’ll go halves in our sin. I shall put down to you not two thousand three hundred, but half of it. Mind, tell my wife I was at the tenant’s.”

      Kryukov and the lieutenant buried their heads in the pillows, and broke into laughter; they raised their heads, glanced at one another, and again subsided into their pillows.

      “Engaged! A lieutenant!” Kryukov jeered.

      “Married!” retorted Sokolsky. “Highly respected! Father of a family!”

      At dinner they talked in veiled allusions, winked at one another, and, to the surprise of the others, were continually gushing with laughter into their dinner-napkins. After dinner, still in the best of spirits, they dressed up as Turks, and, running after one another with guns, played at soldiers with the children. In the evening they had a long argument. The lieutenant maintained that it was mean and contemptible to accept a dowry with your wife, even when there was passionate love on both sides. Kryukov thumped the table with his fists and declared that this was absurd, and that a husband who did not like his wife to have property of her own was an egoist and a despot. Both shouted, boiled over, did not understand each other, drank a good deal, and in the end, picking up the skirts of their dressing-gowns, went to their bedrooms. They soon fell asleep and slept soundly.

      Life went on as before, even, sluggish and free from sorrow. The shadows lay on the earth, thunder pealed from the clouds, from time to time the wind moaned plaintively, as though to prove that nature, too, could lament, but nothing troubled the habitual tranquillity of these people. Of Susanna Moiseyevna and the IOUs they said nothing. Both of them felt, somehow, ashamed to speak of the incident aloud. Yet they remembered it and thought of it with pleasure, as of a curious farce, which life had unexpectedly and casually played upon them, and СКАЧАТЬ