Anton Chekhov: Plays, Short Stories, Diary & Letters (Collected Edition). Anton Chekhov

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СКАЧАТЬ he was making an effort to raise his handsome face, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In the big eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain, and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face. That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the hands he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his clenched teeth, showed that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his right hand in a pool of blood lay a revolver.

      “Don’t go away,” I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out. “There’s a candle on the table.”

      I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor, and it seemed to me that I had seen him before.

      “The pain is insufferable,” he whispered, “and I haven’t the strength to shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will.”

      I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him from the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather covered sofa and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and cold when I took off his clothes; the wound which I saw was not in keeping either with his shivering nor the expression on his face. It was a trifling one. The bullet had passed between the fifth and sixth ribs on the left side, only piercing the skin and the flesh. I found the bullet itself in the folds of the coat-lining near the back pocket. Stopping the bleeding as best I could and making a temporary bandage of a pillowcase, a towel, and two handkerchiefs, I gave the wounded man some water and covered him with a fur coat that was hanging in the passage. We neither of us said a word while the bandaging was being done. I did my work while he lay motionless looking at me with his eyes screwed up as though he were ashamed of his unsuccessful shot and the trouble he was giving me.

      “Now I must trouble you to lie still,” I said, when I had finished the bandaging, “while I run to the chemist and get something.”

      “No need!” he muttered, clutching me by the sleeve and opening his eyes wide.

      I read terror in his eyes. He was afraid of my going away.

      “No need! Stay another five minutes… ten. If it doesn’t disgust you, do stay, I entreat you.”

      As he begged me he was trembling and his teeth were chattering. I obeyed, and sat down on the edge of the sofa. Ten minutes passed in silence. I sat silent, looking about the room into which fate had brought me so unexpectedly. What poverty! This man who was the possessor of a handsome, effeminate face and a luxuriant well-tended beard, had surroundings which a humble working man would not have envied. A sofa with its American-leather torn and peeling, a humble greasy-looking chair, a table covered with a little of paper, and a wretched oleograph on the wall, that was all I saw. Damp, gloomy, and grey.

      “What a wind!” said the sick man, without opening his eyes, “How it whistles!”

      “Yes,” I said. “I say, I fancy I know you. Didn’t you take part in some private theatricals in General Luhatchev’s villa last year?”

      “What of it?” he asked, quickly opening his eyes.

      A cloud seemed to pass over his face.

      “I certainly saw you there. Isn’t your name Vassilyev?”

      “If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should know me.”

      “No, but I just asked you.”

      Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his face to the back of the sofa.

      “I don’t understand your curiosity,” he muttered. “You’ll be asking me next what it was drove me to commit suicide!”

      Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, opened his eyes and said in a tearful voice:

      “Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you’ll admit I’m right! To ask a convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot himself is not generous… and indelicate. To think of gratifying idle curiosity at the expense of another man’s nerves!”

      “There is no need to excite yourself…. It never occurred to me to question you about your motives.”

      “You would have asked…. It’s what people always do. Though it would be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or understand…. I must own I don’t understand it myself…. There are phrases used in the police reports and newspapers such as: ‘unrequited love,’ and ‘hopeless poverty,’ but the reasons are not known…. They are not known to me, nor to you, nor to your newspaper offices, where they have the impudence to write ‘The diary of a suicide.’ God alone understands the state of a man’s soul when he takes his own life; but men know nothing about it.”

      “That is all very nice,” I said, “but you oughtn’t to talk… .”

      But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist, and went on in the tone of some great professor:

      “Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide! How can one speak of reasons? To-day the reason makes one snatch up a revolver, while tomorrow the same reason seems not worth a rotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular condition of the individual at the given moment…. Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when the candle is lighted, and you are sitting by me, I don’t even think of the hour of death. Explain that change if you can! Am I better off, or has my wife risen from the dead? Is it the influence of the light on me, or the presence of an outsider?”

      “The light certainly has an influence… “ I muttered for the sake of saying something. “The influence of light on the organism… .”

      “The influence of light…. We admit it! But you know men do shoot themselves by candle-light! And it would be ignominious indeed for the heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candle were to change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsense can be explained perhaps, but not by us. It’s useless to ask questions or give explanations of what one does not understand… .”

      “Forgive me,” I said, “but… judging by the expression of your face, it seems to me that at this moment you… are posing.”

      “Yes,” Vassilyev said, startled. “It’s very possible! I am naturally vain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your power of reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now I am posing…. Explain that if you can.”

      These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began scrutinising his face. It was as pale as a dead man’s. It seemed as though life were almost extinct in him, and only the signs of the suffering that the “vain and fatuous” man was feeling betrayed that it was still alive. It was painful to look at that face, but what must it have been for Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength to argue and, if I were not mistaken, to pose?

      “You here — are you here ?” he asked suddenly, raising himself on his elbow. “My God, just listen!”

      I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window, never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and lugubriously.

      “ ‘And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness and rejoicing.’ “ Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in the drawing-room СКАЧАТЬ