Love and Other Stories. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

pencil, and an exercise book. I glanced at the book and recognised it as ‘Malinin and Burenin’s Arithmetical Examples.’ It was open, as I now remember, at the ‘Rules of Compound Interest.’

      “ ‘To whom are you giving lessons?’ I asked Kisotchka.

      “ ‘Nobody,’ she answered. ‘I am just doing some. … I have nothing to do, and am so bored that I think of the old days and do sums.’

      “ ‘Have you any children?’

      “ ‘I had a baby boy, but he only lived a week.’

      “We began drinking tea. Admiring me, Kisotchka said again how good it was that I was an engineer, and how glad she was of my success. And the more she talked and the more genuinely she smiled, the stronger was my conviction that I should go away without having gained my object. I was a connoisseur in love affairs in those days, and could accurately gauge my chances of success. You can boldly reckon on success if you are tracking down a fool or a woman as much on the look out for new experiences and sensations as yourself, or an adventuress to whom you are a stranger. If you come across a sensible and serious woman, whose face has an expression of weary submission and goodwill, who is genuinely delighted at your presence, and, above all, respects you, you may as well turn back. To succeed in that case needs longer than one day.

      “And by evening light Kisotchka seemed even more charming than by day. She attracted me more and more, and apparently she liked me too, and the surroundings were most appropriate: the husband not at home, no servants visible, stillness around. … Though I had little confidence in success, I made up my mind to begin the attack anyway. First of all it was necessary to get into a familiar tone and to change Kisotchka’s lyrically earnest mood into a more frivolous one.

      “ ‘Let us change the conversation, Natalya Stepanovna,’ I began. 'Let us talk of something amusing. First of all, allow me, for the sake of old times, to call you Kisotchka.’

      “She allowed me.

      “ ‘Tell me, please, Kisotchka,’ I went on, ‘what is the matter with all the fair sex here. What has happened to them? In old days they were all so moral and virtuous, and now, upon my word, if one asks about anyone, one is told such things that one is quite shocked at human nature. … One young lady has eloped with an officer; another has run away and carried off a high-school boy with her; another—a married woman—has run away from her husband with an actor; a fourth has left her husband and gone off with an officer, and so on and so on. It’s a regular epidemic! If it goes on like this there won’t be a girl or a young woman left in your town!’

      “I spoke in a vulgar, playful tone. If Kisotchka had laughed in response I should have gone on in this style: ‘You had better look out, Kisotchka, or some officer or actor will be carrying you off!’ She would have dropped her eyes and said: ‘As though anyone would care to carry me off; there are plenty younger and better looking. …’ And I should have said: ‘Nonsense, Kisotchka—I for one should be delighted!’ And so on in that style, and it would all have gone swimmingly. But Kisotchka did not laugh in response; on the contrary, she looked grave and sighed.

      “ ‘All you have been told is true,’ she said. ‘My cousin Sonya ran away from her husband with an actor. Of course, it is wrong. … Everyone ought to bear the lot that fate has laid on him, but I do not condemn them or blame them. … Circumstances are sometimes too strong for anyone!’

      “ ‘That is so, Kisotchka, but what circumstances can produce a regular epidemic?’

      “ ‘It’s very simple and easy to understand,’ replied Kisotchka, raising her eyebrows. ‘There is absolutely nothing for us educated girls and women to do with ourselves. Not everyone is able to go to the University, to become a teacher, to live for ideas, in fact, as men do. They have to be married. … And whom would you have them marry? You boys leave the high-school and go away to the University, never to return to your native town again, and you marry in Petersburg or Moscow, while the girls remain. … To whom are they to be married? Why, in the absence of decent cultured men, goodness knows what sort of men they marry—stockbrokers and such people of all kinds, who can do nothing but drink and get into rows at the club. … A girl married like that, at random. … And what is her life like afterwards? You can understand: a well-educated, cultured woman is living with a stupid, boorish man; if she meets a cultivated man, an officer, an actor, or a doctor—well, she gets to love him, her life becomes unbearable to her, and she runs away from her husband. And one can’t condemn her!’

      “ ‘If that is so, Kisotchka, why get married?’ I asked.

      “ ‘Yes, of course,’ said Kisotchka with a sigh, ‘but you know every girl fancies that any husband is better than nothing. … Altogether life is horrid here, Nikolay Anastasyevitch, very horrid! Life is stifling for a girl and stifling when one is married. … Here they laugh at Sonya for having run away from her husband, but if they could see into her soul they would not laugh. …’ ”

      Azorka began barking outside again. He growled angrily at some one, then howled miserably and dashed with all his force against the wall of the hut. … Ananyev’s face was puckered with pity; he broke off his story and went out. For two minutes he could be heard outside comforting his dog. “Good dog! poor dog!”

      “Our Nikolay Anastasyevitch is fond of talking,” said Von Schtenberg, laughing. “He is a good fellow,” he added after a brief silence.

      Returning to the hut, the engineer filled up our glasses and, smiling and stroking his chest, went on:

      “And so my attack was unsuccessful. There was nothing for it, I put off my unclean thoughts to a more favourable occasion, resigned myself to my failure and, as the saying is, waved my hand. What is more, under the influence of Kisotchka’s voice, the evening air, and the stillness, I gradually myself fell into a quiet sentimental mood. I remember I sat in an easy chair by the wide-open window and glanced at the trees and darkened sky. The outlines of the acacias and the lime trees were just the same as they had been eight years before; just as then, in the days of my childhood, somewhere far away there was the tinkling of a wretched piano, and the public had just the same habit of sauntering to and fro along the avenues, but the people were not the same. Along the avenues there walked now not my comrades and I and the object of my adoration, but schoolboys and young ladies who were strangers. And I felt melancholy. When to my inquiries about acquaintances I five times received from Kisotchka the answer, ‘He is dead,’ my melancholy changed into the feeling one has at the funeral service of a good man. And sitting there at the window, looking at the promenading public and listening to the tinkling piano, I saw with my own eyes for the first time in my life with what eagerness one generation hastens to replace another, and what a momentous significance even some seven or eight years may have in a man’s life!

      “Kisotchka put a bottle of red wine on the table. I drank it off, grew sentimental, and began telling a long story about something or other. Kisotchka listened as before, admiring me and my cleverness. And time passed. The sky was by now so dark that the outlines of the acacias and lime trees melted into one, the public was no longer walking up and down the avenues, the piano was silent and the only sound was the even murmur of the sea.

      “Young people are all alike. Be friendly to a young man, make much of him, regale him with wine, let him understand that he is attractive and he will sit on and on, forget that it is time to go, and talk and talk and talk. … His hosts cannot keep their eyes open, it’s past their bedtime, and he still stays and talks. That was what I did. Once I chanced to look at the clock; it was half-past ten. I began saying good-bye.

      “ ‘Have another glass before your walk,’ said Kisotchka.

      “I took another glass, again I began talking at length, forgot it was time to go, and sat down. Then there came the sound of men’s voices, footsteps and the clank of spurs.

      “ ‘I think my husband has come in. …’ said Kisotchka listening.

      “The door creaked, two voices came now from the passage and I saw two men pass the door that led into the dining-room: one a stout, solid,