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

disease would not have developed so rapidly or proved fatal. The feverish energy of his temperament, his readiness to respond to every impression, and his thirst for activity, drove him from south to north and hack again, regardless of his health and of the climate. Like all invalids, he ought to have gone on living in the same place, at Nice or at Yalta, until he was better, but he lived exactly as though he had been in good health. When he arrived in the north he was always excited and absorbed by what was going on, and this exhilaration he mistook for an improvement in his health; but he had only to return to Yalta for the reaction to set in, and it would seem to him at once that his case was hopeless, that the Crimea had no beneficial effect on consumptives, and that the climate was wretched.

      The spring of 1903 passed fairly favourably. He recovered sufficiently to go to Moscow and even to Petersburg. On returning from Petersburg he began preparing to go to Switzerland. But his state of health was such that his doctor in Moscow advised him to give up the idea of Switzerland and even of Yalta, and to stay somewhere not very far from Moscow. He followed this advice and settled at Nar. Now that it was proposed that he should stay the winter in the north, all that he had created in Yalta — his house and his garden — seemed unnecessary and objectless. In the end he returned to Yalta and set to work on “The Cherry Orchard.”

      In October, 1903, the play was finished and he set off to produce it himself in Moscow. He spent days at a time in the Art Theatre, producing his “Cherry Orchard,” and incidentally supervising the setting and performance of the plays of other authors. He gave advice and criticized, was excited and enthusiastic.

      On the 17th of January, 1904, “The Cherry Orchard” was produced for the first time. The first performance was the occasion of the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chekhov’s literary activity. A great number of addresses were read and speeches were made. Chekhov was many times called before the curtain, and this expression of universal sympathy exhausted him to such a degree that the very day after the performance he began to think with relief of going back to Yalta, where he spent the following spring.

      His health was completely shattered, and everyone who saw him secretly thought the end was not far off; but the nearer Chekhov was to the end, the less he seemed to realize it. Ill as he was, at the beginning of May he set off for Moscow. He was terribly ill all the way on the journey, and on arrival took to his bed at once. He was laid up till June.

      On the 3rd of June he set off with his wife for a cure abroad to the Black Forest, and settled in a little spa called Badenweiler. He was dying, although he wrote to everyone that he had almost recovered, and that health was coming back to him not by ounces but by hundredweights. He was dying, but he spent the time dreaming of going to the Italian lakes and returning to Yalta by sea from Trieste, and was already making inquiries about the steamers and the times they stopped at Odessa.

      He died on the 2nd of July.

      His body was taken to Moscow and buried in the Novodyevitchy Monastery, beside his father’s tomb.

      Novellas and Short Stories:

       Table of Contents

      A LIVING CHATTEL

       Table of Contents

      GROHOLSKY embraced Liza, kept kissing one after another all her little fingers with their bitten pink nails, and laid her on the couch covered with cheap velvet. Liza crossed one foot over the other, clasped her hands behind her head, and lay down.

      Groholsky sat down in a chair beside her and bent over. He was entirely absorbed in contemplation of her.

      How pretty she seemed to him, lighted up by the rays of the setting sun!

      There was a complete view from the window of the setting sun, golden, lightly flecked with purple.

      The whole drawing-room, including Liza, was bathed by it with brilliant light that did not hurt the eyes, and for a little while covered with gold.

      Groholsky was lost in admiration. Liza was so incredibly beautiful. It is true her little kittenish face with its brown eyes, and turn up nose was fresh, and even piquant, his scanty hair was black as soot and curly, her little figure was graceful, well proportioned and mobile as the body of an electric eel, but on the whole…. However my taste has nothing to do with it. Groholsky who was spoilt by women, and who had been in love and out of love hundreds of times in his life, saw her as a beauty. He loved her, and blind love finds ideal beauty everywhere.

      “I say,” he said, looking straight into her eyes, “I have come to talk to you, my precious. Love cannot bear anything vague or indefinite…. Indefinite relations, you know, I told you yesterday, Liza… we will try to-day to settle the question we raised yesterday. Come, let us decide together… .”

      What are we to do?”

      Liza gave a yawn and scowling, drew her right arm from under her head.

      “What are we to do?” she repeated hardly audibly after Groholsky.

      “Well, yes, what are we to do? Come, decide, wise little head… I love you, and a man in love is not fond of sharing. He is more than an egoist. It is too much for me to go shares with your husband. I mentally tear him to pieces, when I remember that he loves you too. In the second place you love me…. Perfect freedom is an essential condition for love…. And are you free? Are you not tortured by the thought that that man towers for ever over your soul? A man whom you do not love, whom very likely and quite naturally, you hate…. That’s the second thing…. And thirdly…. What is the third thing? Oh yes…. We are deceiving him and that… is dishonourable. Truth before everything, Liza. Let us have done with lying!”

      “Well, then, what are we to do?”

      “You can guess…. I think it necessary, obligatory, to inform him of our relations and to leave him, to begin to live in freedom. Both must be done as quickly as possible…. This very evening, for instance…. It’s time to make an end of it. Surely you must be sick of loving like a thief?”

      “Tell! tell Vanya?”

      “Why, yes!”

      “That’s impossible! I told you yesterday, Michel, that it is impossible.”

      “Why?”

      “He will be upset. He’ll make a row, do all sorts of unpleasant things…. Don’t you know what he is like? God forbid! There’s no need to tell him. What an idea!”

      Groholsky passed his hand over his brow, and heaved a sigh.

      “Yes,” he said, “he will be more than upset. I am robbing him of his happiness. Does he love you?”

      “He does love me. Very much.”

      “There’s another complication! One does not know where to begin. To conceal it from him is base, telling him would kill him…. Goodness knows what’s one to do. Well, how is it to be?”

      Groholsky pondered. His pale face wore a frown.

      “Let us go on always as we are now,” said Liza. “Let him find out for himself, if he wants to.”

      “But you know that… is sinful, and besides the fact is you are mine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong to me but to someone else! You are mine! I will not give way to anyone!… I am sorry for him — God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza! It hurts me to see him! But… it can’t be helped after all. You don’t love him, do you? What’s the good of your going on being miserable with him? We must have it out! We will have it out with him, and you will come to me. You are my wife, and not his. Let him do what he likes. He’ll get over his troubles somehow…. He is not the first, and he won’t be the last…. Will you run away? Eh? Make haste and tell me! Will