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Even a first-rate horse could not do it, while mine — you can word, … here as before God, … you may spit in my face if I see for yourself — is not a horse but a disgrace.’ And Pavel deceive you: as soon as my Matryona, this same here, is well Ivanitch will frown and shout: ‘We know you! You always again and restored to her natural condition, I’ll make any-find some excuse! Especially you, Grishka; I know you of thing for your honor that you would like to order! A ciga-old! I’ll be bound you have stopped at half a dozen taverns!’
rette-case, if you like, of the best birchwood, … balls for cro-And I shall say: ‘Your honor! am I a criminal or a heathen?
quet, skittles of the most foreign pattern I can turn… . I will My old woman is giving up her soul to God, she is dying, make anything for you! I won’t take a farthing from you. In and am I going to run from tavern to tavern! What an idea, Moscow they would charge you four roubles for such a ciga-upon my word! Plague take them, the taverns!’ Then Pavel rette-case, but I won’t take a farthing.’ The doctor will laugh Ivanitch will order you to be taken into the hospital, and I and say: ‘Oh, all right, all right… . I see! But it’s a pity you are shall fall at his feet… . ‘Pavel Ivanitch! Your honor, we thank a drunkard… .’ I know how to manage the gentry, old girl.
you most humbly! Forgive us fools and anathemas, don’t be There isn’t a gentleman I couldn’t talk to. Only God grant we hard on us peasants! We deserve a good kicking, whi le you don’t get off the road. Oh, how it is blowing! One’s eyes are graciously put yourself out and mess your feet in the snow!’
full of snow.”
And Pavel Ivanitch will give me a look as though he would And the turner went on muttering endlessly. He prattled like to hit me, and will say: ‘You’d much better not be swill-on mechanically to get a little relief from his depressing feeling vodka, you fool, but taking pity on your old woman ings. He had plenty of words on his tongue, but the thoughts instead of falling at my feet. You want a thrashing!’ ‘You are and questions in his brain were even more numerous. Sorrow right there — a thrashing, Pavel Ivanitch, strike me God! But had come upon the turner unawares, unlooked-for, and un-how can we help bowing down at your feet if you are our expected, and now he could not get over it, could not recover benefactor, and a real father to us? Your honor! I give you my himself. He had lived hitherto in unruffled calm, as though 80
The Schoolmistress and other stories in drunken half-consciousness, knowing neither grief nor joy, beat you again. I swear it. And did I ever beat you out of and now he was suddenly aware of a dreadful pain in his heart.
spite? I just beat you without thinking. I am sorry for you.
The careless idler and drunkard found himself quite suddenly Some men wouldn’t trouble, but here I am taking you… . I in the position of a busy man, weighed down by anxieties am doing my best. And the way it snows, the way it snows!
and haste, and even struggling with nature.
Thy Will be done, O Lord! God grant we don’t get off the The turner remembered that his trouble had begun the road… . Does your side ache, Matryona, that you don’t speak?
evening before. When he had come home yesterday evening, I ask you, does your side ache?”
a little drunk as usual, and from long-established habit had It struck him as strange that the snow on his old woman’s begun swearing and shaking his fists, his old woman had face was not melting; it was queer that the face itself looked looked at her rowdy spouse as she had never looked at him somehow drawn, and had turned a pale gray, dingy waxen before. Usually, the expression in her aged eyes was that of a hue and had grown grave and solemn.
martyr, meek like that of a dog frequently beaten and badly
“You are a fool!” muttered the turner… . “I tell you on my fed; this time she had looked at him sternly and immovably, conscience, before God,… and you go and … Well, you are a as saints in the holy pictures or dying people look. From that fool! I have a good mind not to take you to Pavel Ivanitch!” strange, evil look in her eyes the trouble had begun. The turner, The turner let the reins go and began thinking. He could stupefied with amazement, borrowed a horse from a neigh-not bring himself to look round at his old woman: he was bor, and now was taking his old woman to the hospital in the frightened. He was afraid, too, of asking her a question and hope that, by means of powders and ointments, Pavel Ivanitch not getting an answer. At last, to make an end of uncertainty, would bring back his old woman’s habitual expression.
without looking round he felt his old woman’s cold hand.
“I say, Matryona, …” the turner muttered, “if Pavel Ivanitch The lifted hand fell like a log.
asks you whether I beat you, say, ‘Never!’ and I never will
“She is dead, then! What a business!” 81
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And the turner cried. He was not so much sorry as annoyed.
flashed before his eyes, and the field of vision was white and He thought how quickly everything passes in this world! His whirling again.
trouble had hardly begun when the final catastrophe had hap-
“To live over again,” thought the turner.
pened. He had not had time to live with his old woman, to He remembered that forty years ago Matryona had been show her he was sorry for her before she died. He had lived young, handsome, merry, that she had come of a well-to-do with her for forty years, but those forty years had passed by as family. They had married her to him because they had been it were in a fog. What with drunkenness, quarreling, and pov-attracted by his handicraft. All the essentials for a happy life erty, there had been no feeling of life. And, as though to spite had been there, but the trouble was that, just as he had got him, his old woman died at the very time when he felt he was drunk after the wedding and lay sprawling on the stove, so he sorry for her, that he could not live without her, and that he had gone on without waking up till now. His wedding he had behaved dreadfully badly to her.
remembered, but of what happened after the wedding — for
“Why, she used to go the round of the village,” he remem-the life of him he could remember nothing, except perhaps bered. “I sent her out myself to beg for bread. What a business!
that he had drunk, lain on the stove, and quarreled. Forty She ought to have lived another ten years, the silly thing; as it is years had been wasted like that.
I’ll be bound she thinks I really was that sort of man… . Holy The white clouds of snow were beginning little by little to Mother! but where the devil am I driving? There’s no need turn gray. It was getting dusk.
for a doctor now, but a burial. Turn back!”
“Where am I going?” the turner suddenly bethought him Grigory turned back and lashed the horse with all his might.
with a start. “I ought to be thinking of the burial, and I am on The road grew worse and worse every hour. Now he could the way to the hospital… . It as is though I had gone crazy.” not see the yoke at all. Now and then the sledge ran into a Grigory turned round again, and again lashed his horse. The young fir tree, a dark object scratched the turner’s hands and little nag strained its utmost and, with a snort, fell into a little 82
The Schoolmistress and other stories trot. The turner lashed it on the back time after time… . A light was streaming in at the windows. The turner saw people knocking was audible behind him, and though he did not facing him, and his first feeling was a desire to show himself a look round, he knew it was the dead woman’s head knocking respectable man who knew how things should be done.
against the sledge. And the snow kept turning darker and
“A requiem, brothers, for my old woman,” he said. “The darker, the wind grew colder and more cutting… .
priest should be told… .”
“To live over again!” thought the turner. “I should get a new
“Oh, all right, all right; lie down,” a voice cut him short.
lathe, take orders, … give the money to my old woman… .”
“Pavel Ivanitch!” the turner cried in surprise, seeing the doc-And then he dropped the reins. He looked for them, tried tor before him. “Your honor, benefactor! “ to pick them up, but could not — his hands would not He wanted to leap up and fall on his knees before the doc-work… .
tor, but felt that his arms and legs would not obey him.
“It does not matter,” he thought, “the horse will go of it-
“Your honor, where are my legs, where are my arms!” self, it knows the way. I might have a little sleep now… .
“Say good-by to your arms and legs… . They’ve been fro-Before the funeral or the requiem it would be as well to get a zen off. Come, come! … What are you crying for ? You’ve little rest… .”
lived your life, and thank God for it! I suppose you have had The turner closed his eyes and dozed. A little later he heard sixty years of it — that’s enough for you! …” the horse stop; he opened his eyes and saw before him some-
“I am grieving… . Graciously forgive me! If I could have thing dark like a hut or a haystack… .
another five or six years! …”
He would have got out of the sledge and found out what it
“What for?”
was, but he felt overcome by such inertia that it seemed bet-
“The horse isn’t mine, I must give it back… . I must bury ter to freeze than move, and he sank into a peaceful sleep.
my old woman… . How quickly it is all ended in this world!
He woke up in a big room with painted walls. Bright sun-Your honor, Pavel Ivanitch! A cigarette-case of birchwood of 83
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the best! I’ll turn you croquet balls… .” ON OFFICIAL DUTY
The doctor went out of the ward with a wave of his hand.
It was all over with the turner.
THE DEPUTY EXAMINING magistrate and the district doctor were going to an inquest in the village of Syrnya. On the road they were overtaken by a snowstorm; they spent a long time going round and round, and arrived, not at midday, as they had intended, but in the evening when it was dark. They put up for the night at the Zemstvo hut. It so happened that it was in this hut that the dead body was lying — the corpse of the Zemstvo insurance agent, Lesnitsky, who had arrived in Syrnya three days before and, ordering the samovar in the hut, had shot himself, to the great surprise of everyone; and the fact that he had ended his life so strangely, after unpacking his eatables and laying them out on the table, and with the samovar before him, led many people to suspect that it was a case of murder; an inquest was necessary.
In the outer room the doctor and the examining magistrate shook the snow off themselves and knocked it off their boots. And meanwhile the old village constable, Ilya Loshadin, stood by, holding a little tin lamp. There was a strong smell of paraffin.
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The Schoolmistress and other stories
“Who are you?” asked the doctor.
He sank on to a bench, just as he was, in his cap, his fur
“Conshtable, …” answered the constable.
coat, and his felt overboots; his fellow-traveler, the examin-He used to spell it “conshtable” when he signed the receipts ing magistrate, sat down opposite.
at the post office.
“These hysterical, neurasthenic people are great egoists,” the
“And where are the witnesses?”
doctor went on hotly. “If a neurasthenic sleeps in the same
“They must have gone to tea, your honor.” room with you, he rustles his newspaper; when he dines with On the right was the parlor, the travelers’ or gentry’s room; you, he gets up a scene with his wife without troubling about on the left the kitchen, with a big stove and sleeping shelves your presence; and when he feels inclined to shoot himself, under the rafters. The doctor and the examining magistrate, he shoots himself in a village in a Zemstvo hut, so as to give followed by the constable, holding the lamp high above his the maximum of trouble to everybody. These gentlemen in head, went into the parlor. Here a still, long body covered every circumstance of life think of no one but themselves!
with white linen was lying on the floor close to the table-legs.
That’s why the elderly so dislike our ‘nervous age.’” In the dim light of the lamp they could clearly see, besides the
“The elderly dislike so many things,” said the examining white covering, new rubber goloshes, and everything about it magistrate, yawning. “You should point out to the elder gen-was uncanny and sinister: the dark walls, and the silence, and eration what the difference is between the suicides of the past the goloshes, and the stillness of the dead body. On the table and the suicides of to-day. In the old days the so-called gentle-stood a samovar, cold long ago; and round it parcels, prob-man shot himself because he had made away with Govern-ably the eatables.
ment money, but nowadays it is because he is sick of life,
“To shoot oneself in the Zemstvo hut, how tactless!” said depressed… . Which is better?”
the doctor. “If one does want to put a bullet through one’s
“Sick of life, depressed; but you must admit that he might brains, one ought to do it at home in some outhouse.” have shot himself somewhere else.”
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“Such trouble!” said the constable, “such trouble! It’s a real far away they both were from their contemporaries, who were affliction. The people are very much upset, your honor; they at that moment walking about the lighted streets in town haven’t slept these three nights. The children are crying. The without noticing the weather, or were getting ready for the cows ought to be milked, but the women won’t go to the theatre, or sitting in their studies over a book. Oh, how much stall —they are afraid … for fear the gentleman should ap-they would have given now only to stroll along the Nevsky pear to them in the darkness. Of course they are silly women, Prospect, or along Petrovka in Moscow, to listen to decent but some of the men are frightened too. As soon as it is dark singing, to sit for an hour or so in a restaurant!
they won’t go by the hut one by one, but only in a flock
“Oo-oo-oo-oo!” sang the storm in the loft, and something together. And the witnesses too… .” outside slammed viciously, probably the signboard on the hut.
Dr. Startchenko, a middle-aged man in spectacles with a
“Oo-oo-oo-oo!”
dark beard, and the examining magistrate Lyzhin, a fair man,
“You can do as you please, but I have no desire to stay here,” still young, who had only taken his degree two years before said Startchenko, getting up. “It’s not six yet, it’s too early to and looked more like a student than an official, sat in silence, go to bed; I am off. Von Taunitz lives not far from here, only musing. They were vexed that they were late. Now they had a couple of miles from Syrnya. I shall go to see him and spend to wait till morning, and to stay here for the night, though it the evening there. Constable, run and tell my coachman not was not yet six o’clock; and they had before them a long to take the horses out. And what are you going to do?” he evening, a dark night, boredom, uncomfortable beds, beetles, asked Lyzhin.
and cold in the morning; and listening to the blizzard that
“I don’t know; I expect I shall go to sleep.” howled in the chimney and in the loft, they both thought The doctor wrapped himself in his fur coat and went out.
how unlike all this was the life which they would have chosen Lyzhin could hear him talking to the coachman and the bells for themselves and of which they had once dreamed, and how beginning to quiver on the frozen horses. He drove off.
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The Schoolmistress and other stories
“It is not nice for you, sir, to spend the night in here,” said
“I don’t need the elder,” said Lyzhin. “There is nothing for the constable; “come into the other room. It’s dirty, but for him to do here.”
one night it won’t matter. I’ll get a samovar from a peasant He looked at the old man with curiosity, and asked: and heat it directly. I’ll heap up some hay for you, and then
“Tell me, grandfather, how many years have you been con-you go to sleep, and God bless you, your honor.” stable? “
A little later the examining magistrate was sitting in the
“How many? Why, thirty years. Five years after the Free-kitchen drinking tea, while Loshadin, the constable, was stand-dom I began going as constable, that’s how I reckon it. And ing at the door talking. He was an old man about sixty, short from that time I have been going every day since. Other people and very thin, bent and white, with a naive smile on his face have holidays, but I am always going. When it’s Easter and and watery eyes, and he kept smacking with his lips as though the church bells are ringing and Christ has risen, I still go he were sucking a sweetmeat. He was wearing a short sheep-about with my bag — to the treasury, to the post, to the skin coat and high felt boots, and held his stick in his hands police superintendent’s lodgings, to the rural captain, to the all the time. The youth of the examining magistrate aroused tax inspector, to the municipal office, to the gentry, to the his compassion, and that was probably why he addressed him peasants, to all orthodox Christians. I carry parcels, notices, familiarly.
tax papers, letters, forms of different sorts, circulars, and to
“The elder gave orders that he was to be informed when the be sure, kind gentleman, there are all sorts of forms nowa-police superintendent or the examining magistrate came,” he days, so as to note down the numbers — yellow, white, and said, “so I suppose I must go now… . It’s nearly three miles to red — and every gentleman or priest or well-to-do peasant the volost, and the storm, the snowdrifts, are something ter-must write down a dozen times in the year how much he has rible — maybe one won’t get there before midnight. Ough!
sown and harvested, how many quarters or poods he has of how the wind roars!”
rye, how many of oats, how many of hay, and what the 87
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weather’s like, you know, and insects, too, of all sorts. To be even offer me a glass; but as through my poverty I was — in sure you can write what you like, it’s only a regulation, but appearance, I mean — not a man to be relied upon, not a one must go and give out the notices and then go again and man of any worth, we were both brought to trial; he was sent collect them. Here, for instance, there’s no need to cut open to prison, but, praise God! I was acquitted on all points. They the gentleman; you know yourself it’s a silly thing, it’s only read a notice, you know, in the court. And they were all in dirtying your hands, and here you have been put to trouble, uniforms — in the court, I mean. I can tell you, your honor, your honor; you have come because it’s the regulation; you my duties for anyone not used to them are terrible, abso-can’t help it. For thirty years I have been going round accord-lutely killing; but to me it is nothing. In fact, my feet ache ing to regulation. In the summer it is all right, it is warm and when I am not walking. And at home it is worse for me. At dry; but in winter and autumn it’s uncomfortable At times I home one has to heat the stove for the clerk in the volost have been almost drowned and almost frozen; all sorts of office, to fetch water for him, to clean his boots.” things have happened — wicked people set on me in the for-
“And what wages do you get?” Lyzhin asked.
est and took away my bag; I have been beaten, and I have
“Eighty-four roubles a year.”
been before a court of law.”
“I’ll bet you get other little sums coming in. You do, don’t
“What were you accused of?”
you?”
“Of fraud.”
“Other little sums? No, indeed! Gentlemen nowadays don’t
“How do you mean?”
often give tips. Gentlemen nowadays are strict, they take of-
“Why, you see, Hrisanf Grigoryev, the clerk, sold the con-fense at anything. If you bring them a notice they are of-tractor some boards belonging to someone else — cheated fended, if you take off your cap before them they are of-him, in fact. I was mixed up in it. They sent me to the tavern fended. ‘You have come to the wrong entrance,’ they say. ‘You for vodka; well, the clerk did not share with me — did not are a drunkard,’ they say. ‘You smell of onion; you are a block-88
The Schoolmistress and other stories head; you are the son of a bitch.’ There are kind-hearted ones, see, they are frightened, not being used to it, and yesterday of course; but what does one get from them? They only laugh they gave me fifteen kopecks and offered me a glass.” and call one all sorts of names. Mr. Altuhin, for instance, he
“And you, aren’t you frightened?”
is a good-natured gentleman; and if you look at him he seems
“I am, sir; but of course it is my duty, there is no getting sober and in his right mind, but so soon as he sees me he away from it. In the summer I was taking a convict to the shouts and does not know what he means himself. He gave town, and he set upon me and gave me such a drubbing! And me such a name ‘You,’ said he, …” The constable uttered all around were fields, forest — how could I get away from some word, but in such a low voice that it was impossible to him? It’s just the same here. I remember the gentleman, Mr.
make out what he said.
Lesnitsky, when he was so high, and I knew his father and
“What?” Lyzhin asked. “Say it again.” mother. I am from the village of Nedoshtchotova, and they,
“ ‘Administration,’ “ the constable repeated aloud. “He has the Lesnitsky family, were not more than three-quarters of a been calling me that for a long while, for the last six years.
mile from us and less than that, their ground next to ours,
‘Hullo, Administration!’ But I don’t mind; let him, God bless and Mr. Lesnitsky had a sister, a God-fearing and tender-him! Sometimes a lady will send one a glass of vodka and a hearted lady. Lord keep the soul of Thy servant Yulya, eternal bit of pie and one drinks to her health. But peasants give memory to her! She was never married, and when she was more; peasants are more kind-hearted, they have the fear of dying she divided all her property; she left three hundred acres God in their hearts: one will give a bit of bread, another a to the monastery, and six hundred to the commune of peas-drop of cabbage soup, another will stand one a glass. The ants of Nedoshtchotova to commemorate her soul; but her village elders treat one to tea in the tavern. Here the witnesses brother hid the will, they do say burnt it in the stove, and have gone to their tea. ‘Loshadin,’ they said, ‘you stay here took all this land for himself. He thought, to be sure, it was and keep watch for us,’ and they gave me a kopeck each. You for his benefit; but — nay, wait a bit, you won’t get on in the 89
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world through injustice, brother. The gentleman did not go doubt about it, but there, you must make up your mind to to confession for twenty years after. He kept away from the it. I used to live in good style, too; I had two horses, your church, to be sure, and died impenitent. He burst. He was a honor, three cows, I used to keep twenty head of sheep; but very fat man, so he burst lengthways. Then everything was the time has come, and I am left with nothing but a wretched taken from the young master, from Seryozha, to pay the debts bag, and even that is not mine but Government property.
— everything there was. Well, he had not gone very far in his And now in our Nedoshtchotova, if the truth is to be told, studies, he couldn’t do anything, and the president of the Rural my house is the worst of the lot. Makey had four footmen, Board, his uncle — ‘I’ll take him’ — Seryozha, I mean —
and now Makey is a footman himself. Petrak had four labor-thinks he, ‘for an agent; let him collect the insurance, that’s ers, and now Petrak is a laborer himself.” not a difficult job,’ and the gentleman was young and proud,
“How was it you became poor?” asked the examining mag-he wanted to be living on a bigger scale and in better style and istrate.
with more freedom. To be sure it was a come-down for him
“My sons drink terribly. I could not tell you how they drink, to be jolting about the district in a wretched cart and talking you wouldn’t believe it.”
to the peasants; he would walk and keep looking on the Lyzhin listened and thought how he, Lyzhin, would go back ground, looking on the ground and saying nothing; if you sooner or later to Moscow, while this old man would stay called his name right in his ear, ‘Sergey Sergeyitch!’ he would here for ever, and would always be walking and walking. And look round like this, ‘Eh?’ and look down on the ground how many times in his life he would come across such bat-again, and now you see he has laid hands on himself. There’s tered, unkempt old men, not “men of any worth,” in whose no sense in it, your honor, it’s not right, and there’s no mak-souls fifteen kopecks, glasses of vodka, and a profound belief ing out what’s the meaning of it, merciful Lord! Say your that you can’t get on in this life by dishonesty, were equally father was rich and you are poor; it is mortifying, there’s no firmly rooted.
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The Schoolmistress and other stories Then he grew tired of listening, and told the old man to sounded like it. “Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!” bring him some hay for his bed, There was an iron bedstead
“B-booh!” something outside banged against the wall. “Trah!” with a pillow and a quilt in the traveler’s room, and it could The examining magistrate listened: there was no woman be fetched in; but the dead man had been lying by it for nearly up there, it was the wind howling. It was rather cold, and he three days (and perhaps sitting on it just before his death), put his fur coat over his rug. As he got warm he thought how and it would be disagreeable to sleep upon it now… .
remote all this — the storm, and the hut, and the old man,
“It’s only half-past seven,” thought Lyzhin, glancing at his and the dead body lying in the next room — how remote it watch. “How awful it is!”
all was from the life he desired for himself, and how alien it He was not sleepy, but having nothing to do to pass away all was to him, how petty, how uninteresting. If this man had the time, he lay down and covered himself with a rug.
killed himself in Moscow or somewhere in the neighborhood, Loshadin went in and out several times, clearing away the tea-and he had had to hold an inquest on him there, it would things; smacking his lips and sighing, he kept tramping round have been interesting, important, and perhaps he might even the table; at last he took his little lamp and went out, and, have been afraid to sleep in the next room to the corpse. Here, looking at his long, gray-headed, bent figure from behind, nearly a thousand miles from Moscow, all this was seen some-Lyzhin thought:
how in a different light; it was not life, they were not human
“Just like a magician in an opera.” beings, but something only existing “according to the regula-It was dark. The moon must have been behind the clouds, tion,” as Loshadin said; it would leave not the faintest trace in as the windows and the snow on the window-frames could the memory, and would be forgotten as soon as he, Lyzhin, be seen distinctly.
drove away from Syrnya. The fatherland, the real Russia, was
“Oo-oo-oo!” sang the storm, “Oo-oo-oo-oo!” Moscow, Petersburg; but here he was in the provinces, the
“Ho-ho-ly sa-aints!” wailed a woman in the loft, or it colonies. When one dreamed of playing a leading part, of 91
Anton Chekhov
becoming a popular figure, of being, for instance, examining in; he had a disagreeable look in his eyes such as one sees in magistrate in particularly important cases or prosecutor in a people who have slept too long after dinner, and it spoilt his circuit court, of being a society lion, one always thought of delicate, intelligent profile; and the high boots he was wear-Moscow. To live, one must be in Moscow; here one cared for ing did not suit him, but looked clumsy. The bookkeeper nothing, one grew easily resigned to one’s insignificant posi-had introduced him: “This is our insurance agent.” tion, and only e