Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,110

a detailed catalogue of his books and glued labels to their spines, and this mechanical, painstaking work seemed to him more interesting than reading. This monotonous, painstaking work lulled his mind in some incomprehensible way, he did not think of anything, and the time passed quickly. He even found it interesting to sit in the kitchen and peel potatoes with Daryushka or sort buckwheat. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church. Standing by the wall, eyes closed, he listened to the singing and thought about his father, his mother, the university, religion; he felt peaceful, sad, and afterwards, leaving the church, was sorry the service had ended so soon.

Twice he went to the hospital to see Ivan Dmitrich and talk with him. But both times Ivan Dmitrich was unusually upset and angry; he begged to be left alone, having long since grown weary of empty chatter, and for all his sufferings he asked only one reward of cursed, mean people—solitary confinement. Was even that to be denied him? Both times, when Andrei Yefimych took leave of him and wished him a good night, he snarled and said:

“Go to the devil!”

And now Andrei Yefimych did not know whether he should go a third time or not. But he wanted to go.

Formerly, in the time after dinner, Andrei Yefimych had paced his rooms and reflected, but now he spent the time between dinner and evening tea lying on the sofa, face to the back, giving himself up to petty thoughts, which he was unable to fight off. He felt offended that for his more than twenty years of service he had been given neither a pension nor a one-time payment. True, he had served dishonestly, but everyone who served got a pension, whether they were honest or not. Contemporary justice consisted in granting rank, decorations, and pensions not to moral qualities or abilities but to service in general, however it was performed. Why should he be the only exception? He had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass the grocery shop and look at the shopkeeper. He had already run up a bill of thirty-two roubles for beer. He also owed money to the tradeswoman Belov. Daryushka sold old clothes and books on the sly and lied to the landlady that the doctor was soon to receive a very large sum of money.

He was angry with himself for having spent the thousand roubles he had saved on a trip. How useful that thousand would have been to him now! He was vexed that people would not leave him alone. Khobotov considered it his duty to visit his sick colleague occasionally. Everything about him disgusted Andrei Yefimych: his well-fed face, and his bad, condescending tone, and the word “colleague,” and his high boots; most disgusting was that he considered it his duty to treat Andrei Yefimych and thought that he was indeed treating him. On each of his visits he brought a bottle of potassium bromide and rhubarb pills.

Mikhail Averyanych also considered it his duty to visit his friend and divert him. He always entered Andrei Yefimych’s with affected nonchalance and a forced guffaw and began assuring him that he looked very well today and, thank God, things were improving, from which it could be concluded that he considered his friend’s condition hopeless. He had not yet paid back his Warsaw debt and was weighed down by heavy shame, felt tense, and therefore tried to guffaw more loudly and talk more amusingly. His jokes and stories now seemed endless and were a torment both to Andrei Yefimych and for himself.

In his presence Andrei Yefimych usually lay on the sofa with his face to the wall and listened with clenched teeth; layers of scum settled on his soul, and after each visit from his friend he felt this scum rising higher, as if reaching to his throat.

To stifle his petty feelings, he hastened to reflect that he himself, and Khobotov, and Mikhail Averyanych, must die sooner or later, without leaving even a trace on nature. If one should imagine some spirit, a million years from now, flying through space past the earth, that spirit would see only clay and bare cliffs. Everything—including culture and moral law—would have perished, and no burdock would even be growing.17 What, then, was this shame before the shopkeeper, the worthless Khobotov, the painful friendship of Mikhail Averyanych? It was all nonsense and trifles.

But such reasoning no longer helped. As soon as he imagined the earth a