Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,121

what an uneasy, uneven tone, what nervous, almost morbid defiance! Here was an article with what one would think was the most peaceable title and indifferent content: the subject was the Russian Antonov apple tree. Yet Yegor Semyonych began it with audiatur altera pars and ended with sapienti sat,4 and between these two pronouncements there was a whole fountain of venomous words of all sorts addressed to “the learned ignorance of our patented Messers the Horticulturists who observe nature from the height of their lecterns,” or to M. Gaucher, “whose success was created by amateurs and dilettantes,” followed by an inappropriately forced and insincere regret that it was no longer possible to give peasants a birching for stealing fruit and breaking the trees while they are at it.

“This is beautiful, sweet, and healthy work, but here, too, there are passions and war,” thought Kovrin. “It must be that everywhere and in all occupations, people with ideas are nervous and marked by high sensitivity. It probably has to be that way”

He thought of Tanya, who loved Yegor Semyonych’s articles so much. Small of stature, pale, so skinny that you could see her collarbones; her eyes wide open, dark, intelligent, always peering somewhere and seeking something; her gait like her father’s— small, hurried steps. She talks a lot, likes to argue, and accompanies every phrase, even the most insignificant, with expressive looks and gestures. She must be nervous in the highest degree.

Kovrin began to read further, but understood nothing and dropped it. The pleasant excitement, the same with which he had danced the mazurka and listened to the music earlier, now oppressed him and evoked a great many thoughts. He got up and began pacing the room, thinking about the black monk. It occurred to him that if he alone had seen this strange, supernatural monk, it meant that he was ill and had gone as far as hallucinations. This thought alarmed him, but not for long.

“But I’m quite well, and I do no one any harm, so there’s nothing bad in my hallucination,” he thought and felt good again.

He sat down on the sofa and put his head in his hands, holding back the incomprehensible joy that filled his whole being, then he paced about again and sat down to work. But the thoughts he read in the book did not satisfy him. He wanted something gigantic, boundless, staggering. Towards morning he undressed and reluctantly went to bed: he did have to sleep!

When he heard the footsteps of Yegor Semyonych leaving for the gardens, Kovrin rang the bell and told the servant to bring some wine. He drank several glasses of Lafite with pleasure, then pulled the blanket over his head; his consciousness went dim, and he fell asleep.

IV

Yegor Semyonych and Tanya often quarreled and said unpleasant things to each other.

One morning they had a squabble over something. Tanya began to cry and went to her room. She did not come out for dinner or for tea. Yegor Semyonych first went about all pompous, puffed up, as if wishing to make it known that for him the interests of justice and order were higher than anything in the world, but soon his character failed him and he lost his spirits. He wandered sadly through the park and kept sighing: “Ah, my God, my God!”—and did not eat a single crumb at dinner. Finally, guilty, suffering remorse, he knocked on the locked door and timidly called:

“Tanya! Tanya!”

And in answer to him a weak voice, exhausted from tears and at the same time resolute, came from behind the door:

“Leave me alone, I beg you.”

The suffering of the masters affected the entire household, even the people who worked in the garden. Kovrin was immersed in his interesting work, but in the end he, too, felt dull and awkward. To disperse the general bad mood somehow, he decided to intervene and before evening knocked on Tanya’s door. He was admitted.

“Aie, aie, what a shame!” he began jokingly, looking in surprise at Tanya’s tear-stained, mournful face, covered with red spots. “Can it be so serious? Aie, aie!”

“But if you only knew how he torments me!” she said, and tears, bitter, abundant tears, poured from her big eyes. “He wears me out!” she went on, wringing her hands. “I didn’t say anything to him … not anything … I just said there was no need to keep … extra workers, if… if it’s possible to hire day laborers whenever we like. The … the workers have already