Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,149

good ten years older than he and ruled him so strictly that, whenever he went away from the house, he had to ask her permission. She sobbed frequently in a male voice, and then I would send word that unless she stopped I would give up my lodgings, and she would stop.

When we came home, Belokurov sat on the sofa and frowned pensively, and I began pacing the hall, feeling a quiet excitement, as if I were in love. I wanted to talk about the Volchaninovs.

“Lida can only fall in love with a zemstvo activist, whose passions are the same as hers—hospitals and schools,” I said. “Oh, for the sake of such a girl you could not only join the zemstvo, but even wear out a pair of iron shoes, as in the old tale.5 And Missyus? How lovely this Missyus is!”

Belokurov, with his drawn out “E-e-eh,” began talking at length about the disease of the age—pessimism. He spoke confidently and in such a tone as if I were arguing with him. Hundreds of miles of deserted, monotonous, scorched steppe cannot produce such gloom as one man when he sits and talks and nobody knows when he will leave.

“The point isn’t pessimism or optimism,” I said irritably, “but that ninety-nine people out of a hundred are witless.”

Belokurov took it personally, became offended, and left.

III

“The prince is visiting in Malozyomovo and sends you his greetings,” Lida was saying to her mother, having returned from somewhere and taking off her gloves. “He tells many interesting things … He promises to raise the question of a dispensary in Malozyomovo again in the provincial assembly, but he says there’s little hope.” And turning to me, she said: “Excuse me, I keep forgetting that this cannot be of interest to you.”

I felt annoyed.

“Why not?” I asked and shrugged my shoulders. “You have no wish to know my opinion, but I assure you the question is of lively interest to me.”

“It is?”

“Yes, it is. In my opinion there’s no need at all for a dispensary in Malozyomovo.”

My annoyance communicated itself to her; she looked at me, narrowing her eyes, and asked:

“What do they need? Landscapes?”

“No need for landscapes either. They don’t need anything.”

She finished taking off her gloves and opened a newspaper that had just been brought from the post office; after a minute she said softly, obviously restraining herself:

“Last week Anna died in childbirth. If there had been a dispensary nearby, she would still be alive. And it seems to me that gentleman landscape painters ought to have some sort of convictions in that regard.”

“I have very definite convictions in that regard, I assure you,” I replied, but she shielded herself from me with the newspaper as if she did not wish to listen. “In my opinion, dispensaries, schools, libraries, first-aid kits, under the existing conditions, only serve enslavement. The people are fettered with a great chain, and you don’t cut the chain, you merely add new links to it—there’s my conviction for you.”

She raised her eyes to me and smiled derisively, while I went on trying to grasp my main thought:

“What matters is not that Anna died in childbirth, but that all these Annas, Mavras, Pelageyas bend their backs from early morning till dark, get sick from overwork, tremble all their lives for their hungry and sick children, fear death and sickness all their lives, get treated all their lives, fade early, age early, and die in dirt and stench; their children grow up and start the same tune, and so hundreds of years go by, and billions of people live worse than animals—only for the sake of a crust of bread, knowing constant fear. The whole horror of their situation is that they have no time to think of their souls, no time to remember their image and likeness;6hunger, cold, animal fear, a mass of work, like a snowslide, bar all the paths to spiritual activity, to what precisely distinguishes man from animal and is the only thing worth living for. You come to their aid with hospitals and schools, but that doesn’t free them from bondage, but, on the contrary, enslaves them still more, because, by introducing new prejudices in their life, you increase the number of their needs, not to mention that they must pay the zemstvo for their little pills and primers, and that means bending their backs even more.”

“I won’t argue with you,” said Lida, lowering the newspaper. “I’ve already heard it all. I’ll tell you just one thing: