Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,156

her box with a fan, radiant, happy, and beside her Belikov, small, hunched up, as if they’d pulled him out of his house with pliers. I gave a party and the ladies demanded that I invite Belikov and Varenka without fail. In short, the machine got going. It turned out that Varenka wouldn’t have minded getting married. Her life with her brother was not so happy, all they could do was argue and quarrel the whole day long. Here’s a scene for you: Kovalenko goes walking down the street, a tall, hefty hulk in an embroidered shirt, his forelock falling over his forehead from under his cap; a pile of books in one hand, a thick, knotty stick in the other. Behind him comes his sister, also with books.

“‘But Mikhailik, you haven’t read this one!’ she protests loudly. ‘I’m telling you, I swear, you haven’t read it at all!’

“‘And I tell you I have!’ shouts Kovalenko, rapping his stick on the sidewalk.

“‘Ah, my God, Minchik! Why are you getting angry, we’re having a conversation of principle.’

“‘And I tell you I’ve read it!’ Kovalenko shouts still louder.

“And at home, whenever an outsider comes, there’s some spat. Such a life was probably boring, she wanted a corner of her own, and age was also a consideration; there was no time for choosing, she’d marry anybody, even the teacher of Greek. And to tell the truth, for the majority of our young ladies, it didn’t matter whom they married, as long as they got married. Be that as it may, Varenka began to show our Belikov a marked benevolence.

“And Belikov? He called on Kovalenko just as he did on us. He’d come to him and say nothing. He’d say nothing, and Varenka would sing ‘The Winds Waft’ for him, or look at him pensively with her dark eyes, or suddenly dissolve:

“‘Ha, ha, ha!’

“In amorous matters, especially in marriage, insinuation plays a major role. Everybody—his colleagues and the ladies—started assuring Belikov that he must marry, that there was nothing left for him in life but to marry; we all congratulated him and with important faces uttered various banalities, such as that marriage was a serious step; besides, Varenka was interesting and not bad-looking, she was the daughter of a state councillor and owned a farmstead, and, above all, she was the first woman who had treated him gently, cordially—his head got in a whirl, and he decided that he really did have to marry.”

“That was the time to take away his galoshes and umbrella,” said Ivan Ivanych.

“Imagine, that turned out to be impossible. He put Varenka’s portrait on his desk and kept coming to me and talking about Varenka, about family life, about marriage being a serious step, he visited the Kovalenkos frequently, but he didn’t change his way of life in the least. Even the opposite, the decision to marry affected him somehow morbidly, he lost weight, grew pale, and seemed to withdraw further into his case.

“‘I like Varvara Savvishna,’ he said to me with a faint, crooked little smile, ‘and I know that every man needs to marry, but … you know, all this has happened somehow suddenly … I have to think.’

“‘What’s there to think about?’ I say to him. ‘Marry her, and that’s that.’

“‘No, marriage is a serious step, I must first weigh my future duties, responsibilities … or something may come of it later. It bothers me so much that I’ve now stopped sleeping at night. And, I confess, I’m afraid: she and her brother have some strange way of thinking, they reason, you know, somehow strangely, and her character is very sprightly. I’ll get married and then, for all I know, wind up in some kind of trouble.’

“And he didn’t propose, he kept postponing it, to the great vexation of the director’s wife and our other ladies; he kept weighing his future duties and responsibilities and meanwhile went strolling with Varenka almost every day, perhaps thinking it was necessary in his position, and came to me to talk about family life. And, in all probability, he would have proposed in the end, and one of those needless, stupid marriages would have taken place, such as take place here by the thousand out of boredom and idleness, if a kolossalische Scandal had not suddenly occurred. It must be said that Varenka’s brother, Kovalenko, had hated Belikov from the first day of their acquaintance and could not bear him.

“‘I don’t understand,’ he said to us, shrugging his shoulders, ‘I don’t