Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,167

on the walls, the portraits. The paintings, done in oils, with gilded frames, were views of the Crimea, a stormy sea with a little boat, a Catholic monk with a wineglass, and all of them dry, slick, giftless … Not a single handsome, interesting face among the portraits, everywhere wide cheekbones, astonished eyes; Lialikov, Liza’s father, had a narrow forehead and a self-satisfied face, the uniform hung like a sack on his big, plebeian body, on his chest he had a medal and the badge of the Red Cross. The culture was poor, the luxury accidental, unconscious, ill at ease, like his uniform; the gleam of the floors was annoying, the chandelier was annoying, and for some reason brought to mind the story of the merchant who went to the bathhouse with a medal on his neck …

From the front hall came a whispering, someone quietly snored. And suddenly sharp, abrupt, metallic noises came from outside, such as Korolev had never heard before and could not understand now; they echoed strangely and unpleasantly in his soul.

“I don’t think I’d ever stay and live here for anything …” he thought, and again took up the scores.

“Doctor, come and have a bite to eat!” the governess called in a low voice.

He went to supper. The table was big, well furnished with food and wines, but only two people sat down: himself and Christina Dmitrievna. She drank Madeira, ate quickly, and talked, looking at him through her pince-nez:

“The workers are very pleased with us. We have theatricals at the factory every winter, the workers themselves act in them, and there are magic-lantern lectures, a magnificent tearoom, and whatever you like. They’re very devoted to us, and when they learned that Lizanka was worse, they held a prayer service for her. They’re uneducated, and yet they, too, have feelings.”

“It looks as if you have no men in the house,” said Korolev.

“Not one. Pyotr Nikanorych died a year and a half ago, and we were left by ourselves. So there’s just the three of us. In the summer we live here, and in the winter in Moscow, on Polianka Street. I’ve been with them for eleven years now. Like one of the family.”

For supper they were served sterlet, chicken cutlets, and fruit compote; the wines were expensive, French.

“Please, doctor, no ceremony,” said Christina Dmitrievna, eating and wiping her mouth with her fist, and it was obvious that her life there was fully to her satisfaction. “Please eat.”

After dinner the doctor was taken to a room where a bed had been made for him. But he did not want to sleep, it was stuffy and the room smelled of paint; he put his coat on and went out.

It was cool outside; dawn was already breaking,1 and in the damp air all five buildings with their tall smokestacks, the barracks and warehouses were clearly outlined. Since it was Sunday, no one was working, the windows were dark, and only in one of the buildings was a furnace still burning; the two windows were crimson and, along with smoke, fire occasionally came from the smokestack. Further away, beyond the yard, frogs were croaking and a nightingale sang.

Looking at the buildings and at the barracks where the workers slept, he again thought what he always thought when he saw factories. There may be theatricals for the workers, magic lanterns, factory doctors, various improvements, but even so the workers he had met that day on his way from the station did not look different in any way from the workers he had seen back in his childhood, when there were no factory theatricals or improvements. As a physician, he could make correct judgments about chronic ailments the fundamental cause of which was incomprehensible and incurable, and he looked at factories as a misunderstanding the cause of which was also obscure and irremediable, and while he did not consider all the improvements in the workers’ lives superfluous, he saw them as the equivalent of treating an incurable illness.

“This is a misunderstanding, of course …” he thought, looking at the crimson windows. “Fifteen hundred, two thousand factory hands work without rest, in unhealthy conditions, producing poor-quality calico, starving, and only occasionally sobering up from this nightmare in a pothouse; a hundred men supervise the work, and the whole life of those hundred men goes into levying fines, pouring out abuse, being unjust, and only the two or three so-called owners enjoy the profits, though they don’t work at all and scorn poor-quality