Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,18

breathed greedily with her whole breast, as if sensing that she did not have long to breathe …

Andrei Andreich tosses his head like a stung horse and, to stifle the painful memories, starts crossing himself rapidly …

“Remember, O Lord,” he murmurs, “the departed servant of God, the harlot Maria, and forgive her transgressions both voluntary and involuntary …”

The indecent word again escapes his mouth, but he does not notice it: what is stuck fast in his consciousness will not be dug out of it even by a nail, still less by Father Grigory’s admonitions! Makaryevna sighs and whispers something, sucking in air. Mitka with the paralyzed arm ponders something …

“… where there is no sickness, sorrow or sighing …” drones the beadle, putting his hand to his right cheek.

Bluish smoke streams from the censer and bathes in a wide, slanting ray of sunlight that crosses the gloomy, lifeless emptiness of the church. And it seems that, together with the smoke, the soul of the departed woman herself hovers in the ray of sunlight. The streams of smoke, looking like a child’s curls, twist, rush upwards to the window and seem to shun the dejection and grief that fill this poor soul.

FEBRUARY 1886

ANYUTA

In the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous grinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room had not yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …

“The right lung consists of three sections …” repeated Klochkov. “The boundaries! The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest, the fourth rib at the side … the spina scapulae in the back …”

Klochkov, straining to visualize what he had just read, raised his eyes to the ceiling. Getting no clear impression, he began feeling his own upper ribs through his waistcoat.

“These ribs are like piano keys,” he said. “To avoid confusion in counting them, one absolutely must get used to them. I’ll have to study it with a skeleton and a living person … Come here, Anyuta, let me try to get oriented!”

Anyuta stopped embroidering, took off her blouse, and straightened up. Klochkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs.

“Hm … The first rib can’t be felt … It’s behind the collarbone … Here’s the second rib … Right … Here’s the third … Here’s the fourth … Hm … Right … Why are you flinching?”

“Your fingers are cold!”

“Well, well … you won’t die, don’t fidget. So then, this is the third rib, and this is the fourth … You’re so skinny to look at, yet I can barely feel your ribs. The second … the third … No, I’ll get confused this way and won’t have a clear picture … I’ll have to draw it … Where’s my charcoal?”

Klochkov took a piece of charcoal and drew several parallel lines with it on Anyuta’s chest, corresponding to the ribs.

“Excellent. All just like the palm of your hand … Well, and now we can do some tapping. Stand up!”

Anyuta stood up and lifted her chin. Klochkov started tapping and got so immersed in this occupation that he did not notice that Anyuta’s lips, nose, and fingers had turned blue with cold. Anyuta was shivering and feared that the medical student, noticing her shivering, would stop drawing with charcoal and tapping, and would perhaps do poorly at the examination.

“Now it’s all clear,” said Klochkov, and he stopped tapping. “You sit like that, without wiping off the charcoal, while I go over it a little more.”

And the medical student again began pacing and repeating. Anyuta, as if tattooed, black stripes on her chest, shrunken with cold, sat and thought. She generally spoke very little, was always silent and kept thinking, thinking …

In all her six or seven years of wandering through