Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,53

it’s still warm and I have free time, to go to Kharkov and there find out what sort of man our Gnekker is.

“All right, I’ll go …” I agree.

My wife, pleased with me, gets up and goes to the door, but comes back at once and says:

“Incidentally, one more request. I know you’ll be angry, but it is my duty to warn you … Forgive me, Nikolai Stepanych, but there has begun to be talk among all our neighbors and acquaintances that you visit Katya rather often. She’s intelligent, educated, I don’t dispute it, one may enjoy spending time with her, but at your age and with your social position, you know, it’s somehow strange to find pleasure in her company … Besides, her reputation is such that …”

All the blood suddenly drains from my brain, sparks shoot from my eyes, I jump up and, clutching my head, stamping my feet, shout in a voice not my own:

“Leave me! Leave me! Get out!”

My face is probably terrible, my voice strange, because my wife suddenly turns pale and cries out loudly in a desperate voice, also somehow not her own. At our cries, Liza, Gnekker, then Yegor come running in …

“Leave me!” I shout. “Get out! Out!”

My legs go numb, as if they’re not there, I feel myself fall into someone’s arms, briefly hear someone weeping, and sink into a swoon that lasts for two or three hours.

Now about Katya. She calls on me every day towards evening, and, of course, neighbors and acquaintances cannot fail to notice it. She comes for just a minute and takes me for a ride with her. She has her own horse and a new charabanc, bought this summer. Generally, she lives in grand style: she has rented an expensive separate summer house with a big garden and moved all her town furniture into it; keeps two maids, a coachman … I often ask her:

“Katya, how are you going to live when you’ve squandered all your father’s money?”

“We’ll see then,” she replies.

“That money deserves a more serious attitude, my friend. A good man earned it by honest labor.”

“You already told me about that. I know.”

First we drive through the field, then through the evergreen forest that can be seen from my window. I still find nature beautiful, though a demon whispers to me that none of these pines and firs, birds and white clouds in the sky will notice my absence when I die three or four months from now. Katya enjoys driving the horse and is pleased that the weather is nice and that I’m sitting beside her. She’s in fine spirits and doesn’t say anything sharp.

“You’re a very good man, Nikolai Stepanych,” she says. “You’re a rare specimen, and there’s no actor who could play you. Even a bad actor could play me, or Mikhail Fyodorych, for instance, but no one could play you. And I envy you, envy you terribly! Because what am I the picture of? What?”

She thinks for a moment and asks:

“I’m a negative phenomenon—right, Nikolai Stepanych?”

“Right,” I answer.

“Hm … What am I to do?”

What answer can I give her? It’s easy to say “work,” or “give what you have to the poor,” or “know yourself,” and because it’s easy to say, I don’t know how to answer.

My general-practitioner colleagues, when they teach medical treatment, advise one “to individualize each particular case.” One need only follow that advice to be convinced that the remedies recommended by textbooks as the best and wholly suitable for the standard case, prove completely unsuitable in particular cases. The same is true for moral illnesses.

But answer I must, and so I say:

“You have too much free time, my friend. You must occupy yourself with something. Why indeed don’t you become an actress again, since you have the calling?”

“I can’t.”

“Your tone and manner make it seem that you’re a victim. I don’t like that, my friend. It’s your own fault. Remember, you started by getting angry at people and their ways, but you did nothing to make them better. You didn’t fight the evil, you got tired, and you are the victim not of the struggle, but of your own weakness. Well, of course, you were young then, inexperienced, but now everything might go differently. Really, try it again! You’ll work and serve holy art …”

“Don’t dissemble, Nikolai Stepanych,” Katya interrupts me. “Let’s agree once and for all: we can talk about actors, about actresses, or writers, but we’ll leave art alone. You’re a wonderful, rare