Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,59

voice:

“I’ll soon be no more, Katya …”

“Just one word, one word!” she weeps, holding her arms out to me. “What am I to do?”

“You’re a strange one, really …” I murmur. “I don’t understand! Such a clever girl and suddenly—there you go, bursting into tears! …

Silence ensues. Katya straightens her hair, puts her hat on, then crumples the letters and stuffs them into her bag—and all this silently and unhurriedly Her face, breast, and gloves are wet with tears, but the expression of her face is already dry, severe … I look at her and feel ashamed that I’m happier than she is. I’ve noticed the absence in me of what my philosopher colleagues call a general idea only shortly before death, in the twilight of my days, but the soul of this poor thing has known and will know no refuge all her life, all her life!

“Let’s have breakfast, Katya,” I say.

“No, thank you,” she replies coldly.

Another minute passes in silence.

“I don’t like Kharkov,” I say. “Much too gray. A gray sort of city.”

“Yes, perhaps so … Not pretty … I won’t stay long … Passing through. I’m leaving today.”

“Where for?”

“The Crimea … I mean, the Caucasus.”

“Ah. For long?”

“I don’t know.”

Katya gets up and, smiling coldly, gives me her hand without looking at me.

I want to ask: “So you won’t be at my funeral?” But she doesn’t look at me, her hand is cold, like a stranger’s. I silently walk with her to the door … Now she has left my room and walks down the long corridor without looking back. She knows I’m following her with my eyes and will probably look back from the turn.

No, she didn’t look back. The black dress flashed a last time, the footsteps faded away … Farewell, my treasure!

NOVEMBER 1889

GUSEV

I

It has grown dark, it will soon be night.

Gusev, a discharged private, sits up on his cot and says in a low voice:

“Can you hear, Pavel Ivanych? A soldier in Suchan told me their ship ran over a big fish as it went and broke a hole in its bottom.”

The man of unknown status whom he is addressing and whom everyone in the ship’s sick bay calls Pavel Ivanych, says nothing, as if he has not heard.

And again there is silence … The wind plays in the rigging, the propeller thuds, the waves splash, the cots creak, but the ear is long accustomed to it all, and it seems as if everything around is asleep and still. It is boring. The other three patients—two soldiers and a sailor—who played cards all day long, are now asleep and muttering to themselves.

It seems the ship is beginning to toss. The cot under Gusev slowly goes up and down, as if sighing—it does it once, twice, a third time … Something hits the floor with a clank: a mug must have fallen.

“The wind has snapped its chain …” says Gusev, listening.

This time Pavel Ivanych coughs and replies irritably:

“First you’ve got a ship running over a fish, then the wind snaps its chain … Is the wind a beast that it can snap its chain?”

“That’s how Christian folk talk.”

“And Christian folk are as ignorant as you are … What else do they say? You have to keep your head on your shoulders and think. Senseless man.”

Pavel Ivanych is subject to seasickness. When the ship tosses, he usually gets angry and the least trifle irritates him. But there is, in Gusev’s opinion, absolutely nothing to get angry about. What is so strange or tricky, for instance, even in the fish, or in the wind snapping its chain? Suppose the fish is as big as a mountain, and its back is as hard as a sturgeon’s; suppose, too, that at the world’s end there are thick stone walls, and the angry winds are chained to the walls … If they have not snapped their chains, why are they rushing about like crazy all over the sea and straining like dogs? If they do not get chained up, where do they go when it is still?

Gusev spends a long time thinking about fish as big as mountains and thick, rusty chains, then he gets bored and begins thinking about his homeland, to which he is now returning after serving for five years in the Far East. He pictures an enormous pond covered with snow … On one side of the pond, a porcelain factory the color of brick, with a tall smokestack and clouds of black smoke; on the other