Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,67

sent for, this and that, women’s talk, and our Vasya went to look himself up a bride. He picked out the widow Samokhvalikha’s Mashenka. Without more ado the couple got blessed and the whole thing was put together in a week. The girl was young, about seventeen, short, scanty, but with a fair and pleasant face, and with all the qualities, like a young lady; and the dowry wasn’t bad either—five hundred roubles in cash, a cow, linen … And three days after the wedding, as if her heart could sense it, the old woman departed for the heavenly Jerusalem, where there’s no sickness or sighing.1 The young couple paid her their respects and began life together. They lived in splendid fashion for about half a year, then suddenly a new woe. Misfortunes never come singly: Vasya was summoned to the office to draw lots. They took him, the dear heart, as a soldier and didn’t even shorten his term. They shaved his head and drove him to the Kingdom of Poland. It was God’s will, nothing to be done. He was all right as he took leave of his wife in the yard, but when he gave a last look at the hayloft with his pigeons, he dissolved in floods of tears. It was a pity to see. At first, so as not to be bored, Mashenka took in her mother; the mother stayed till this Kuzka was born, then went to Oboyan to her other daughter, also married, and Mashenka was left alone with the baby. Five carters, all drunken folk, mischievous; horses, wagons, then a fence would collapse, or the soot would catch fire in the chimney—not a woman’s business, so she started turning to me, in neighborly fashion, for every trifle. Well, I’d come and take care of it, give her advice … You know, there was nothing for it but to go in, have some tea, talk a bit. I was a young man, of a mental sort, liked to talk about various subjects, and she was educated and polite, too. She dressed neatly, went about with a parasol in summer. I’d start on divinity or politics with her, and she’d be flattered and treat me to tea and preserves … In short, not to embroider on it, I’ll tell you, grandpa, that before a year was out the unclean spirit, the enemy of the human race, got me worked up. I began to notice that if I didn’t go to her one day, I’d feel out of sorts, bored. And I kept inventing some reason to go to her. ‘It’s time you put your winter sashes in,’ I’d say, and I’d spend the whole day loitering around her place, putting the sashes in and doing it so as there were two sashes left for the next day. ‘I must count up Vasya’s pigeons, to make sure none gets lost,’ and the like. I kept talking with her over the fence, and in the end, to save going the long way round, I made a little gate in it. There’s a lot of evil and all sorts of vileness in this world from the female sex. Not only us sinners but even holy men have been led astray. Mashenka didn’t do anything to turn me away from her. Instead of remembering her husband and minding herself, she fell in love with me. I began to notice that she was bored, too, and kept walking near the fence and looking into my yard through the cracks. The brains in my head whirled with fantasy. On Thursday in Holy Week,2 early, at daybreak, I went to the market, and as I passed her gate, the unclean one was right there. I looked—her gate had a little lattice at the top—and she was already up and standing in the middle of the yard feeding the ducks. I couldn’t help myself and called to her. She came up and looked at me through the lattice. Fair little face, tender eyes, still sleepy … I liked her very much and began paying her compliments, as if we weren’t by the gate but at a birthday party, and she blushed, laughed, and kept looking right into my eyes without blinking. I lost my mind and started explaining my amorous feelings to her … She opened the gate and let me in, and from that morning on we began to live as husband and wife.”

Hunchbacked Alyoshka came into the yard from outside