Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,77

for a long time without blinking, she imagined crowds of people, lights, the festive sounds of music, shouts of delight, she herself in a white dress, and flowers pouring on her from all sides. She also thought that beside her, leaning his elbows on the bulwark, stood a truly great man, a genius, one of God’s chosen … Everything he had created so far was beautiful, new, and extraordinary, and what he would create in time, when his rare talent was strengthened by maturity, would be astounding, immeasurably lofty, and this could be seen by his face, by his manner of expressing himself, and by his attitude towards nature. Of the shadows, the evening hues, the shining of the moon, he spoke somehow specially, in his own language, so that one inadvertently felt the charm of his power over nature. He himself was very handsome, original, and his life, independent, free, foreign to everything mundane, was like the life of a bird.

“It’s getting cool,” said Olga Ivanovna, shivering.

Ryabovsky wrapped his cloak around her and said sorrowfully:

“I feel I am in your power. I am a slave. What makes you so bewitching today?”

He gazed at her all the while, not tearing himself away, and his eyes were terrible, and she was afraid to look at him.

“I love you madly …” he whispered, breathing on her cheek. “Say one word to me, and I’ll cease living, I’ll abandon art …” he murmured in great agitation. “Love me, love …”

“Don’t speak like that,” said Olga Ivanovna, closing her eyes. “It’s terrible. And Dymov?”

“What of Dymov? Why Dymov? What do I care about Dymov? The Volga, the moon, beauty, my love, my ecstasy, and there isn’t any Dymov… Ah, I know nothing … I need no past, give me one instant… one moment.”

Olga Ivanovna’s heart was pounding. She wanted to think of her husband, but the whole of her past, with the wedding, with Dymov, with her soirées, seemed small to her, worthless, faded, unnecessary, and far, far away… What Dymov, indeed? Why Dymov? What did she care about Dymov? Did he really exist in nature, or was he merely a dream?

“For him, a simple and ordinary man, the happiness he has already received is enough,” she thought, covering her face with her hands. “Let them condemn me there, let them curse me, and I’ll just up and ruin myself, ruin myself to spite them all… One must experience everything in life. Oh, God, how scary and how good!”

“Well, what? What?” the artist murmured, embracing her and greedily kissing her hands, with which she tried weakly to push him away. “You love me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! A wondrous night!”

“Yes, what a night!” she whispered, looking into his eyes, glistening with tears. Then she glanced around quickly, embraced him, and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Approaching Kineshma!” someone said on the other side of the deck.

Heavy footsteps were heard. It was a man from the buffet walking by.

“Listen,” Olga Ivanovna said to him, laughing and crying from happiness, “bring us some wine.”

The artist, pale with excitement, sat down on a bench, looked at Olga Ivanovna with adoring, grateful eyes, then closed his eyes and said, smiling languidly:

“I’m tired.”

And he leaned his head against the bulwark.

V

The second day of September was warm and still, but gray. Early in the morning a light mist wandered over the Volga, and after nine a drizzling rain set in. And there was no hope that the sky would clear. Over tea Ryabovsky was saying to Olga Ivanovna that painting was the most ungrateful and boring of arts, that he was not an artist, and that only fools thought he had talent, and suddenly, out of the blue, he seized a knife and scratched the best of his studies. After tea he sat gloomily by the window and looked at the Volga. And the Volga was without a gleam, dull, lusterless, and cold-looking. Everything, everything recalled the approach of melancholy, dismal autumn. And it seemed as if nature now stripped the Volga of the luxurious green carpets on its banks, the diamond glints of the sun, the transparent blue distance, and all that was smart and showy, and packed it away in trunks till next spring, and the crows flew about the Volga, teasing her: “Bare! Bare!” Ryabovsky listened to their cawing and thought that he was already played out and had lost his talent, and that everything in this world was conventional, relative, and stupid, and that