Selected Stories of Anton Chekov - By Anton Chekhov Page 0,86

into a noose. You want money now, I say, and in a little while, lo and behold, you’ll want something else, and then more and more. If you wish to be happy, I say, then first of all wish for nothing. Yes … Since fate has bitterly offended you and me, I say to him, there’s no point asking her for mercy or bowing at her feet, we should scorn her and laugh at her. Otherwise it’s she who will laugh at us. That’s what I said to him … About two years later, I take him to this side, and he rubs his hands and laughs. ‘I’m going to Gyrino,’ he says, ‘to meet my wife. She’s taken pity on me,’ he says, ‘and she’s coming. She’s a nice woman, a kind one.’ And he’s even breathless with joy. So two days later he arrives with his wife. A young lady, beautiful, in a hat; with a baby girl in her arms. And a lot of luggage of all sorts. My Vassily Sergeich fusses around her, can’t have enough of looking at her and praising her. ‘Yes, brother Semyon, people can live in Siberia, too!’ Well, I think, all right, you won’t be overjoyed. And after that he began to visit Gyrino nearly every week, to see if money had come from Russia. He needed no end of money. ‘For my sake,’ he says, ‘to share my bitter lot, she’s ruining her youth and beauty here in Siberia, and on account of that,’ he says, ‘I must offer her all sorts of pleasures …’ To make it more cheerful for the lady, he began keeping company with officials and all sorts of trash. And it’s a sure thing that all such people have to be wined and dined, and there should be a piano, and a shaggy lapdog on the sofa—it can croak for all of me … Luxury, in short, indulgence. The lady didn’t live with him long. How could she? Clay, water, cold, no vegetables, no fruit, drunken, uneducated people everywhere, no civility at all, and she’s a spoiled lady, from the capital … And, sure enough, she got bored … And her husband, say what you like, is no longer a gentleman, he’s an exile—it’s not the same honor. In about three years, I remember, on the eve of the Dormition,1 a shout comes from the other bank. I went over in the ferry, I see—the lady, all wrapped up, and a young gentleman with her, one of the officials. A troika … I brought them over to this side, they got in and— that’s the last I ever saw of them! They passed out of the picture. And towards morning Vassily Sergeich drove up with a pair. ‘Did my wife pass by here, Semyon, with a gentleman in spectacles?’ She did, I say, go chase the wind in the field! He galloped after them, pursued them for five days. Afterwards, when I took him back to the other side, he fell down and began howling and beating his head on the floorboards. There you have it, I say. I laugh and remind him: ‘People can live in Siberia, too!’ And he beats his head even harder … After that he wanted to get his freedom. His wife went to Russia, and so he was drawn there, too, to see her and get her away from her lover. And so, brother dear, he began riding nearly every day either to the post office or to see the authorities in town. He kept sending and submitting appeals to be pardoned and allowed to return home, and he told me he’d spent two hundred roubles on telegrams alone. He sold the land, pawned the house to the Jews. He turned gray, bent, his face got as yellow as a consumptive’s. He talks to you and goes hem, hem, hem … and there are tears in his eyes. He suffered some eight years like that with these appeals, but then he revived and got happy again: he came up with a new indulgence. His daughter’s grown up, you see. He looks at her and can’t have enough. And, to tell the truth, she’s not bad at all: pretty, with dark eyebrows, and a lively character. Every Sunday he took her to church in Gyrino. The two of them stand side by side on the ferry, she laughs and he can’t take his eyes off her. ‘Yes, Semyon,’ he says,