Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (361 page)

When daylight came and the carts rattled on the streets, Vassiliev lay motionless on the sofa, staring at one point. He did not think any more of women, or men, or apostles. All his attention was fixed on the pain of his soul which tormented him. It was a dull pain, indefinite, vague ; it was like anguish and the most acute fear and despair. He could say where the pain was. It was in his breast, under the heart. It could not be compared to anything. Once on a time he used to have violent toothache. Once, he had pleurisy and neuralgia. But all these pains were as nothing beside the pain of his soul. Beneath this pain life seemed repulsive. The thesis, his brilliant work already written, the people he loved, the salvation of fallen women, all that which only yesterday he loved or was indifferent to, remembered now, irritated him in the same way as the noise of the carts, the running about of the porters and the daylight ... If someone now were to perform before his eyes a deed of mercy or an act of revolting violence, both would produce upon him an equally repulsive impression. Of all the thoughts which roved lazily in his head, two only did not irritate him : one — at any moment he had the power to kill himself, the other — that the pain would not last more than three days. The second he knew from experience.

After having lain down for a while he got up and walked wringing his hands, not from corner to corner as usually, but in a square along the walls. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass. His face was pale and haggard, his temples hollow, his eyes bigger, darker, more immobile, as if they were not his own, and they expressed the intolerable suffering of his soul.

In the afternoon the painter knocked at the door.

“Gregory, are you at home ? “ he asked.

Receiving no answer, he stood musing for a while, and said to himself good-naturedly :

“Out. He’s gone to the University. Damn him.”

And went away.

Vassiliev lay down on his bed and burying his head in the pillow he began to cry with the pain. But the faster his tears flowed, the more terrible was the pain. When it was dark, he got into his mind the idea of the horrible night which was awaiting him and awful despair seized him. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, leaving the door wide open, and into the street without reason or purpose. Without asking himself where he was going, he walked quickly to Sadovaia Street.

Snow was falling as yesterday. It was thawing. Putting his hands into his sleeves, shivering, and frightened of the noises and the bells of the trams and of passers-by, Vassiliev walked from Sadovaia to Sukhariev Tower then to the Red Gates, and from here he turned and went to Basmannaia. He went into a public-house and gulped down a big glass of vodka, but felt no better. Arriving at Razgoulyai, he turned to the right and began to stride down streets that he had never in his life been down before. He came to that old bridge under which the river Yaouza roars and from whence long rows of lights are seen in the windows of the Red Barracks. In order to distract the pain of his soul by a new sensation or another pain, not knowing what to do, weeping and trembling, Vassiliev unbuttoned his coat and jacket, baring his naked breast to the damp snow and the wind. Neither lessened the pain. Then he bent over the rail of the bridge and stared down at the black, turbulent Yaouza, and he suddenly wanted to throw himself head-first, not from hatred of life, not for the sake of suicide, but only to hurt himself and so to kill one pain by another. But the black water, the dark, deserted banks covered with snow were frightening. He shuddered and went on. He walked as far as the Red Barracks, then back and into a wood, from the wood to the bridge again.

“No! Home, home,” he thought. “At home I believe it’s easier.”

And he went back. On returning home he tore off his wet clothes and hat, began to pace along the walls, and paced incessantly until the very morning.

VII

The next morning when the painter and the medico came to see him, they found him in a shirt torn to ribbons, his hands bitten all over, tossing about in the room and moaning with pain.

“For God’s sake ! “ he began to sob, seeing his comrades, “ Take me anywhere you like, do what you like, but save me, for God’s sake now, now ! I’ll kill myself.”

The painter went pale and was bewildered. The medico, too, nearly began to cry ; but, believing that medical men must be cool and serious on every occasion of life, he said coldly :

“It’s a fit you’ve got. But never mind. Come to the doctor, at once.”

“Anywhere you like, but quickly, for God’s sake ! “

“Don’t be agitated. You must struggle with yourself.”

The painter and the medico dressed Vassiliev with trembling hands and led him into the street.

“Mikhail Sergueyich has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a long while,” the medico said on the way. “ He’s a very nice man, and knows his job splendidly. He took his degree in ‘82, and has got a huge practice already. He keeps friends with the students.”

“ Quicker, quicker . . .” urged Vassiliev.

Mikhail Sergueyich, a stout doctor with fair hair, received the friends politely, firmly, coldly, and smiled with one cheek only.

“The painter and Mayer have told me of your disease already,” he said. “ Very glad to be of service to you. Well ? Sit down, please.”

He made Vassiliev sit down in a big chair by the table, and put a box of cigarettes in front of him.

“Well ? “ he began, stroking his knees. “Let’s make a start. How old are you ? “

He put questions and the medico answered. He asked whether Vassiliev’s father suffered from any peculiar diseases, if he had fits of drinking, was he distinguished by his severity or any other eccentricities. He asked the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and brothers. Having ascertained that his mother had a fine voice and occasionally appeared on the stage, he suddenly brightened up and asked :

“Excuse me, but could you recall whether the theatre was not a passion with your mother ? “

About twenty minutes passed. Vassiliev was bored by the doctor stroking his knees and talking of the same thing all the while.

“As far as I can understand your questions, Doctor,” he said. “ You want to know whether my disease is hereditary or not. It is not hereditary.”

The doctor went on to ask if Vassiliev had not any secret vices in his early youth, any blows on the head, any love passions, eccentricities, or exceptional infatuations. To half the questions habitually asked by careful doctors you may return no answer without any injury to your health ; but Mikhail Sergueyich, the medico and the painter looked as though, if Vassiliev failed to answer even one single question, everything would be ruined. For some reason the doctor wrote down the answers he received on a scrap of paper. Discovering that Vassiliev had already passed through the faculty of natural science and was now in the Law faculty, the doctor began to be pensive. . . .

“He wrote a brilliant thesis last year ...” said the medico.

“Excuse me. You mustn’t interrupt me ; you prevent me from concentrating,” the doctor said, smiling with one cheek. “ Yes, certainly that is important for the anamnesis. . . . Yes, yes. . . . And do you drink vodka ? “ he turned to Vassiliev.

“Very rarely.”

Another twenty minutes passed. The medico began
sotto voce
to give his opinion of the immediate causes of the fit and told how he, the painter and Vassiliev went to S —
 
— v Street the day before yesterday.

The indifferent, reserved, cold tone in which his friends and the doctor were speaking of the women and the miserable street seemed to him in the highest degree strange. . . .

“Doctor, tell me this one thing,” he said, restraining himself from being rude. “ Is prosti- tution an evil or not ? “

“My dear fellow, who disputes it ? “ the doctor said with an expression as though he had long ago solved all these questions for himself. “ Who disputes it ? “

“Are you a psychiatrist ? “

“Yes-s, a psychiatrist.”

“Perhaps all of you are right,” said Vassiliev, rising and beginning to walk from corner to corner. “ It may be. But to me all this seems amazing. They see a great achievement in my having passed through two faculties at the university ; they praise me to the skies because I have written a work that will be thrown away and forgotten in three years’ time, but because I can’t speak of prostitutes as indifferently as I can about these chairs, they send me to doctors, call me a lunatic, and pity me.”

For some reason Vassiliev suddenly began to feel an intolerable pity for himself, his friends, and everybody whom he had seen the day before yesterday, and for the doctor. He began to sob and fell into the chair.

The friends looked interrogatively at the doctor. He, looking as though he magnificently understood the tears and the despair, and knew himself a specialist in this line, approached Vassiliev and gave him some drops to drink, and then when Vassiliev grew calm undressed him and began to examine the sensitiveness of his skin, of the knee reflexes, ....

And Vassiliev felt better. When he was coming out of the doctor’s he was already ashamed ; the noise of the traffic did not seem irritating, and the heaviness beneath his heart became easier and easier as though it were thawing. In his hand were two prescriptions. One was for kali-bromatum, the other — morphia. He used to take both before.

He stood still in the street for a while, pensive, and then, taking leave of his friends, lazily dragged on towards the university.

OVERWHELMING SENSATIONS

Translated by John Middleton Murry 1915

THIS happened not so very long ago in the Moscow Circuit Court. The jurymen, left in court for the night, before going to bed, began a conversation about overwhelming sensations. It was occasioned by someone’s recollection of a witness who became a stammerer and turned grey, owing, as he said, to one dreadful moment. The jurymen decided before going to bed that each one of them should dig into his memories and tell a story. Life is short ; but still there is not a single man who can boast that he had not had some dreadful moments in his past.

One juryman related how he was nearly drowned. A second told how one night he poisoned his own child, in a place where there was neither doctor nor chemist, by giving the child white copperas in mistake for soda. The child did not die, but the father nearly went mad. A third, not an old man, but sickly, described his two attempts to commit suicide. Once he shot himself ; the second time he threw himself in front of a train.

The fourth, a short, stout man, smartly dressed, told the following story:

“I was no more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old, when I fell head over heels in love with my present wife and proposed to her. Now, I would gladly give myself a thrashing for that early marriage ; but then — well, I don’t know what would have happened to me if Natasha had refused. My love was most ardent, the kind described in novels as mad, passionate, and so on. My happiness choked me, and I did not know how to escape from it. I bored my father, my friends, the servants by continually telling them how desperately I was in love. Happy people are quite the most tiresome and boring. I used to be awfully exasperating. Even now I’m ashamed.

“At the time I had a newly-called barrister among my friends. The barrister is now known all over Russia, but then he was only at the beginning of his popularity, and he was not rich or famous enough to have the right not to recognise a friend when he met him or not to raise his hat. I used to go and see him once or twice a week.

“When I came, we used both to stretch ourselves upon the sofas and begin to philosophise.

“Once I lay on the sofa, harping on the theme that there is no more ungrateful profession than a barrister’s. I tried to show that after the witnesses have been heard the Court can easily dispense with the Crown Prosecutor and the barrister, because they are equally unnecessary and only hindrances. If an adult juryman, sound in spirit and mind, is convinced that this ceiling is white, or that Ivanov is guilty, no Demosthenes has the power to fight and overcome his conviction. Who can convince me that my moustache is carroty when I know it is black ? When I listen to an orator I may perhaps get sentimental and even shed a tear, but my rooted convictions, for the most part based on the obvious and on facts, will not be changed an atom. My friend the barrister contended that I was still young and silly and was talking childish nonsense. In his opinion an obvious fact when illumined by conscientious experts became still more obvious. That was his first point. His second was that a talent is a force, an elemental power, a hurricane, that is able to turn even stones to dust, not to speak of such trifles as the convictions of householders and small shopkeepers. It is as hard for human frailty to struggle against a talent as it is to look at the sun without being blinded or to stop the wind. By the power of the word one single mortal converts thousands of convinced savages to Christianity. Ulysses was the most convinced person in the world, but he was all submission before the Syrens, and so on. All history is made up of such instances. In life we meet them at every turn. And so it ought to be ; otherwise a clever person of talent would not be preferred before the stupid and untalented.

“I persisted and continued to argue that a conviction is stronger than any talent, though, speaking frankly, I myself could not define what exactly is a conviction and what is a talent. Probably I talked only for the sake of talking.

“ ‘ Take even your own case ‘ . . . said the barrister. ‘ You are convinced that your fiancee is an angel and that there’s not a man in all the town happier than you. I tell you, ten or twenty minutes would be quite enough for me to make you sit down at this very table and write to break off the engagement.’ “

I began to laugh.

“ ‘ Don’t laugh. I’m talking seriously,’ said my friend. ‘ If I only had the desire, in twenty minutes you would be happy in the thought that you have been saved from marriage. My talent is not great, but neither are you strong ? ‘ “

“ ‘ Well, try, please,’ I said. “

“ ‘ No, why should I ? I only said it in passing. You’re a good boy. It would be a pity to expose you to such an experiment. Besides, I’m not in the mood, to-day.’ “

“We sat down to supper. The wine and thoughts of Natasha and my love utterly filled me with a sense of youth and happiness. My happiness was so infinitely great that the green-eyed barrister opposite me seemed so unhappy, so little, so grey ! “

“ ‘ But do try,’ I pressed him. ‘ I beg you.’ “

“ The barrister shook his head and knit his brows. Evidently I had begun to bore him.

“ ‘ I know,’ he said, ‘ that when the experiment is over you will thank me and call me saviour, but one must think of your sweetheart too. She loves you, and your refusal would make her suffer. But what a beauty she is! I envy you.’

“The barrister sighed, swallowed some wine, and began to speak of what a wonderful creature my Natasha was. He had an uncommon gift for description. He could pour out a whoie heap of words about a woman’s eyelashes or her little finger. I listened to him with delight.

“ ‘ I’ve seen many women in my life-time,’ he said, ‘ but I give you my word of honour, I tell you as a friend, your Natasha Andreevna is a gem, a rare girl ! Of course, there are defects, even a good many, I grant you, but still she is charming.’

“And the barrister began to speak of the defects of my sweetheart. Now I quite understand it was a general conversation about women, one about their weak points in general ; but it appeared to me then as though he was speaking only of Natasha. He went into raptures about her snub-nose, her excited voice, her shrill laugh, her affectation — indeed, about everything I particularly disliked in her. All this was in his opinion infinitely amiable, gracious and feminine. Imperceptibly he changed from enthusiasm first to paternal edification, then to a light, sneering tone. . . . There was no Chairman of the Bench with us to stop the barrister riding the high horse. I hadn’t a chance of opening my mouth and what could I have said ? My friend said nothing new, his truths were long familiar. The poison was not at all in what he said, but altogether in the devilish form in which he said it. A form of Satan’s own invention ! As I listened to him I was convinced that one and the same word had a thousand meanings and nuances according to the way it is pronounced and the turn given to the sentence. I certainly cannot reproduce the tone or the form. I can only say that as I listened to my friend and paced from corner to corner of my room, I was revolted, exasperated, contemptuous according as he felt. I even believed him when, with tears in his eyes, he declared to me that I was a great man, deserving a better fate, and destined in the future to accomplish some remarkable exploit, from which I might be prevented by my marriage.

“ ‘ My dear friend,’ he exclaimed, firmly grasping my hand, ‘ I implore you, I command you : stop before it is too late. Stop ! God save you from this strange and terrible mistake ! My friend, don’t ruin your youth.’

“Believe me or not as you will, but finally I sat down at the table and wrote to my sweetheart breaking off the engagement. I wrote and rejoiced that there was still time to repair my mistake. When the envelope was sealed I hurried into the street to put it in a pillar box. The barrister came with me.

“ ‘ Splendid ! Superb ! ‘ he praised me when my letter to Natasha disappeared into the darkness of the pillar-box. ‘ I congratulate you with all my heart. I’m delighted for your sake.’

“After we had gone about ten steps together, the barrister continued :

“ ‘ Of course, marriage has its bright side too. I, for instance, belong to the kind of men for whom marriage and family life are everything.’

“He was already describing his life : all the ugliness of a lonely bachelor existence appeared before me.

“He spoke with enthusiasm of his future wife, of the pleasures of an ordinary family life, and his transports were so beautiful and sincere that I was in absolute despair by the time we reached his door.

“ ‘ What are you doing with me, you damnable man ? ‘ I said panting. ‘ You’ve ruined me ! Why did you make me write that cursed letter ? I love her ! I love her ! ‘

“And I swore that I was in love. I was terrified of my action. It already seemed wild and absurd to me. Gentlemen, it is quite impossible to imagine a more overwhelming sensation than mine at that moment ! If a kind man had happened to slip a revolver into my hand I would have put a bullet through my head gladly.

“ ‘ Well, that’s enough, enough ! ‘ the advocate said, patting my shoulder and beginning to laugh. ‘ Stop crying ! The letter won’t reach your sweetheart. It was I, not you, wrote the address on the envelope, and I muddled it up so that they won’t be able to make anything of it at the post-office. But let this be a lesson to you. Don’t discuss things you don’t understand.’ “

“Now, gentlemen, next, please.”

The fifth juryman had settled himself comfortably and already opened his mouth to begin his story, when we heard the clock striking from Spaisky Church-tower.

“Twelve . . .” one of the jurymen counted. “To which class, gentlemen, would you assign the sensations which our prisoner at the bar is now feeling ? The murderer passes the night here in a prisoner’s cell, either lying or sitting, certainly without sleeping and all through the sleepless night listens to the striking of the hours. What does he think of ? What dreams visit him ? “

And all the jurymen suddenly forgot about overwhelming sensations. The experience of their friend, who once wrote the letter to his Natasha, seemed unimportant, and not even amusing. Nobody told any more stories ; but they began to go to bed quietly, in silence.