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A.P. Chekhov -
Anna on the Neck
I
II
I
AFTER the wedding they had not even light
refreshments; the happy pair simply drank a glass of champagne,
changed into their travelling things, and drove to the station.
Instead of a gay wedding ball and supper, instead of music and
dancing, they went on a journey to pray at a shrine a hundred
and fifty miles away. Many people commended this, saying that
Modest Alexeitch was a man high up in the service and no longer
young, and that a noisy wedding might not have seemed quite
suitable; and music is apt to sound dreary when a government
official of fifty-two marries a girl who is only just eighteen.
People said, too, that Modest Alexeitch, being a man of
principle, had arranged this visit to the monastery expressly in
order to make his young bride realize that even in marriage he
put religion and morality above everything.
The happy pair were seen off at the station. The crowd of
relations and colleagues in the service stood, with glasses in
their hands, waiting for the train to start to shout "Hurrah!"
and the bride's father, Pyotr Leontyitch, wearing a top-hat and
the uniform of a teacher, already drunk and very pale, kept
craning towards the window, glass in hand and saying in an
imploring voice:
"Anyuta! Anya, Anya! one word!"
Anna bent out of the window to him, and he whispered something
to her, enveloping her in a stale smell of alcohol, blew into
her ear -- she could make out nothing -- and made the sign of
the cross over her face, her bosom, and her hands; meanwhile he
was breathing in gasps and tears were shining in his eyes. And
the schoolboys, Anna's brothers, Petya and Andrusha, pulled at
his coat from behind, whispering in confusion:
"Father, hush! . . . Father, that's enough. . . ."
When the train started, Anna saw her father run a little way
after the train, staggering and spilling his wine, and what a
kind, guilty, pitiful face he had:
"Hurra--ah!" he shouted.
The happy pair were left alone. Modest Alexeitch looked about
the compartment, arranged their things on the shelves, and sat
down, smiling, opposite his young wife. He was an official of
medium height, rather stout and puffy, who looked exceedingly
well nourished, with long whiskers and no moustache. His
clean-shaven, round, sharply defined chin looked like the heel
of a foot. The most characteristic point in his face was the
absence of moustache, the bare, freshly shaven place, which
gradually passed into the fat cheeks, quivering like jelly. His
deportment was dignified, his movements were deliberate, his
manner was soft.
"I cannot help remembering now one circumstance," he said,
smiling. "When, five years ago, Kosorotov received the order of
St. Anna of the second grade, and went to thank His Excellency,
His Excellency expressed himself as follows: 'So now you have
three Annas: one in your buttonhole and two on your neck.' And
it must be explained that at that time Kosorotov's wife, a
quarrelsome and frivolous person, had just returned to him, and
that her name was Anna. I trust that when I receive the Anna of
the second grade His Excellency will not have occasion to say
the same thing to me."
He smiled with his little eyes. And she, too, smiled, troubled
at the thought that at any moment this man might kiss her with
his thick damp lips, and that she had no right to prevent his
doing so. The soft movements of his fat person frightened her;
she felt both fear and disgust. He got up, without haste took
off the order from his neck, took off his coat and waistcoat,
and put on his dressing-gown.
"That's better," he said, sitting down beside Anna.
Anna remembered what agony the wedding had been, when it had
seemed to her that the priest, and the guests, and every one in
church had been looking at her sorrowfully and asking why, why
was she, such a sweet, nice girl, marrying such an elderly,
uninteresting gentleman. Only that morning she was delighted
that everything had been satisfactorily arranged, but at the
time of the wedding, and now in the railway carriage, she felt
cheated, guilty, and ridiculous. Here she had married a rich man
and yet she had no money, her wedding-dress had been bought on
credit, and when her father and brothers had been saying
good-bye, she could see from their faces that they had not a
farthing. Would they have any supper that day? And tomorrow? And
for some reason it seemed to her that her father and the boys
were sitting tonight hungry without her, and feeling the same
misery as they had the day after their mother's funeral.
"Oh, how unhappy I am!" she thought. "Why am I so unhappy?"
With the awkwardness of a man with settled habits, unaccustomed
to deal with women, Modest Alexeitch touched her on the waist
and patted her on the shoulder, while she went on thinking about
money, about her mother and her mother's death. When her mother
died, her father, Pyotr Leontyitch, a teacher of drawing and
writing in the high school, had taken to drink, impoverishment
had followed, the boys had not had boots or goloshes, their
father had been hauled up before the magistrate, the warrant
officer had come and made an inventory of the furniture. . . .
What a disgrace! Anna had had to look after her drunken father,
darn her brothers' stockings, go to market, and when she was
complimented on her youth, her beauty, and her elegant manners,
it seemed to her that every one was looking at her cheap hat and
the holes in her boots that were inked over. And at night there
had been tears and a haunting dread that her father would soon,
very soon, be dismissed from the school for his weakness, and
that he would not survive it, but would die, too, like their
mother. But ladies of their acquaintance had taken the matter in
hand and looked about for a good match for Anna. This Modest
Alexevitch, who was neither young nor good-looking but had
money, was soon found. He had a hundred thousand in the bank and
the family estate, which he had let on lease. He was a man of
principle and stood well with His Excellency; it would be
nothing to him, so they told Anna, to get a note from His
Excellency to the directors of the high school, or even to the
Education Commissioner, to prevent Pyotr Leontyitch from being
dismissed.
While she was recalling these details, she suddenly heard
strains of music which floated in at the window, together with
the sound of voices. The train was stopping at a station. In the
crowd beyond the platform an accordion and a cheap squeaky
fiddle were being briskly played, and the sound of a military
band came from beyond the villas and the tall birches and
poplars that lay bathed in the moonlight; there must have been a
dance in the place. Summer visitors and townspeople, who used to
come out here by train in fine weather for a breath of fresh
air, were parading up and down on the platform. Among them was
the wealthy owner of all the summer villas -- a tall, stout,
dark man called Artynov. He had prominent eyes and looked like
an Armenian. He wore a strange costume; his shirt was
unbuttoned, showing his chest; he wore high boots with spurs,
and a black cloak hung from his shoulders and dragged on the
ground like a train. Two boar-hounds followed him with their
sharp noses to the ground.
Tears were still shining in Anna's eyes, but she was not
thinking now of her mother, nor of money, nor of her marriage;
but shaking hands with schoolboys and officers she knew, she
laughed gaily and said quickly:
"How do you do? How are you?"
She went out on to the platform between the carriages into the
moonlight, and stood so that they could all see her in her new
splendid dress and hat.
"Why are we stopping here?" she asked.
"This is a junction. They are waiting for the mail train to
pass."
Seeing that Artynov was looking at her, she screwed up her eyes
coquettishly and began talking aloud in French; and because her
voice sounded so pleasant, and because she heard music and the
moon was reflected in the pond, and because Artynov, the
notorious Don Juan and spoiled child of fortune, was looking at
her eagerly and with curiosity, and because every one was in
good spirits -- she suddenly felt joyful, and when the train
started and the officers of her acquaintance saluted her, she
was humming the polka the strains of which reached her from the
military band playing beyond the trees; and she returned to her
compartment feeling as though it had been proved to her at the
station that she would certainly be happy in spite of
everything.
The happy pair spent two days at the monastery, then went back
to town. They lived in a rent-free flat. When Modest Alexevitch
had gone to the office, Anna played the piano, or shed tears of
depression, or lay down on a couch and read novels or looked
through fashion papers. At dinner Modest Alexevitch ate a great
deal and talked about politics, about appointments, transfers,
and promotions in the service, about the necessity of hard work,
and said that, family life not being a pleasure but a duty, if
you took care of the kopecks the roubles would take care of
themselves, and that he put religion and morality before
everything else in the world. And holding his knife in his fist
as though it were a sword, he would say:
"Every one ought to have his duties!"
And Anna listened to him, was frightened, and could not eat, and
she usually got up from the table hungry. After dinner her
husband lay down for a nap and snored loudly, while Anna went to
see her own people. Her father and the boys looked at her in a
peculiar way, as though just before she came in they had been
blaming her for having married for money a tedious, wearisome
man she did not love; her rustling skirts, her bracelets, and
her general air of a married lady, offended them and made them
uncomfortable. In her presence they felt a little embarrassed
and did not know what to talk to her about; but yet they still
loved her as before, and were not used to having dinner without
her. She sat down with them to cabbage soup, porridge, and fried
potatoes, smelling of mutton dripping. Pyotr Leontyitch filled
his glass from the decanter with a trembling hand and drank it
off hurriedly, greedily, with repulsion, then poured out a
second glass and then a third. Petya and Andrusha, thin, pale
boys with big eyes, would take the decanter and say desperately:
"You mustn't, father. . . . Enough, father. . . ."
And Anna, too, was troubled and entreated him to drink no more;
and he would suddenly fly into a rage and beat the table with
his fists:
"I won't allow any one to dictate to me!" he would shout.
"Wretched boys! wretched girl! I'll turn you all out!"
But there was a note of weakness, of good-nature in his voice,
and no one was afraid of him. After dinner he usually dressed in
his best. Pale, with a cut on his chin from shaving, craning his
thin neck, he would stand for half an hour before the glass,
prinking, combing his hair, twisting his black moustache,
sprinkling himself with scent, tying his cravat in a bow; then
he would put on his gloves and his top-hat, and go off to give
his private lessons. Or if it was a holiday he would stay at
home and paint, or play the harmonium, which wheezed and
growled; he would try to wrest from it pure harmonious sounds
and would sing to it; or would storm at the boys:
"Wretches! Good-for-nothing boys! You have spoiled the
instrument!"
In the evening Anna's husband played cards with his colleagues,
who lived under the same roof in the government quarters. The
wives of these gentlemen would come in -- ugly, tastelessly
dressed women, as coarse as cooks -- and gossip would begin in
the flat as tasteless and unattractive as the ladies themselves.
Sometimes Modest Alexevitch would take Anna to the theatre. In
the intervals he would never let her stir a step from his side,
but walked about arm in arm with her through the corridors and
the foyer. When he bowed to some one, he immediately whispered
to Anna: "A civil councillor . . . visits at His Excellency's";
or, "A man of means . . . has a house of his own." When they
passed the buffet Anna had a great longing for something sweet;
she was fond of chocolate and apple cakes, but she had no money,
and she did not like to ask her husband. He would take a pear,
pinch it with his fingers, and ask uncertainly:
"How much?"
"Twenty-five kopecks!"
"I say!" he would reply, and put it down; but as it was awkward
to leave the buffet without buying anything, he would order some
seltzer-water and drink the whole bottle himself, and tears
would come into his eyes. And Anna hated him at such times.
And suddenly flushing crimson, he would say to her rapidly:
"Bow to that old lady!"
"But I don't know her."
"No matter. That's the wife of the director of the local
treasury! Bow, I tell you," he would grumble insistently. "Your
head won't drop off."
Anna bowed and her head certainly did not drop off, but it was
agonizing. She did everything her husband wanted her to, and was
furious with herself for having let him deceive her like the
veriest idiot. She had only married him for his money, and yet
she had less money now than before her marriage. In old days her
father would sometimes give her twenty kopecks, but now she had
not a farthing.
To take money by stealth or ask for it, she could not; she was
afraid of her husband, she trembled before him. She felt as
though she had been afraid of him for years. In her childhood
the director of the high school had always seemed the most
impressive and terrifying force in the world, sweeping down like
a thunderstorm or a steam-engine ready to crush her; another
similar force of which the whole family talked, and of which
they were for some reason afraid, was His Excellency; then there
were a dozen others, less formidable, and among them the
teachers at the high school, with shaven upper lips, stern,
implacable; and now finally, there was Modest Alexeitch, a man
of principle, who even resembled the director in the face. And
in Anna's imagination all these forces blended together into
one, and, in the form of a terrible, huge white bear, menaced
the weak and erring such as her father. And she was afraid to
say anything in opposition to her husband, and gave a forced
smile, and tried to make a show of pleasure when she was
coarsely caressed and defiled by embraces that excited her
terror. Only once Pyotr Leontyitch had the temerity to ask for a
loan of fifty roubles in order to pay some very irksome debt,
but what an agony it had been!
"Very good; I'll give it to you," said Modest Alexeitch after a
moment's thought; "but I warn you I won't help you again till
you give up drinking. Such a failing is disgraceful in a man in
the government service! I must remind you of the well-known fact
that many capable people have been ruined by that passion,
though they might possibly, with temperance, have risen in time
to a very high."
And long-winded phrases followed: "inasmuch as . . .,"
"following upon which proposition . . . ," "in view of the
aforesaid contention . . ."; and Pyotr Leontyitch was in agonies
of humiliation and felt an intense craving for alcohol.
And when the boys came to visit Anna, generally in broken boots
and threadbare trousers, they, too, had to listen to sermons.
"Every man ought to have his duties!" Modest Alexeitch would say
to them.
And he did not give them money. But he did give Anna bracelets,
rings, and brooches, saying that these things would come in
useful for a rainy day. And he often unlocked her drawer and
made an inspection to see whether they were all safe.
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