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My Life -
Chekhov
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII XVIII
XIX XX
XVIII A little later my sister and I were walking along the street. I
covered her with the skirts of my coat; we hastened, choosing
back streets where there were no street lamps, avoiding
passers-by; it was as though we were running away. She was no
longer crying, but looked at me with dry eyes. To Karpovna's,
where I took her, it was only twenty minutes' walk, and, strange
to say, in that short time we succeeded in thinking of our whole
life; we talked over everything, considered our position,
reflected. . . .
We decided we could not go on living in this town, and that when
I had earned a little money we would move to some other place.
In some houses everyone was asleep, in others they were playing
cards; we hated these houses; we were afraid of them. We talked
of the fanaticism, the coarseness of feeling, the insignificance
of these respectable families, these amateurs of dramatic art
whom we had so alarmed, and I kept asking in what way these
stupid, cruel, lazy, and dishonest people were superior to the
drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or in what way
they were better than animals, who in the same way are thrown
into a panic when some incident disturbs the monotony of their
life limited by their instincts. What would have happened to my
sister now if she had been left to live at home?
What moral agonies would she have experienced, talking with my
father, meeting every day with acquaintances? I imagined this to
myself, and at once there came into my mind people, all people I
knew, who had been slowly done to death by their nearest
relations. I remembered the tortured dogs, driven mad, the live
sparrows plucked naked by boys and flung into the water, and a
long, long series of obscure lingering miseries which I had
looked on continually from early childhood in that town; and I
could not understand what these sixty thousand people lived for,
what they read the gospel for, why they prayed, why they read
books and magazines. What good had they gained from all that had
been said and written hitherto if they were still possessed by
the same spiritual darkness and hatred of liberty, as they were
a hundred and three hundred years ago? A master carpenter spends
his whole life building houses in the town, and always, to the
day of his death, calls a "gallery" a "galdery." So these sixty
thousand people have been reading and hearing of truth, of
justice, of mercy, of freedom for generations, and yet from
morning till night, till the day of their death, they are lying,
and tormenting each other, and they fear liberty and hate it as
a deadly foe.
"And so my fate is decided," said my sister, as we arrived home.
"After what has happened I cannot go back there. Heavens, how
good that is! My heart feels lighter."
She went to bed at once. Tears were glittering on her eyelashes,
but her expression was happy; she fell into a sound sweet sleep,
and one could see that her heart was lighter and that she was
resting. It was a long, long time since she had slept like that.
And so we began our life together. She was always singing and
saying that her life was very happy, and the books I brought her
from the public library I took back unread, as now she could not
read; she wanted to do nothing but dream and talk of the future,
mending my linen, or helping Karpovna near the stove; she was
always singing, or talking of her Vladimir, of his cleverness,
of his charming manners, of his kindness, of his extraordinary
learning, and I assented to all she said, though by now I
disliked her doctor. She wanted to work, to lead an independent
life on her own account, and she used to say that she would
become a school-teacher or a doctor' s assistant as soon as her
health would permit her, and would herself do the scrubbing and
the washing. Already she was passionately devoted to her child;
he was not yet born, but she knew already the colour of his
eyes, what his hands would be like, and how he would laugh. She
was fond of talking about education, and as her Vladimir was the
best man in the world, all her discussion of education could be
summed up in the question how to make the boy as fascinating as
his father. There was no end to her talk, and everything she
said made her intensely joyful. Sometimes I was delighted, too,
though I could not have said why.
I suppose her dreaminess infected me. I, too, gave up reading,
and did nothing but dream. In the evenings, in spite of my
fatigue, I walked up and down the room, with my hands in my
pockets, talking of Masha.
"What do you think?" I would ask of my sister. "When will she
come back? I think she'll come back at Christmas, not later;
what has she to do there?"
"As she doesn't write to you, it's evident she will come back
very soon.
"That's true," I assented, though I knew perfectly well that
Masha would not return to our town.
I missed her fearfully, and could no longer deceive myself, and
tried to get other people to deceive me. My sister was expecting
her doctor, and I -- Masha; and both of us talked incessantly,
laughed, and did not notice that we were preventing Karpovna
from sleeping. She lay on the stove and kept muttering:
"The samovar hummed this morning, it did hum! Oh, it bodes no
good, my dears, it bodes no good!"
No one ever came to see us but the postman, who brought my
sister letters from the doctor, and Prokofy, who sometimes came
in to see us in the evening, and after looking at my sister
without speaking went away, and when he was in the kitchen said:
"Every class ought to remember its rules, and anyone, who is so
proud that he won't understand that, will find it a vale of
tears."
He was very fond of the phrase "a vale of tears." One day -- it
was in Christmas week, when I was walking by the bazaar -- he
called me into the butcher's shop, and not shaking hands with
me, announced that he had to speak to me about something very
important. His face was red from the frost and vodka; near him,
behind the counter, stood Nikolka, with the expression of a
brigand, holding a bloodstained knife in his hand.
"I desire to express my word to you," Prokofy began. "This
incident cannot continue, because, as you understand yourself
that for such a vale, people will say nothing good of you or of
us. Mamma, through pity, cannot say something unpleasant to you,
that your sister should move into another lodging on account of
her condition, but I won't have it any more, because I can't
approve of her behaviour."
I understood him, and I went out of the shop. The same day my
sister and I moved to Radish's. We had no money for a cab, and
we walked on foot; I carried a parcel of our belongings on my
back; my sister had nothing in her hands, but she gasped for
breath and coughed, and kept asking whether we should get there
soon.
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