A.P. Chekhov - A Happy Man
THE passenger train is just starting from Bologoe, the junction
on the Petersburg-Moscow line. In a second-class smoking
compartment five passengers sit dozing, shrouded in the twilight
of the carriage. They had just had a meal, and now, snugly
ensconced in their seats, they are trying to go to sleep.
Stillness.
The door opens and in there walks a tall, lanky figure straight
as a poker, with a ginger-coloured hat and a smart overcoat,
wonderfully suggestive of a journalist in Jules Verne or on the
comic stage.
The figure stands still in the middle of the compartment for a
long while, breathing heavily, screwing up his eyes and peering
at the seats.
"No, wrong again!" he mutters. "What the deuce! It's positively
revolting! No, the wrong one again!"
One of the passengers stares at the figure and utters a shout of
joy:
"Ivan Alexyevitch! what brings you here? Is it you?"
The poker-like gentleman starts, stares blankly at the
passenger, and recognizing him claps his hands with delight.
"Ha! Pyotr Petrovitch," he says. "How many summers, how many
winters! I didn't know you were in this train."
"How are you getting on?"
"I am all right; the only thing is, my dear fellow, I've lost my
compartment and I simply can't find it. What an idiot I am! I
ought to be thrashed!"
The poker-like gentleman sways a little unsteadily and sniggers.
"Queer things do happen!" he continues. "I stepped out just
after the second bell to get a glass of brandy. I got it, of
course. Well, I thought, since it's a long way to the next
station, it would be as well to have a second glass. While I was
thinking about it and drinking it the third bell rang. . . . I
ran like mad and jumped into the first carriage. I am an idiot!
I am the son of a hen!"
"But you seem in very good spirits," observes Pyotr Petrovitch.
"Come and sit down! There's room and a welcome."
"No, no. . . . I'm off to look for my carriage. Good-bye!"
"You'll fall between the carriages in the dark if you don't look
out! Sit down, and when we get to a station you'll find your own
compartment. Sit down!"
Ivan Alexyevitch heaves a sigh and irresolutely sits down facing
Pyotr Petrovitch. He is visibly excited, and fidgets as though
he were sitting on thorns.
"Where are you travelling to?" Pyotr Petrovitch enquires.
"I? Into space. There is such a turmoil in my head that I
couldn't tell where I am going myself. I go where fate takes me.
Ha-ha! My dear fellow, have you ever seen a happy fool? No?
Well, then, take a look at one. You behold the happiest of
mortals! Yes! Don't you see something from my face?"
"Well, one can see you're a bit . . . a tiny bit so-so."
"I dare say I look awfully stupid just now. Ach! it's a pity I
haven't a looking-glass, I should like to look at my
counting-house. My dear fellow, I feel I am turning into an
idiot, honour bright. Ha-ha! Would you believe it, I'm on my
honeymoon. Am I not the son of a hen?"
"You? Do you mean to say you are married?"
"To-day, my dear boy. We came away straight after the wedding."
Congratulations and the usual questions follow. "Well, you are a
fellow!" laughs Pyotr Petrovitch. "That's why you are rigged out
such a dandy."
"Yes, indeed. . . . To complete the illusion, I've even
sprinkled myself with scent. I am over my ears in vanity! No
care, no thought, nothing but a sensation of something or other
. . . deuce knows what to call it . . . beatitude or something?
I've never felt so grand in my life!"
Ivan Alexyevitch shuts his eyes and waggles his head.
"I'm revoltingly happy," he says. "Just think; in a minute I
shall go to my compartment. There on the seat near the window is
sitting a being who is, so to say, devoted to you with her whole
being. A little blonde with a little nose . . . little fingers.
. . . My little darling! My angel! My little poppet! Phylloxera
of my soul! And her little foot! Good God! A little foot not
like our beetle-crushers, but something miniature, fairylike,
allegorical. I could pick it up and eat it, that little foot!
Oh, but you don't understand! You're a materialist, of course,
you begin analyzing at once, and one thing and another. You are
cold-hearted bachelors, that's what you are! When you get
married you'll think of me. 'Where's Ivan Alexyevitch now?'
you'll say. Yes; so in a minute I'm going to my compartment.
There she is waiting for me with impatience . . . in joyful
anticipation of my appearance. She'll have a smile to greet me.
I sit down beside her and take her chin with my two fingers."
Ivan Alexyevitch waggles his head and goes off into a chuckle of
delight.
"Then I lay my noddle on her shoulder and put my arm round her
waist. Around all is silence, you know . . . poetic twilight. I
could embrace the whole world at such a moment. Pyotr Petrovitch,
allow me to embrace you!"
"Delighted, I'm sure." The two friends embrace while the
passengers laugh in chorus. And the happy bridegroom continues:
"And to complete the idiocy, or, as the novelists say, to
complete the illusion, one goes to the refreshment-room and
tosses off two or three glasses. And then something happens in
your head and your heart, finer than you can read of in a fairy
tale. I am a man of no importance, but I feel as though I were
limitless: I embrace the whole world!"
The passengers, looking at the tipsy and blissful bridegroom,
are infected by his cheerfulness and no longer feel sleepy.
Instead of one listener, Ivan Alexyevitch has now an audience of
five. He wriggles and splutters, gesticulates, and prattles on
without ceasing. He laughs and they all laugh.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, don't think so much! Damn all this
analysis! If you want a drink, drink, no need to philosophize as
to whether it's bad for you or not. . . . Damn all this
philosophy and psychology!"
The guard walks through the compartment.
"My dear fellow," the bridegroom addresses him, "when you pass
through the carriage No. 209 look out for a lady in a grey hat
with a white bird and tell her I'm here!"
"Yes, sir. Only there isn't a No. 209 in this train; there's
219!"
"Well, 219, then! It's all the same. Tell that lady, then, that
her husband is all right!"
Ivan Alexyevitch suddenly clutches his head and groans:
"Husband. . . . Lady. . . . All in a minute! Husband. . . .
Ha-ha! I am a puppy that needs thrashing, and here I am a
husband! Ach, idiot! But think of her! . . . Yesterday she was a
little girl, a midget . . . it s simply incredible!"
"Nowadays it really seems strange to see a happy man," observes
one of the passengers; "one as soon expects to see a white
elephant."
"Yes, and whose fault is it?" says Ivan Alexyevitch, stretching
his long legs and thrusting out his feet with their very pointed
toes. "If you are not happy it's your own fault! Yes, what else
do you suppose it is? Man is the creator of his own happiness.
If you want to be happy you will be, but you don't want to be!
You obstinately turn away from happiness."
"Why, what next! How do you make that out?"
"Very simply. Nature has ordained that at a certain stage in his
life man should love. When that time comes you should love like
a house on fire, but you won't heed the dictates of nature, you
keep waiting for something. What's more, it's laid down by law
that the normal man should enter upon matrimony. There's no
happiness without marriage. When the propitious moment has come,
get married. There's no use in shilly-shallying. . . . But you
don't get married, you keep waiting for something! Then the
Scriptures tell us that 'wine maketh glad the heart of man.' . .
. If you feel happy and you want to feel better still, then go
to the refreshment bar and have a drink. The great thing is not
to be too clever, but to follow the beaten track! The beaten
track is a grand thing!"
"You say that man is the creator of his own happiness. How the
devil is he the creator of it when a toothache or an ill-natured
mother-in-law is enough to scatter his happiness to the winds?
Everything depends on chance. If we had an accident at this
moment you'd sing a different tune."
"Stuff and nonsense!" retorts the bridegroom. "Railway accidents
only happen once a year. I'm not afraid of an accident, for
there is no reason for one. Accidents are exceptional! Confound
them! I don't want to talk of them! Oh, I believe we're stopping
at a station."
"Where are you going now?" asks Pyotr Petrovitch. "To Moscow or
somewhere further south?
"Why, bless you! How could I go somewhere further south, when
I'm on my way to the north?"
"But Moscow isn't in the north."
"I know that, but we're on our way to Petersburg," says Ivan
Alexyevitch.
"We are going to Moscow, mercy on us!"
"To Moscow? What do you mean?" says the bridegroom in amazement.
"It's queer. . . . For what station did you take your ticket?"
"For Petersburg."
"In that case I congratulate you. You've got into the wrong
train."
There follows a minute of silence. The bridegroom gets up and
looks blankly round the company.
"Yes, yes," Pyotr Petrovitch explains. "You must have jumped
into the wrong train at Bologoe. . . . After your glass of
brandy you succeeded in getting into the down-train."
Ivan Alexyevitch turns pale, clutches his head, and begins
pacing rapidly about the carriage.
"Ach, idiot that I am!" he says in indignation. "Scoundrel! The
devil devour me! Whatever am I to do now? Why, my wife is in
that train! She's there all alone, expecting me, consumed by
anxiety. Ach, I'm a motley fool!"
The bridegroom falls on the seat and writhes as though someone
had trodden on his corns.
"I am un-unhappy man!" he moans. "What am I to do, what am I to
do?"
"There, there!" the passengers try to console him. "It's all
right. . . . You must telegraph to your wife and try to change
into the Petersburg express. In that way you'll overtake her."
"The Petersburg express!" weeps the bridegroom, the creator of
his own happiness. "And how am I to get a ticket for the
Petersburg express? All my money is with my wife."
The passengers, laughing and whispering together, make a
collection and furnish the happy man with funds.
NOTES
a journalist in Jules Verne: French author of science fiction
romances (1828-1905)
second bell: train passengers were given 3 warning bells: the
first (single) ring indicated 15 minutes until departure; the
second (2 rings) indicated 5 minutes; and the third bell (3
rings) sounded as the train left the station
counting-house: he substitutes the word "counting-house" for
"countenance"
phylloxera: small insects related to aphids
the down-train: the translator uses the British terms for trains
going to the capital (up trains) and trains leaving the capital
(down trains)
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