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A.P. Chekhov - A Misfortune
SOFYA PETROVNA, the wife of Lubyantsev the notary, a handsome
young woman of five-and-twenty, was walking slowly along a track
that had been cleared in the wood, with Ilyin, a lawyer who was
spending the summer in the neighbourhood. It was five o'clock in
the evening. Feathery-white masses of cloud stood overhead;
patches of bright blue sky peeped out between them. The clouds
stood motionless, as though they had caught in the tops of the
tall old pine-trees. It was still and sultry.
Farther on, the track was crossed by a low railway embankment on
which a sentinel with a gun was for some reason pacing up and
down. Just beyond the embankment there was a large white church
with six domes and a rusty roof.
"I did not expect to meet you here," said Sofya Petrovna,
looking at the ground and prodding at the last year's leaves
with the tip of her parasol, "and now I am glad we have met. I
want to speak to you seriously and once for all. I beg you, Ivan
Mihalovitch, if you really love and respect me, please make an
end of this pursuit of me! You follow me about like a shadow,
you are continually looking at me not in a nice way, making love
to me, writing me strange letters, and . . . and I don't know
where it's all going to end! Why, what can come of it?"
Ilyin said nothing. Sofya Petrovna walked on a few steps and
continued:
"And this complete transformation in you all came about in the
course of two or three weeks, after five years' friendship. I
don't know you, Ivan Mihalovitch!"
Sofya Petrovna stole a glance at her companion. Screwing up his
eyes, he was looking intently at the fluffy clouds. His face
looked angry, ill-humoured, and preoccupied, like that of a man
in pain forced to listen to nonsense.
"I wonder you don't see it yourself," Madame Lubyantsev went on,
shrugging her shoulders. "You ought to realize that it's not a
very nice part you are playing. I am married; I love and respect
my husband. . . . I have a daughter . . . . Can you think all
that means nothing? Besides, as an old friend you know my
attitude to family life and my views as to the sanctity of
marriage."
Ilyin cleared his throat angrily and heaved a sigh.
"Sanctity of marriage . . ." he muttered. "Oh, Lord!"
"Yes, yes. . . . I love my husband, I respect him; and in any
case I value the peace of my home. I would rather let myself be
killed than be a cause of unhappiness to Andrey and his
daughter. . . . And I beg you, Ivan Mihalovitch, for God's sake,
leave me in peace! Let us be as good, true friends as we used to
be, and give up these sighs and groans, which really don't suit
you. It's settled and over! Not a word more about it. Let us
talk of something else."
Sofya Petrovna again stole a glance at Ilyin's face. Ilyin was
looking up; he was pale, and was angrily biting his quivering
lips. She could not understand why he was angry and why he was
indignant, but his pallor touched her.
"Don't be angry; let us be friends," she said affectionately.
"Agreed? Here's my hand."
Ilyin took her plump little hand in both of his, squeezed it,
and slowly raised it to his lips.
"I am not a schoolboy," he muttered. "I am not in the least
tempted by friendship with the woman I love."
"Enough, enough! It's settled and done with. We have reached the
seat; let us sit down."
Sofya Petrovna's soul was filled with a sweet sense of relief:
the most difficult and delicate thing had been said, the painful
question was settled and done with. Now she could breathe freely
and look Ilyin straight in the face. She looked at him, and the
egoistic feeling of the superiority of the woman over the man
who loves her, agreeably flattered her. It pleased her to see
this huge, strong man, with his manly, angry face and his big
black beard -- clever, cultivated, and, people said, talented --
sit down obediently beside her and bow his head dejectedly. For
two or three minutes they sat without speaking.
"Nothing is settled or done with," began Ilyin. "You repeat
copy-book maxims to me. 'I love and respect my husband . . . the
sanctity of marriage. . . .' I know all that without your help,
and I could tell you more, too. I tell you truthfully and
honestly that I consider the way I am behaving as criminal and
immoral. What more can one say than that? But what's the good of
saying what everybody knows? Instead of feeding nightingales
with paltry words, you had much better tell me what I am to do."
"I've told you already -- go away."
"As you know perfectly well, I have gone away five times, and
every time I turned back on the way. I can show you my through
tickets -- I've kept them all. I have not will enough to run
away from you! I am struggling. I am struggling horribly; but
what the devil am I good for if I have no backbone, if I am
weak, cowardly! I can't struggle with Nature! Do you understand?
I cannot! I run away from here, and she holds on to me and pulls
me back. Contemptible, loathsome weakness!"
Ilyin flushed crimson, got up, and walked up and down by the
seat.
"I feel as cross as a dog," he muttered, clenching his fists. "I
hate and despise myself! My God! like some depraved schoolboy, I
am making love to another man's wife, writing idiotic letters,
degrading myself . . . ugh!"
Ilyin clutched at his head, grunted, and sat down. "And then
your insincerity!" he went on bitterly. "If you do dislike my
disgusting behaviour, why have you come here? What drew you
here? In my letters I only ask you for a direct, definite answer
-- yes or no; but instead of a direct answer, you contrive every
day these 'chance' meetings with me and regale me with copy-book
maxims!"
Madame Lubyantsev was frightened and flushed. She suddenly felt
the awkwardness which a decent woman feels when she is
accidentally discovered undressed.
"You seem to suspect I am playing with you," she muttered. "I
have always given you a direct answer, and . . . only today I've
begged you . . ."
"Ough! as though one begged in such cases! If you were to say
straight out 'Get away,' I should have been gone long ago; but
you've never said that. You've never once given me a direct
answer. Strange indecision! Yes, indeed; either you are playing
with me, or else . . ."
Ilyin leaned his head on his fists without finishing. Sofya
Petrovna began going over in her own mind the way she had
behaved from beginning to end. She remembered that not only in
her actions, but even in her secret thoughts, she had always
been opposed to Ilyin's love-making; but yet she felt there was
a grain of truth in the lawyer's words. But not knowing exactly
what the truth was, she could not find answers to make to
Ilyin's complaint, however hard she thought. It was awkward to
be silent, and, shrugging her shoulders, she said:
So I am to blame, it appears."
"I don't blame you for your insincerity," sighed Ilyin. "I did
not mean that when I spoke of it. . . . Your insincerity is
natural and in the order of things. If people agreed together
and suddenly became sincere, everything would go to the devil."
Sofya Petrovna was in no mood for philosophical reflections, but
she was glad of a chance to change the conversation, and asked:
"But why?"
"Because only savage women and animals are sincere. Once
civilization has introduced a demand for such comforts as, for
instance, feminine virtue, sincerity is out of place. . . ."
Ilyin jabbed his stick angrily into the sand. Madame Lubyantsev
listened to him and liked his conversation, though a great deal
of it she did not understand. What gratified her most was that
she, an ordinary woman, was talked to by a talented man on
"intellectual" subjects; it afforded her great pleasure, too, to
watch the working of his mobile, young face, which was still
pale and angry. She failed to understand a great deal that he
said, but what was clear to her in his words was the attractive
boldness with which the modern man without hesitation or doubt
decides great questions and draws conclusive deductions.
She suddenly realized that she was admiring him, and was
alarmed.
"Forgive me, but I don't understand," she said hurriedly. "What
makes you talk of insincerity? I repeat my request again: be my
good, true friend; let me alone! I beg you most earnestly!"
"Very good; I'll try again," sighed Ilyin. "Glad to do my best.
. . . Only I doubt whether anything will come of my efforts.
Either I shall put a bullet through my brains or take to drink
in an idiotic way. I shall come to a bad end! There's a limit to
everything -- to struggles with Nature, too. Tell me, how can
one struggle against madness? If you drink wine, how are you to
struggle against intoxication? What am I to do if your image has
grown into my soul, and day and night stands persistently before
my eyes, like that pine there at this moment? Come, tell me,
what hard and difficult thing can I do to get free from this
abominable, miserable condition, in which all my thoughts,
desires, and dreams are no longer my own, but belong to some
demon who has taken possession of me? I love you, love you so
much that I am completely thrown out of gear; I've given up my
work and all who are dear to me; I've forgotten my God! I've
never been in love like this in my life."
Sofya Petrovna, who had not expected such a turn to their
conversation, drew away from Ilyin and looked into his face in
dismay. Tears came into his eyes, his lips were quivering, and
there was an imploring, hungry expression in his face.
"I love you!" he muttered, bringing his eyes near her big,
frightened eyes. "You are so beautiful! I am in agony now, but I
swear I would sit here all my life, suffering and looking in
your eyes. But . . . be silent, I implore you!"
Sofya Petrovna, feeling utterly disconcerted, tried to think as
quickly as possible of something to say to stop him. "I'll go
away," she decided, but before she had time to make a movement
to get up, Ilyin was on his knees before her. . . . He was
clasping her knees, gazing into her face and speaking
passionately, hotly, eloquently. In her terror and confusion she
did not hear his words; for some reason now, at this dangerous
moment, while her knees were being agreeably squeezed and felt
as though they were in a warm bath, she was trying, with a sort
of angry spite, to interpret her own sensations. She was angry
that instead of brimming over with protesting virtue, she was
entirely overwhelmed with weakness, apathy, and emptiness, like
a drunken man utterly reckless; only at the bottom of her soul a
remote bit of herself was malignantly taunting her: "Why don't
you go? Is this as it should be? Yes?"
Seeking for some explanation, she could not understand how it
was she did not pull away the hand to which Ilyin was clinging
like a leech, and why, like Ilyin, she hastily glanced to right
and to left to see whether any one was looking. The clouds and
the pines stood motionless, looking at them severely, like old
ushers seeing mischief, but bribed not to tell the school
authorities. The sentry stood like a post on the embankment and
seemed to be looking at the seat.
"Let him look," thought Sofya Petrovna.
"But . . . but listen," she said at last, with despair in her
voice. "What can come of this? What will be the end of this?"
"I don't know, I don't know," he whispered, waving off the
disagreeable questions.
They heard the hoarse, discordant whistle of the train. This
cold, irrelevant sound from the everyday world of prose made
Sofya Petrovna rouse herself.
"I can't stay . . . it's time I was at home," she said, getting
up quickly. "The train is coming in. . . Andrey is coming by it!
He will want his dinner."
Sofya Petrovna turned towards the embankment with a burning
face. The engine slowly crawled by, then came the carriages. It
was not the local train, as she had supposed, but a goods train.
The trucks filed by against the background of the white church
in a long string like the days of a man's life, and it seemed as
though it would never end.
But at last the train passed, and the last carriage with the
guard and a light in it had disappeared behind the trees. Sofya
Petrovna turned round sharply, and without looking at Ilyin,
walked rapidly back along the track. She had regained her
self-possession. Crimson with shame, humiliated not by Ilyin --
no, but by her own cowardice, by the shamelessness with which
she, a chaste and high-principled woman, had allowed a man, not
her husband, to hug her knees -- she had only one thought now:
to get home as quickly as possible to her villa, to her family.
The lawyer could hardly keep pace with her. Turning from the
clearing into a narrow path, she turned round and glanced at him
so quickly that she saw nothing but the sand on his knees, and
waved to him to drop behind.
Reaching home, Sofya Petrovna stood in the middle of her room
for five minutes without moving, and looked first at the window
and then at her writing-table.
"You low creature!" she said, upbraiding herself. "You low
creature!"
To spite herself, she recalled in precise detail, keeping
nothing back -- she recalled that though all this time she had
been opposed to Ilyin's lovemaking, something had impelled her
to seek an interview with him; and what was more, when he was at
her feet she had enjoyed it enormously. She recalled it all
without sparing herself, and now, breathless with shame, she
would have liked to slap herself in the face.
"Poor Andrey!" she said to herself, trying as she thought of her
husband to put into her face as tender an expression as she
could. "Varya, my poor little girl, doesn't know what a mother
she has! Forgive me, my dear ones! I love you so much . . . so
much!"
And anxious to prove to herself that she was still a good wife
and mother, and that corruption had not yet touched that
"sanctity of marriage" of which she had spoken to Ilyin, Sofya
Petrovna ran to the kitchen and abused the cook for not having
yet laid the table for Andrey Ilyitch. She tried to picture her
husband's hungry and exhausted appearance, commiserated him
aloud, and laid the table for him with her own hands, which she
had never done before. Then she found her daughter Varya, picked
her up in her arms and hugged her warmly; the child seemed to
her cold and heavy, but she was unwilling to acknowledge this to
herself, and she began explaining to the child how good, kind,
and honourable her papa was.
But when Andrey Ilyitch arrived soon afterwards she hardly
greeted him. The rush of false feeling had already passed off
without proving anything to her, only irritating and
exasperating her by its falsity. She was sitting by the window,
feeling miserable and cross. It is only by being in trouble that
people can understand how far from easy it is to be the master
of one's feelings and thoughts. Sofya Petrovna said afterwards
that there was a tangle within her which it was as difficult to
unravel as to count a flock of sparrows rapidly flying by. From
the fact that she was not overjoyed to see her husband, that she
did not like his manner at dinner, she concluded all of a sudden
that she was beginning to hate her husband.
Andrey Ilyitch, languid with hunger and exhaustion, fell upon
the sausage while waiting for the soup to be brought in, and ate
it greedily, munching noisily and moving his temples.
"My goodness!" thought Sofya Petrovna. "I love and respect him,
but . . . why does he munch so repulsively?"
The disorder in her thoughts was no less than the disorder in
her feelings. Like all persons inexperienced in combating
unpleasant ideas, Madame Lubyantsev did her utmost not to think
of her trouble, and the harder she tried the more vividly Ilyin,
the sand on his knees, the fluffy clouds, the train, stood out
in her imagination.
"And why did I go there this afternoon like a fool?" she
thought, tormenting herself. "And am I really so weak that I
cannot depend upon myself?"
Fear magnifies danger. By the time Andrey Ilyitch was finishing
the last course, she had firmly made up her mind to tell her
husband everything and to flee from danger!
"I've something serious to say to you, Andrey," she began after
dinner while her husband was taking off his coat and boots to
lie down for a nap.
"Well?"
"Let us leave this place!"
"H'm! . . . Where shall we go? It's too soon to go back to
town."
"No; for a tour or something of that sort.
"For a tour . . ." repeated the notary, stretching. "I dream of
that myself, but where are we to get the money, and to whom am I
to leave the office?"
And thinking a little he added:
"Of course, you must be bored. Go by yourself if you like."
Sofya Petrovna agreed, but at once reflected that Ilyin would be
delighted with the opportunity, and would go with her in the
same train, in the same compartment. . . . She thought and
looked at her husband, now satisfied but still languid. For some
reason her eyes rested on his feet -- miniature, almost feminine
feet, clad in striped socks; there was a thread standing out at
the tip of each sock.
Behind the blind a bumble-bee was beating itself against the
window-pane and buzzing. Sofya Petrovna looked at the threads on
the socks, listened to the bee, and pictured how she would set
off. . . . vis--vis Ilyin would sit, day and night, never
taking his eyes off her, wrathful at his own weakness and pale
with spiritual agony. He would call himself an immoral
schoolboy, would abuse her, tear his hair, but when darkness
came on and the passengers were asleep or got out at a station,
he would seize the opportunity to kneel before her and embrace
her knees as he had at the seat in the wood. . . .
She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible
and not want the impossible."
"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya
Petrovna.
Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out
of danger. Little by little her ideas grew clearer; her spirits
rose and she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that
however much she thought, however much she dreamed, she would go
away. While her husband was asleep, the evening gradually came
on. She sat in the drawing-room and played the piano. The
greater liveliness out of doors, the sound of music, but above
all the thought that she was a sensible person, that she had
surmounted her difficulties, completely restored her spirits.
Other women, her appeased conscience told her, would probably
have been carried off their feet in her position, and would have
lost their balance, while she had almost died of shame, had been
miserable, and was now running out of the danger which perhaps
did not exist! She was so touched by her own virtue and
determination that she even looked at herself two or three times
in the looking-glass.
When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the
dining-room to play cards; the ladies remained in the
drawing-room and the verandah. The last to arrive was Ilyin. He
was gloomy, morose, and looked ill. He sat down in the corner of
the sofa and did not move the whole evening. Usually
good-humoured and talkative, this time he remained silent,
frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had to answer some
question, he gave a forced smile with his upper lip only, and
answered jerkily and irritably. Four or five times he made some
jest, but his jests sounded harsh and cutting. It seemed to
Sofya Petrovna that he was on the verge of hysterics. Only now,
sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for the first time
that this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his soul was
sick, and that he could find no rest. For her sake he was
wasting the best days of his youth and his career, spending the
last of his money on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and
sisters, and, worst of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing
struggle with himself. From mere common humanity he ought to be
treated seriously.
She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and
if at that moment she had gone up to him and said to him, "No,"
there would have been a force in her voice hard to disobey. But
she did not go up to him and did not speak -- indeed, never
thought of doing so. The pettiness and egoism of youth had never
been more patent in her than that evening. She realized that
Ilyin was unhappy, and that he was sitting on the sofa as though
he were on hot coals; she felt sorry for him, but at the same
time the presence of a man who loved her to distraction, filled
her soul with triumph and a sense of her own power. She felt her
youth, her beauty, and her unassailable virtue, and, since she
had decided to go away, gave herself full licence for that
evening. She flirted, laughed incessantly, sang with peculiar
feeling and gusto. Everything delighted and amused her. She was
amused at the memory of what had happened at the seat in the
wood, of the sentinel who had looked on. She was amused by her
guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the pin in his cravat,
which she had never noticed before. There was a red snake with
diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as so amusing
that she could have kissed it on the spot.
Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as
though half intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which
dealt with wasted hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery
of another's grief. " 'And old age comes nearer and nearer' . .
." she sang. And what was old age to her?
"It seems as though there is something going wrong with me," she
thought from time to time through her laughter and singing.
The party broke up at twelve o'clock. Ilyin was the last to
leave. Sofya Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him
to the bottom step of the verandah. She wanted to tell him that
she was going away with her husband, and to watch the effect
this news would produce on him.
The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough
for Sofya Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of
his overcoat and with the awning of the verandah. She could see,
too, how white Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip in
the effort to smile.
"Sonia, Sonitchka . . . my darling woman!" he muttered,
preventing her from speaking. "My dear! my sweet!"
In a rush of tenderness, with tears in his voice, he showered
caressing words upon her, that grew tenderer and tenderer, and
even called her "thou," as though she were his wife or mistress.
Quite unexpectedly he put one arm round her waist and with the
other hand took hold of her elbow.
"My precious! my delight!" he whispered, kissing the nape of her
neck; "be sincere; come to me at once!"
She slipped out of his arms and raised her head to give vent to
her indignation and anger, but the indignation did not come off,
and all her vaunted virtue and chastity was only sufficient to
enable her to utter the phrase used by all ordinary women on
such occasions:
"You must be mad."
"Come, let us go," Ilyin continued. "I felt just now, as well as
at the seat in the wood, that you are as helpless as I am,
Sonia. . . . You are in the same plight! You love me and are
fruitlessly trying to appease your conscience. . . ."
Seeing that she was moving away, he caught her by her lace cuff
and said rapidly:
"If not today, then tomorrow you will have to give in! Why,
then, this waste of time? My precious, darling Sonia, the
sentence is passed; why put off the execution? Why deceive
yourself?"
Sofya Petrovna tore herself from him and darted in at the door.
Returning to the drawing-room, she mechanically shut the piano,
looked for a long time at the music-stand, and sat down. She
could not stand up nor think. All that was left of her
excitement and recklessness was a fearful weakness, apathy, and
dreariness. Her conscience whispered to her that she had behaved
badly, foolishly, that evening, like some madcap girl -- that
she had just been embraced on the verandah, and still had an
uneasy feeling in her waist and her elbow. There was not a soul
in the drawing-room; there was only one candle burning. Madame
Lubyantsev sat on the round stool before the piano, motionless,
as though expecting something. And as though taking advantage of
the darkness and her extreme lassitude, an oppressive,
overpowering desire began to assail her. Like a boa-constrictor
it gripped her limbs and her soul, and grew stronger every
second, and no longer menaced her as it had done, but stood
clear before her in all its nakedness.
She sat for half an hour without stirring, not restraining
herself from thinking of Ilyin, then she got up languidly and
dragged herself to her bedroom. Andrey Ilyitch was already in
bed. She sat down by the open window and gave herself up to
desire. There was no "tangle" now in her head; all her thoughts
and feelings were bent with one accord upon a single aim. She
tried to struggle against it, but instantly gave it up. . . .
She understood now how strong and relentless was the foe.
Strength and fortitude were needed to combat him, and her birth,
her education, and her life had given her nothing to fall back
upon.
"Immoral wretch! Low creature!" she nagged at herself for her
weakness. "So that's what you're like!"
Her outraged sense of propriety was moved to such indignation by
this weakness that she lavished upon herself every term of abuse
she knew, and told herself many offensive and humiliating
truths. So, for instance, she told herself that she never had
been moral, that she had not come to grief before simply because
she had had no opportunity, that her inward conflict during that
day had all been a farce. . . .
"And even if I have struggled," she thought, "what sort of
struggle was it? Even the woman who sells herself struggles
before she brings herself to it, and yet she sells herself. A
fine struggle! Like milk, I've turned in a day! In one day!"
She convicted herself of being tempted, not by feeling, not by
Ilyin personally, but by sensations which awaited her . . . an
idle lady, having her fling in the summer holidays, like so
many!
" 'Like an unfledged bird when the mother has been slain,' "
sang a husky tenor outside the window.
"If I am to go, it's time," thought Sofya Petrovna. Her heart
suddenly began beating violently.
"Andrey!" she almost shrieked. "Listen! we . . . we are going?
Yes?"
"Yes, I've told you already: you go alone."
"But listen," she began. "If you don't go with me, you are in
danger of losing me. I believe I am . . . in love already."
"With whom?" asked Andrey Ilyitch.
"It can't make any difference to you who it is!" cried Sofya
Petrovna.
Andrey Ilyitch sat up with his feet out of bed and looked
wonderingly at his wife's dark figure.
"It's a fancy!" he yawned.
He did not believe her, but yet he was frightened. After
thinking a little and asking his wife several unimportant
questions, he delivered himself of his opinions on the family,
on infidelity . . . spoke listlessly for about ten minutes and
got into bed again. His moralizing produced no effect. There are
a great many opinions in the world, and a good half of them are
held by people who have never been in trouble!
In spite of the late hour, summer visitors were still walking
outside. Sofya Petrovna put on a light cape, stood a little,
thought a little. . . . She still had resolution enough to say
to her sleeping husband:
"Are you asleep? I am going for a walk. . . . Will you come with
me?"
That was her last hope. Receiving no answer, she went out. . . .
It was fresh and windy. She was conscious neither of the wind
nor the darkness, but went on and on. . . . An overmastering
force drove her on, and it seemed as though, if she had stopped,
it would have pushed her in the back.
"Immoral creature!" she muttered mechanically. "Low wretch!"
She was breathless, hot with shame, did not feel her legs under
her, but what drove her on was stronger than shame, reason, or
fear.
NOTES
making love to me: in the 19th century this meant declaring
one's love, courting
vis--vis: face to face
Sofotchka: an affectionate diminutive form of Sofya
Sonitchka: another affectionate diminutive form of Sofya
"thou": the familiar form of "you" that is used in Russian to
address family members and children
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