Chekhov - Mire
I II
II
Five hours had passed. The lieutenant's cousin, Alexey
Ivanovitch Kryukov was walking about the rooms of his
country-house in his dressing-gown and slippers, and looking
impatiently out of window. He was a tall, sturdy man, with a
large black beard and a manly face; and as the Jewess had truly
said, he was handsome, though he had reached the age when men
are apt to grow too stout, puffy, and bald. By mind and
temperament he was one of those natures in which the Russian
intellectual classes are so rich: warm-hearted, good-natured,
well-bred, having some knowledge of the arts and sciences, some
faith, and the most chivalrous notions about honour, but
indolent and lacking in depth. He was fond of good eating and
drinking, was an ideal whist-player, was a connoisseur in women
and horses, but in other things he was apathetic and sluggish as
a seal, and to rouse him from his lethargy something
extraordinary and quite revolting was needed, and then he would
forget everything in the world and display intense activity; he
would fume and talk of a duel, write a petition of seven pages
to a Minister, gallop at breakneck speed about the district,
call some one publicly "a scoundrel," would go to law, and so
on.
"How is it our Sasha's not back yet?" he kept asking his wife,
glancing out of window. "Why, it's dinner-time!"
After waiting for the lieutenant till six o'clock, they sat down
to dinner. When supper-time came, however, Alexey Ivanovitch was
listening to every footstep, to every sound of the door, and
kept shrugging his shoulders.
"Strange!" he said. "The rascally dandy must have stayed on at
the tenant's."
As he went to bed after supper, Kryukov made up his mind that
the lieutenant was being entertained at the tenant's, where
after a festive evening he was staying the night.
Alexandr Grigoryevitch only returned next morning. He looked
extremely crumpled and confused.
"I want to speak to you alone . . ." he said mysteriously to his
cousin.
They went into the study. The lieutenant shut the door, and he
paced for a long time up and down before he began to speak.
"Something's happened, my dear fellow," he began, "that I don't
know how to tell you about. You wouldn't believe it . . ."
And blushing, faltering, not looking at his cousin, he told what
had happened with the IOUs. Kryukov, standing with his feet wide
apart and his head bent, listened and frowned.
"Are you joking?" he asked.
"How the devil could I be joking? It's no joking matter!"
"I don't understand!" muttered Kryukov, turning crimson and
flinging up his hands. "It's positively . . . immoral on your
part. Before your very eyes a hussy is up to the devil knows
what, a serious crime, plays a nasty trick, and you go and kiss
her!"
"But I can't understand myself how it happened!" whispered the
lieutenant, blinking guiltily. "Upon my honour, I don't
understand it! It's the first time in my life I've come across
such a monster! It's not her beauty that does for you, not her
mind, but that . . . you understand . . . insolence, cynicism. .
. ."
"Insolence, cynicism . . . it's unclean! If you've such a
longing for insolence and cynicism, you might have picked a sow
out of the mire and have devoured her alive. It would have been
cheaper, anyway! Instead of two thousand three hundred!"
"You do express yourself elegantly!" said the lieutenant,
frowning. "I'll pay you back the two thousand three hundred!"
"I know you'll pay it back, but it's not a question of money!
Damn the money! What revolts me is your being such a limp rag .
. . such filthy feebleness! And engaged! With a fiance!"
"Don't speak of it . . ." said the lieutenant, blushing. "I
loathe myself as it is. I should like to sink into the earth.
It's sickening and vexatious that I shall have to bother my aunt
for that five thousand. . . ."
Kryukov continued for some time longer expressing his
indignation and grumbling, then, as he grew calmer, he sat down
on the sofa and began to jeer at his cousin.
"You young officers!" he said with contemptuous irony. "Nice
bridegrooms."
Suddenly he leapt up as though he had been stung, stamped his
foot, and ran about the study.
"No, I'm not going to leave it like that!" he said, shaking his
fist. "I will have those IOUs, I will! I'll give it her! One
doesn't beat women, but I'll break every bone in her body. . . .
I'll pound her to a jelly! I'm not a lieutenant! You won't touch
me with insolence or cynicism! No-o-o, damn her! Mishka!" he
shouted, "run and tell them to get the racing droshky out for
me!"
Kryukov dressed rapidly, and, without heeding the agitated
lieutenant, got into the droshky, and with a wave of his hand
resolutely raced off to Susanna Moiseyevna. For a long time the
lieutenant gazed out of window at the clouds of dust that rolled
after his cousin's droshky, stretched, yawned, and went to his
own room. A quarter of an hour later he was sound asleep.
At six o'clock he was waked up and summoned to dinner.
"How nice this is of Alexey!" his cousin's wife greeted him in
the dining-room. "He keeps us waiting for dinner."
"Do you mean to say he's not come back yet?" yawned the
lieutenant. "H'm! . . . he's probably gone round to see the
tenant."
But Alexey Ivanovitch was not back by supper either. His wife
and Sokolsky decided that he was playing cards at the tenant's
and would most likely stay the night there. What had happened
was not what they had supposed, however.
Kryukov returned next morning, and without greeting any one,
without a word, dashed into his study.
"Well?" whispered the lieutenant, gazing at him round-eyed.
Kryukov waved his hand and gave a snort.
"Why, what's the matter? What are you laughing at?"
Kryukov flopped on the sofa, thrust his head in the pillow, and
shook with suppressed laughter. A minute later he got up, and
looking at the surprised lieutenant, with his eyes full of tears
from laughing, said:
"Close the door. Well . . . she is a fe-e-male, I beg to inform
you!"
"Did you get the IOUs?"
Kryukov waved his hand and went off into a peal of laughter
again.
"Well! she is a female!" he went on. "Merci for the
acquaintance, my boy! She's a devil in petticoats. I arrived; I
walked in like such an avenging Jove, you know, that I felt
almost afraid of myself. . . . I frowned, I scowled, even
clenched my fists to be more awe-inspiring. . . . 'Jokes don't
pay with me, madam!' said I, and more in that style. And I
threatened her with the law and with the Governor. To begin with
she burst into tears, said she'd been joking with you, and even
took me to the cupboard to give me the money. Then she began
arguing that the future of Europe lies in the hands of the
French, and the Russians, swore at women. . . . Like you, I
listened, fascinated, ass that I was. . . . She kept singing the
praises of my beauty, patted me on the arm near the shoulder, to
see how strong I was, and . . . and as you see, I've only just
got away from her! Ha, ha! She's enthusiastic about you!"
"You're a nice fellow!" laughed the lieutenant. "A married man!
highly respected. . . . Well, aren't you ashamed? Disgusted?
Joking apart though, old man, you've got your Queen Tamara in
your own neighbourhood. . . ."
"In my own neighbourhood! Why, you wouldn't find another such
chameleon in the whole of Russia! I've never seen anything like
it in my life, though I know a good bit about women, too. I have
known regular devils in my time, but I never met anything like
this. It is, as you say, by insolence and cynicism she gets over
you. What is so attractive in her is the diabolical suddenness,
the quick transitions, the swift shifting hues. . . . Brrr! And
the IOU -- phew! Write it off for lost. We are both great
sinners, we'll go halves in our sin. I shall put down to you not
two thousand three hundred, but half of it. Mind, tell my wife I
was at the tenant's."
Kryukov and the lieutenant buried their heads in the pillows,
and broke into laughter; they raised their heads, glanced at one
another, and again subsided into their pillows.
"Engaged! A lieutenant!" Kryukov jeered.
"Married!" retorted Sokolsky. "Highly respected! Father of a
family!"
At dinner they talked in veiled allusions, winked at one
another, and, to the surprise of the others, were continually
gushing with laughter into their dinner-napkins. After dinner,
still in the best of spirits, they dressed up as Turks, and,
running after one another with guns, played at soldiers with the
children. In the evening they had a long argument. The
lieutenant maintained that it was mean and contemptible to
accept a dowry with your wife, even when there was passionate
love on both sides. Kryukov thumped the table with his fists and
declared that this was absurd, and that a husband who did not
like his wife to have property of her own was an egoist and a
despot. Both shouted, boiled over, did not understand each
other, drank a good deal, and in the end, picking up the skirts
of their dressing-gowns, went to their bedrooms. They soon fell
asleep and slept soundly.
Life went on as before, even, sluggish and free from sorrow. The
shadows lay on the earth, thunder pealed from the clouds, from
time to time the wind moaned plaintively, as though to prove
that nature, too, could lament, but nothing troubled the
habitual tranquillity of these people. Of Susanna Moiseyevna and
the IOUs they said nothing. Both of them felt, somehow, ashamed
to speak of the incident aloud. Yet they remembered it and
thought of it with pleasure, as of a curious farce, which life
had unexpectedly and casually played upon them, and which it
would be pleasant to recall in old age.
On the sixth or seventh day after his visit to the Jewess,
Kryukov was sitting in his study in the morning writing a
congratulatory letter to his aunt. Alexandr Grigoryevitch was
walking to and fro near the table in silence. The lieutenant had
slept badly that night; he woke up depressed, and now he felt
bored. He paced up and down, thinking of the end of his
furlough, of his fiance, who was expecting him, of how people
could live all their lives in the country without feeling bored.
Standing at the window, for a long time he stared at the trees,
smoked three cigarettes one after another, and suddenly turned
to his cousin.
"I have a favour to ask you, Alyosha," he said. "Let me have a
saddle-horse for the day. . . ."
Kryukov looked searchingly at him and continued his writing with
a frown.
"You will, then?" asked the lieutenant.
Kryukov looked at him again, then deliberately drew out a drawer
in the table, and taking out a thick roll of notes, gave it to
his cousin.
"Here's five thousand . . ." he said. "Though it's not my money,
yet, God bless you, it's all the same. I advise you to send for
post-horses at once and go away. Yes, really!"
The lieutenant in his turn looked searchingly at Kryukov and
laughed.
"You've guessed right, Alyosha," he said, reddening. "It was to
her I meant to ride. Yesterday evening when the washerwoman gave
me that damned tunic, the one I was wearing then, and it smelt
of jasmine, why . . . I felt I must go!"
"You must go away."
"Yes, certainly. And my furlough's just over. I really will go
to-day! Yes, by Jove! However long one stays, one has to go in
the end. . . . I'm going!"
The post-horses were brought after dinner the same day; the
lieutenant said good-bye to the Kryukovs and set off, followed
by their good wishes.
Another week passed. It was a dull but hot and heavy day. From
early morning Kryukov walked aimlessly about the house, looking
out of window, or turning over the leaves of albums, though he
was sick of the sight of them already. When he came across his
wife or children, he began grumbling crossly. It seemed to him,
for some reason that day, that his children's manners were
revolting, that his wife did not know how to look after the
servants, that their expenditure was quite disproportionate to
their income. All this meant that "the master" was out of
humour.
After dinner, Kryukov, feeling dissatisfied with the soup and
the roast meat he had eaten, ordered out his racing droshky. He
drove slowly out of the courtyard, drove at a walking pace for a
quarter of a mile, and stopped.
"Shall I . . . drive to her . . . that devil?" he thought,
looking at the leaden sky.
And Kryukov positively laughed, as though it were the first time
that day he had asked himself that question. At once the load of
boredom was lifted from his heart, and there rose a gleam of
pleasure in his lazy eyes. He lashed the horse. . . .
All the way his imagination was picturing how surprised the
Jewess would be to see him, how he would laugh and chat, and
come home feeling refreshed. . . .
"Once a month one needs something to brighten one up . . .
something out of the common round," he thought, "something that
would give the stagnant organism a good shaking up, a reaction .
. . whether it's a drinking bout, or . . . Susanna. One can't
get on without it."
It was getting dark when he drove into the yard of the vodka
distillery. From the open windows of the owner's house came
sounds of laughter and singing:
" 'Brighter than lightning, more burning than flame. . . .' "
sang a powerful, mellow, bass voice.
"Aha! she has visitors," thought Kryukov.
And he was annoyed that she had visitors.
"Shall I go back?" he thought with his hand on the bell, but he
rang all the same, and went up the familiar staircase. From the
entry he glanced into the reception hall. There were about five
men there -- all landowners and officials of his acquaintance;
one, a tall, thin gentleman, was sitting at the piano, singing,
and striking the keys with his long, thin fingers. The others
were listening and grinning with enjoyment. Kryukov looked
himself up and down in the looking-glass, and was about to go
into the hall, when Susanna Moiseyevna herself darted into the
entry, in high spirits and wearing the same black dress. . . .
Seeing Kryukov, she was petrified for an instant, then she
uttered a little scream and beamed with delight.
"Is it you?" she said, clutching his hand. "What a surprise!"
"Here she is!" smiled Kryukov, putting his arm round her waist.
"Well! Does the destiny of Europe still lie in the hands of the
French and the Russians?"
"I'm so glad," laughed the Jewess, cautiously removing his arm.
"Come, go into the hall; they're all friends there. . . . I'll
go and tell them to bring you some tea. Your name's Alexey,
isn't it? Well, go in, I'll come directly. . . ."
She blew him a kiss and ran out of the entry, leaving behind her
the same sickly smell of jasmine. Kryukov raised his head and
walked into the hall. He was on terms of friendly intimacy with
all the men in the room, but scarcely nodded to them; they, too,
scarcely responded, as though the places in which they met were
not quite decent, and as though they were in tacit agreement
with one another that it was more suitable for them not to
recognise one another.
From the hall Kryukov walked into the drawing-room, and from it
into a second drawing-room. On the way he met three or four
other guests, also men whom he knew, though they barely
recognised him. Their faces were flushed with drink and
merriment. Alexey Ivanovitch glanced furtively at them and
marvelled that these men, respectable heads of families, who had
known sorrow and privation, could demean themselves to such
pitiful, cheap gaiety! He shrugged his shoulders, smiled, and
walked on.
"There are places," he reflected, "where a sober man feels sick,
and a drunken man rejoices. I remember I never could go to the
operetta or the gipsies when I was sober: wine makes a man more
good-natured and reconciles him with vice. . . ."
Suddenly he stood still, petrified, and caught hold of the
door-post with both hands. At the writing-table in Susanna's
study was sitting Lieutenant Alexandr Grigoryevitch. He was
discussing something in an undertone with a fat, flabby-looking
Jew, and seeing his cousin, flushed crimson and looked down at
an album.
The sense of decency was stirred in Kryukov and the blood rushed
to his head. Overwhelmed with amazement, shame, and anger, he
walked up to the table without a word. Sokolsky's head sank
lower than ever. His face worked with an expression of agonising
shame.
"Ah, it's you, Alyosha!" he articulated, making a desperate
effort to raise his eyes and to smile. "I called here to say
good-bye, and, as you see. . . . But to-morrow I am certainly
going."
"What can I say to him? What?" thought Alexey Ivanovitch. "How
can I judge him since I'm here myself?"
And clearing his throat without uttering a word, he went out
slowly.
" 'Call her not heavenly, and leave her on earth. . . .' "
The bass was singing in the hall. A little while after,
Kryukov's racing droshky was bumping along the dusty road.
NOTES
meeting of Jacob and Esau: Gen 33:1-11
olina harp: an instrument that makes music by the action of the
wind on stretched strings
belle-soeur: sister-in-law
Queen Tamara: Tamara (1160-1212), Queen of Georgia, (falsely)
described by Lemontov in The Demon as a beautiful witch who took
lovers and then hurled them to their deaths
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