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An Anonymous Story
- Anton Chekhov
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XI An old man of sixty, in a long fur coat reaching to the ground,
and a beaver cap, was standing at the door.
"Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?" he asked.
At first I thought it was one of the moneylenders, Gruzin's
creditors, who sometimes used to come to Orlov for small
payments on account; but when he came into the hall and flung
open his coat, I saw the thick brows and the characteristically
compressed lips which I knew so well from the photographs, and
two rows of stars on the uniform. I recognised him: it was
Orlov's father, the distinguished statesman.
I answered that Georgy Ivanitch was not at home. The old man
pursed up his lips tightly and looked into space, reflecting,
showing me his dried-up, toothless profile.
"I'll leave a note," he said; "show me in."
He left his goloshes in the hall, and, without taking off his
long, heavy fur coat, went into the study. There he sat down
before the table, and, before taking up the pen, for three
minutes he pondered, shading his eyes with his hand as though
from the sun -- exactly as his son did when he was out of
humour. His face was sad, thoughtful, with that look of
resignation which I have only seen on the faces of the old and
religious. I stood behind him, gazed at his bald head and at the
hollow at the nape of his neck, and it was clear as daylight to
me that this weak old man was now in my power. There was not a
soul in the flat except my enemy and me. I had only to use a
little physical violence, then snatch his watch to disguise the
object of the crime, and to get off by the back way, and I
should have gained infinitely more than I could have imagined
possible when I took up the part of a footman. I thought that I
could hardly get a better opportunity. But instead of acting, I
looked quite unconcernedly, first at his bald patch and then at
his fur, and calmly meditated on this man's relation to his only
son, and on the fact that people spoiled by power and wealth
probably don't want to die. . . .
"Have you been long in my son's service?" he asked, writing a
large hand on the paper.
"Three months, your High Excellency."
He finished the letter and stood up. I still had time. I urged
myself on and clenched my fists, trying to wring out of my soul
some trace of my former hatred; I recalled what a passionate,
implacable, obstinate hate I had felt for him only a little
while before. . . . But it is difficult to strike a match
against a crumbling stone. The sad old face and the cold glitter
of his stars roused in me nothing but petty, cheap, unnecessary
thoughts of the transitoriness of everything earthly, of the
nearness of death. . . .
"Good-day, brother," said the old man. He put on his cap and
went out.
There could be no doubt about it: I had undergone a change; I
had become different. To convince myself, I began to recall the
past, but at once I felt uneasy, as though I had accidentally
peeped into a dark, damp corner. I remembered my comrades and
friends, and my first thought was how I should blush in
confusion if ever I met any of them. What was I now? What had I
to think of and to do? Where was I to go? What was I living for?
I could make nothing of it. I only knew one thing -- that I must
make haste to pack my things and be off. Before the old man's
visit my position as a flunkey had a meaning; now it was absurd.
Tears dropped into my open portmanteau; I felt insufferably sad;
but how I longed to live! I was ready to embrace and include in
my short life every possibility open to man. I wanted to speak,
to read, and to hammer in some big factory, and to stand on
watch, and to plough. I yearned for the Nevsky Prospect, for the
sea and the fields -- for every place to which my imagination
travelled. When Zinaida Fyodorovna came in, I rushed to open the
door for her, and with peculiar tenderness took off her fur
coat. The last time!
We had two other visitors that day besides the old man. In the
evening when it was quite dark, Gruzin came to fetch some papers
for Orlov. He opened the table-drawer, took the necessary
papers, and, rolling them up, told me to put them in the hall
beside his cap while he went in to see Zinaida Fyodorovna. She
was lying on the sofa in the drawing-room, with her arms behind
her head. Five or six days had already passed since Orlov went
on his tour of inspection, and no one knew when he would be
back, but this time she did not send telegrams and did not
expect them. She did not seem to notice the presence of Polya,
who was still living with us. "So be it, then," was what I read
on her passionless and very pale face. Like Orlov, she wanted to
be unhappy out of obstinacy. To spite herself and everything in
the world, she lay for days together on the sofa, desiring and
expecting nothing but evil for herself. Probably she was
picturing to herself Orlov's return and the inevitable quarrels
with him; then his growing indifference to her, his
infidelities; then how they would separate; and perhaps these
agonising thoughts gave her satisfaction. But what would she
have said if she found out the actual truth?
"I love you, Godmother," said Gruzin, greeting her and kissing
her hand. "You are so kind! And so dear George has gone away,"
he lied. "He has gone away, the rascal!"
He sat down with a sigh and tenderly stroked her hand.
"Let me spend an hour with you, my dear," he said. "I don't want
to go home, and it's too early to go to the Birshovs'. The
Birshovs are keeping their Katya's birthday to-day. She is a
nice child!"
I brought him a glass of tea and a decanter of brandy. He slowly
and with obvious reluctance drank the tea, and returning the
glass to me, asked timidly:
"Can you give me . . . something to eat, my friend? I have had
no dinner."
We had nothing in the flat. I went to the restaurant and brought
him the ordinary rouble dinner.
"To your health, my dear," he said to Zinaida Fyodorovna, and he
tossed off a glass of vodka. "My little girl, your godchild,
sends you her love. Poor child! she's rickety. Ah, children,
children!" he sighed. "Whatever you may say, Godmother, it is
nice to be a father. Dear George can't understand that feeling."
He drank some more. Pale and lean, with his dinner-napkin over
his chest like a little pinafore, he ate greedily, and raising
his eyebrows, kept looking guiltily, like a little boy, first at
Zinaida Fyodorovna and then at me. It seemed as though he would
have begun crying if I had not given him the grouse or the
jelly. When he had satisfied his hunger he grew more lively, and
began laughingly telling some story about the Birshov household,
but perceiving that it was tiresome and that Zinaida Fyodorovna
was not laughing, he ceased. And there was a sudden feeling of
dreariness. After he had finished his dinner they sat in the
drawing-room by the light of a single lamp, and did not speak;
it was painful to him to lie to her, and she wanted to ask him
something, but could not make up her mind to. So passed half an
hour. Gruzin glanced at his watch.
"I suppose it's time for me to go."
"No, stay a little. . . . We must have a talk."
Again they were silent. He sat down to the piano, struck one
chord, then began playing, and sang softly, "What does the
coming day bring me?" but as usual he got up suddenly and tossed
his head.
"Play something," Zinaida Fyodorovna asked him.
"What shall I play?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. "I have
forgotten everything. I've given it up long ago."
Looking at the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played
two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite expression, with such
warmth, such insight! His face was just as usual -- neither
stupid nor intelligent -- and it seemed to me a perfect marvel
that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most
degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of
rising to a feeling so lofty, so far beyond my reach. Zinaida
Fyodorovna's face glowed, and she walked about the drawing-room
in emotion.
"Wait a bit, Godmother; if I can remember it, I will play you
something," he said; "I heard it played on the violoncello."
Beginning timidly and picking out the notes, and then gathering
confidence, he played Saint-Sa?s's "Swan Song." He played it
through, and then played it a second time.
"It's nice, isn't it?" he said.
Moved by the music, Zinaida Fyodorovna stood beside him and
asked:
"Tell me honestly, as a friend, what do you think about me?"
"What am I to say?" he said, raising his eyebrows. "I love you
and think nothing but good of you. But if you wish that I should
speak generally about the question that interests you," he went
on, rubbing his sleeve near the elbow and frowning, "then, my
dear, you know. . . . To follow freely the promptings of the
heart does not always give good people happiness. To feel free
and at the same time to be happy, it seems to me, one must not
conceal from oneself that life is coarse, cruel, and merciless
in its conservatism, and one must retaliate with what it
deserves -- that is, be as coarse and as merciless in one's
striving for freedom. That's what I think."
"That's beyond me," said Zinaida Fyodorovna, with a mournful
smile. "I am exhausted already. I am so exhausted that I
wouldn't stir a finger for my own salvation."
"Go into a nunnery."
He said this in jest, but after he had said it, tears glistened
in Zinaida Fyodorovna's eyes and then in his.
"Well," he said, "we've been sitting and sitting, and now we
must go. Good-bye, dear Godmother. God give you health."
He kissed both her hands, and stroking them tenderly, said that
he should certainly come to see her again in a day or two. In
the hall, as he was putting on his overcoat, that was so like a
child's pelisse, he fumbled long in his pockets to find a tip
for me, but found nothing there.
"Good-bye, my dear fellow," he said sadly, and went away.
I shall never forget the feeling that this man left behind him.
Zinaida Fyodorovna still walked about the room in her
excitement. That she was walking about and not still lying down
was so much to the good. I wanted to take advantage of this mood
to speak to her openly and then to go away, but I had hardly
seen Gruzin out when I heard a ring. It was Kukushkin.
"Is Georgy Ivanitch at home?" he said. "Has he come back? You
say no? What a pity! In that case, I'll go in and kiss your
mistress's hand, and so away. Zinaida Fyodorovna, may I come
in?" he cried. "I want to kiss your hand. Excuse my being so
late."
He was not long in the drawing-room, not more than ten minutes,
but I felt as though he were staying a long while and would
never go away. I bit my lips from indignation and annoyance, and
already hated Zinaida Fyodorovna. "Why does she not turn him
out?" I thought indignantly, though it was evident that she was
bored by his company.
When I held his fur coat for him he asked me, as a mark of
special good-will, how I managed to get on without a wife.
"But I don't suppose you waste your time," he said, laughingly.
"I've no doubt Polya and you are as thick as thieves. . . . You
rascal!"
In spite of my experience of life, I knew very little of mankind
at that time, and it is very likely that I often exaggerated
what was of little consequence and failed to observe what was
important. It seemed to me it was not without motive that
Kukushkin tittered and flattered me. Could it be that he was
hoping that I, like a flunkey, would gossip in other kitchens
and servants' quarters of his coming to see us in the evenings
when Orlov was away, and staying with Zinaida Fyodorovna till
late at night? And when my tittle-tattle came to the ears of his
acquaintance, he would drop his eyes in confusion and shake his
little finger. And would not he, I thought, looking at his
little honeyed face, this very evening at cards pretend and
perhaps declare that he had already won Zinaida Fyodorovna from
Orlov?
That hatred which failed me at midday when the old father had
come, took possession of me now. Kukushkin went away at last,
and as I listened to the shuffle of his leather goloshes, I felt
greatly tempted to fling after him, as a parting shot, some
coarse word of abuse, but I restrained myself. And when the
steps had died away on the stairs, I went back to the hall, and,
hardly conscious of what I was doing, took up the roll of papers
that Gruzin had left behind, and ran headlong downstairs.
Without cap or overcoat, I ran down into the street. It was not
cold, but big flakes of snow were falling and it was windy.
"Your Excellency!" I cried, catching up Kukushkin. "Your
Excellency!"
He stopped under a lamp-post and looked round with surprise.
"Your Excellency!" I said breathless, "your Excellency!"
And not able to think of anything to say, I hit him two or three
times on the face with the roll of paper. Completely at a loss,
and hardly wondering-- I had so completely taken him by surprise
-- he leaned his back against the lamp-post and put up his hands
to protect his face. At that moment an army doctor passed, and
saw how I was beating the man, but he merely looked at us in
astonishment and went on. I felt ashamed and I ran back to the
house.
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