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The Black Monk
- Anton Chekhov
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
VIII
Summer had come again, and the doctor advised
their going into the country. Kovrin had recovered; he had left
off seeing the black monk, and he had only to get up his
strength. Staying at his father-in-law's, he drank a great deal
of milk, worked for only two hours out of the twenty-four, and
neither smoked nor drank wine.
On the evening before Elijah's Day they had an evening service
in the house. When the deacon was handing the priest the censer
the immense old room smelt like a graveyard, and Kovrin felt
bored. He went out into the garden. Without noticing the
gorgeous flowers, he walked about the garden, sat down on a
seat, then strolled about the park; reaching the river, he went
down and then stood lost in thought, looking at the water. The
sullen pines with their shaggy roots, which had seen him a year
before so young, so joyful and confident, were not whispering
now, but standing mute and motionless, as though they did not
recognise him. And, indeed, his head was closely cropped, his
beautiful long hair was gone, his step was lagging, his face was
fuller and paler than last summer.
He crossed by the footbridge to the other side. Where the year
before there had been rye the oats stood, reaped, and lay in
rows. The sun had set and there was a broad stretch of glowing
red on the horizon, a sign of windy weather next day. It was
still. Looking in the direction from which the year before the
black monk had first appeared, Kovrin stood for twenty minutes,
till the evening glow had begun to fade. . . .
When, listless and dissatisfied, he returned home the service
was over. Yegor Semyonitch and Tanya were sitting on the steps
of the verandah, drinking tea. They were talking of something,
but, seeing Kovrin, ceased at once, and he concluded from their
faces that their talk had been about him.
"I believe it is time for you to have your milk," Tanya said to
her husband.
"No, it is not time yet . . ." he said, sitting down on the
bottom step. "Drink it yourself; I don't want it."
Tanya exchanged a troubled glance with her father, and said in a
guilty voice:
"You notice yourself that milk does you good."
"Yes, a great deal of good!" Kovrin laughed. "I congratulate
you: I have gained a pound in weight since Friday." He pressed
his head tightly in his hands and said miserably: "Why, why have
you cured me? Preparations of bromide, idleness, hot baths,
supervision, cowardly consternation at every mouthful, at every
step -- all this will reduce me at last to idiocy. I went out of
my mind, I had megalomania; but then I was cheerful, confident,
and even happy; I was interesting and original. Now I have
become more sensible and stolid, but I am just like every one
else: I am -- mediocrity; I am weary of life. . . . Oh, how
cruelly you have treated me! . . . I saw hallucinations, but
what harm did that do to any one? I ask, what harm did that do
any one?"
"Goodness knows what you are saying!" sighed Yegor Semyonitch.
"It's positively wearisome to listen to it."
"Then don't listen."
The presence of other people, especially Yegor Semyonitch,
irritated Kovrin now; he answered him drily, coldly, and even
rudely, never looked at him but with irony and hatred, while
Yegor Semyonitch was overcome with confusion and cleared his
throat guiltily, though he was not conscious of any fault in
himself. At a loss to understand why their charming and
affectionate relations had changed so abruptly, Tanya huddled up
to her father and looked anxiously in his face; she wanted to
understand and could not understand, and all that was clear to
her was that their relations were growing worse and worse every
day, that of late her father had begun to look much older, and
her husband had grown irritable, capricious, quarrelsome and
uninteresting. She could not laugh or sing; at dinner she ate
nothing; did not sleep for nights together, expecting something
awful, and was so worn out that on one occasion she lay in a
dead faint from dinner-time till evening. During the service she
thought her father was crying, and now while the three of them
were sitting together on the terrace she made an effort not to
think of it.
"How fortunate Buddha, Mahomed, and Shakespeare were that their
kind relations and doctors did not cure them of their ecstasy
and their inspiration," said Kovrin. "If Mahomed had taken
bromide for his nerves, had worked only two hours out of the
twenty-four, and had drunk milk, that remarkable man would have
left no more trace after him than his dog. Doctors and kind
relations will succeed in stupefying mankind, in making
mediocrity pass for genius and in bringing civilisation to ruin.
If only you knew," Kovrin said with annoyance, "how grateful I
am to you."
He felt intense irritation, and to avoid saying too much, he got
up quickly and went into the house. It was still, and the
fragrance of the tobacco plant and the marvel of Peru floated in
at the open window. The moonlight lay in green patches on the
floor and on the piano in the big dark dining-room. Kovrin
remembered the raptures of the previous summer when there had
been the same scent of the marvel of Peru and the moon had shone
in at the window. To bring back the mood of last year he went
quickly to his study, lighted a strong cigar, and told the
footman to bring him some wine. But the cigar left a bitter and
disgusting taste in his mouth, and the wine had not the same
flavour as it had the year before. And so great is the effect of
giving up a habit, the cigar and the two gulps of wine made him
giddy, and brought on palpitations of the heart, so that he was
obliged to take bromide.
Before going to bed, Tanya said to him:
"Father adores you. You are cross with him about something, and
it is killing him. Look at him; he is ageing, not from day to
day, but from hour to hour. I entreat you, Andryusha, for God's
sake, for the sake of your dead father, for the sake of my peace
of mind, be affectionate to him."
"I can't, I don't want to."
"But why?" asked Tanya, beginning to tremble all over. "Explain
why."
"Because he is antipathetic to me, that's all," said Kovrin
carelessly; and he shrugged his shoulders. "But we won't talk
about him: he is your father."
"I can't understand, I can't," said Tanya, pressing her hands to
her temples and staring at a fixed point. "Something
incomprehensible, awful, is going on in the house. You have
changed, grown unlike yourself. . . . You, clever, extraordinary
man as you are, are irritated over trifles, meddle in paltry
nonsense. . . . Such trivial things excite you, that sometimes
one is simply amazed and can't believe that it is you. Come,
come, don't be angry, don't be angry," she went on, kissing his
hands, frightened of her own words. "You are clever, kind,
noble. You will be just to father. He is so good."
"He is not good; he is just good-natured. Burlesque old uncles
like your father, with well-fed, good-natured faces,
extraordinarily hospitable and queer, at one time used to touch
me and amuse me in novels and in farces and in life; now I
dislike them. They are egoists to the marrow of their bones.
What disgusts me most of all is their being so well-fed, and
that purely bovine, purely hoggish optimism of a full stomach."
Tanya sat down on the bed and laid her head on the pillow.
"This is torture," she said, and from her voice it was evident
that she was utterly exhausted, and that it was hard for her to
speak. "Not one moment of peace since the winter. . . . Why,
it's awful! My God! I am wretched."
"Oh, of course, I am Herod, and you and your father are the
innocents. Of course."
His face seemed to Tanya ugly and unpleasant. Hatred and an
ironical expression did not suit him. And, indeed, she had
noticed before that there was something lacking in his face, as
though ever since his hair had been cut his face had changed,
too. She wanted to say something wounding to him, but
immediately she caught herself in this antagonistic feeling, she
was frightened and went out of the bedroom.
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