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Chekhov
- Three Years
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
V The Laptevs had a wholesale business in Moscow, dealing in fancy
goods: fringe, tape, trimmings, crochet cotton, buttons, and so
on. The gross receipts reached two millions a year; what the net
profit was, no one knew but the old father. The sons and the
clerks estimated the profits at approximately three hundred
thousand, and said that it would have been a hundred thousand
more if the old man had not "been too free-handed" -- that is,
had not allowed credit indiscriminately. In the last ten years
alone the bad debts had mounted up to the sum of a million; and
when the subject was referred to, the senior clerk would wink
slyly and deliver himself of sentences the meaning of which was
not clear to every one:
"The psychological sequences of the age."
Their chief commercial operations were conducted in the town
market in a building which was called the warehouse. The
entrance to the warehouse was in the yard, where it was always
dark, and smelt of matting and where the dray-horses were always
stamping their hoofs on the asphalt. A very humble-looking door,
studded with iron, led from the yard into a room with walls
discoloured by damp and scrawled over with charcoal, lighted up
by a narrow window covered by an iron grating. Then on the left
was another room larger and cleaner with an iron stove and a
couple of chairs, though it, too, had a prison window: this was
the office, and from it a narrow stone staircase led up to the
second storey, where the principal room was. This was rather a
large room, but owing to the perpetual darkness, the low-pitched
ceiling, the piles of boxes and bales, and the numbers of men
that kept flitting to and fro in it, it made as unpleasant an
impression on a newcomer as the others. In the offices on the
top storey the goods lay in bales, in bundles and in cardboard
boxes on the shelves; there was no order nor neatness in the
arrangement of it, and if crimson threads, tassels, ends of
fringe, had not peeped out here and there from holes in the
paper parcels, no one could have guessed what was being bought
and sold here. And looking at these crumpled paper parcels and
boxes, no one would have believed that a million was being made
out of such trash, and that fifty men were employed every day in
this warehouse, not counting the buyers.
When at midday, on the day after his arrival at Moscow, Laptev
went into the warehouse, the workmen packing the goods were
hammering so loudly that in the outer room and the office no one
heard him come in. A postman he knew was coming down the stairs
with a bundle of letters in his hand; he was wincing at the
noise, and he did not notice Laptev either. The first person to
meet him upstairs was his brother Fyodor Fyodorovitch, who was
so like him that they passed for twins. This resemblance always
reminded Laptev of his own personal appearance, and now, seeing
before him a short, red-faced man with rather thin hair, with
narrow plebeian hips, looking so uninteresting and so
unintellectual, he asked himself: "Can I really look like that?"
"How glad I am to see you!" said Fyodor, kissing his brother and
pressing his hand warmly. "I have been impatiently looking
forward to seeing you every day, my dear fellow. When you wrote
that you were getting married, I was tormented with curiosity,
and I've missed you, too, brother. Only fancy, it's six months
since we saw each other. Well? How goes it? Nina's very bad?
Awfully bad?"
"Awfully bad."
"It's in God's hands," sighed Fyodor. "Well, what of your wife?
She's a beauty, no doubt? I love her already. Of course, she is
my little sister now. We'll make much of her between us."
Laptev saw the broad, bent back -- so familiar to him -- of his
father, Fyodor Stepanovitch. The old man was sitting on a stool
near the counter, talking to a customer.
"Father, God has sent us joy!" cried Fyodor. "Brother has come!"
Fyodor Stepanovitch was a tall man of exceptionally powerful
build, so that, in spite of his wrinkles and eighty years, he
still looked a hale and vigorous man. He spoke in a deep, rich,
sonorous voice, that resounded from his broad chest as from a
barrel. He wore no beard, but a short-clipped military
moustache, and smoked cigars. As he was always too hot, he used
all the year round to wear a canvas coat at home and at the
warehouse. He had lately had an operation for cataract. His
sight was bad, and he did nothing in the business but talk to
the customers and have tea and jam with them.
Laptev bent down and kissed his head and then his lips.
"It's a good long time since we saw you, honoured sir," said the
old man -- "a good long time. Well, am I to congratulate you on
entering the state of holy matrimony? Very well, then; I
congratulate you."
And he put his lips out to be kissed. Laptev bent down and
kissed him.
"Well, have you brought your young lady?" the old man asked, and
without waiting for an answer, he said, addressing the customer:
" 'Herewith I beg to inform you, father, that I'm going to marry
such and such a young lady.' Yes. But as for asking for his
father's counsel or blessing, that's not in the rules nowadays.
Now they go their own way. When I married I was over forty, but
I went on my knees to my father and asked his advice. Nowadays
we've none of that."
The old man was delighted to see his son, but thought it
unseemly to show his affection or make any display of his joy.
His voice and his manner of saying "your young lady" brought
back to Laptev the depression he had always felt in the
warehouse. Here every trifling detail reminded him of the past,
when he used to be flogged and put on Lenten fare; he knew that
even now boys were thrashed and punched in the face till their
noses bled, and that when those boys grew up they would beat
others. And before he had been five minutes in the warehouse, he
always felt as though he were being scolded or punched in the
face.
Fyodor slapped the customer on the shoulder and said to his
brother:
"Here, Alyosha, I must introduce our Tambov benefactor, Grigory
Timofeitch. He might serve as an example for the young men of
the day; he's passed his fiftieth birthday, and he has tiny
children."
The clerks laughed, and the customer, a lean old man with a pale
face, laughed too.
"Nature above the normal capacity," observed the head-clerk, who
was standing at the counter close by. "It always comes out when
it's there."
The head-clerk -- a tall man of fifty, in spectacles, with a
dark beard, and a pencil behind his ear -- usually expressed his
ideas vaguely in roundabout hints, while his sly smile betrayed
that he attached particular significance to his words. He liked
to obscure his utterances with bookish words, which he
understood in his own way, and many such words he used in a
wrong sense. For instance, the word "except." When he had
expressed some opinion positively and did not want to be
contradicted, he would stretch out his hand and pronounce:
"Except!"
And what was most astonishing, the customers and the other
clerks understood him perfectly. His name was Ivan Vassilitch
Potchatkin, and he came from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev,
he expressed himself as follows:
"It's the reward of valour, for the female heart is a strong
opponent."
Another important person in the warehouse was a clerk called
Makeitchev -- a stout, solid, fair man with whiskers and a
perfectly bald head. He went up to Laptev and congratulated him
respectfully in a low voice:
"I have the honour, sir. . . The Lord has heard your parent's
prayer. Thank God."
Then the other clerks began coming up to congratulate him on his
marriage. They were all fashionably dressed, and looked like
perfectly well-bred, educated men. Since between every two words
they put in a "sir," their congratulations -- something like
"Best wishes, sir, for happiness, sir," uttered very rapidly in
a low voice -- sounded rather like the hiss of a whip in the air
-- "Shshsh-s s s s s!" Laptev was soon bored and longing to go
home, but it was awkward to go away. He was obliged to stay at
least two hours at the warehouse to keep up appearances. He
walked away from the counter and began asking Makeitchev whether
things had gone well while he was away, and whether anything new
had turned up, and the clerk answered him respectfully, avoiding
his eyes. A boy with a cropped head, wearing a grey blouse,
handed Laptev a glass of tea without a saucer; not long
afterwards another boy, passing by, stumbled over a box, and
almost fell down, and Makeitchev's face looked suddenly spiteful
and ferocious like a wild beast's, and he shouted at him:
"Keep on your feet!"
The clerks were pleased that their young master was married and
had come back at last; they looked at him with curiosity and
friendly feeling, and each one thought it his duty to say
something agreeable when he passed him. But Laptev was convinced
that it was not genuine, and that they were only flattering him
because they were afraid of him. He never could forget how
fifteen years before, a clerk, who was mentally deranged, had
run out into the street with nothing on but his shirt and
shaking his fists at the windows, shouted that he had been
ill-treated; and how, when the poor fellow had recovered, the
clerks had jeered at him for long afterwards, reminding him how
he had called his employers "planters" instead of "exploiters."
Altogether the employees at Laptevs' had a very poor time of it,
and this fact was a subject of conversation for the whole
market. The worst of it was that the old man, Fyodor
Stepanovitch, maintained something of an Asiatic despotism in
his attitude to them. Thus, no one knew what wages were paid to
the old man's favourites, Potchatkin and Makeitchev. They
received no more than three thousand a year, together with
bonuses, but he made out that he paid then seven. The bonuses
were given to all the clerks every year, but privately, so that
the man who got little was bound from vanity to say he had got
more. Not one boy knew when he would be promoted to be a clerk;
not one of the men knew whether his employer was satisfied with
him or not. Nothing was directly forbidden, and so the clerks
never knew what was allowed, and what was not. They were not
forbidden to marry, but they did not marry for fear of
displeasing their employer and losing their place. They were
allowed to have friends and pay visits, but the gates were shut
at nine o'clock, and every morning the old man scanned them all
suspiciously, and tried to detect any smell of vodka about them:
"Now then, breathe," he would say.
Every clerk was obliged to go to early service, and to stand in
church in such a position that the old man could see them all.
The fasts were strictly observed. On great occasions, such as
the birthday of their employer or of any member of his family,
the clerks had to subscribe and present a cake from Fley's, or
an album. The clerks lived three or four in a room in the lower
storey, and in the lodges of the house in Pyatnitsky Street, and
at dinner ate from a common bowl, though there was a plate set
before each of them. If one of the family came into the room
while they were at dinner, they all stood up.
Laptev was conscious that only, perhaps, those among them who
had been corrupted by the old man's training could seriously
regard him as their benefactor; the others must have looked on
him as an enemy and a "planter." Now, after six months' absence,
he saw no change for the better; there was indeed something new
which boded nothing good. His brother Fyodor, who had always
been quiet, thoughtful, and extremely refined, was now running
about the warehouse with a pencil behind his ear making a show
of being very busy and businesslike, slapping customers on the
shoulder and shouting "Friends!" to the clerks. Apparently he
had taken up a new role, and Alexey did not recognise him in the
part.
The old man's voice boomed unceasingly. Having nothing to do, he
was laying down the law to a customer, telling him how he should
order his life and his business, always holding himself up as an
example. That boastfulness, that aggressive tone of authority,
Laptev had heard ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. The old man
adored himself; from what he said it always appeared that he had
made his wife and all her relations happy, that he had been
munificent to his children, and a benefactor to his clerks and
employ?, and that every one in the street and all his
acquaintances remembered him in their prayers. Whatever he did
was always right, and if things went wrong with people it was
because they did not take his advice; without his advice nothing
could succeed. In church he stood in the foremost place, and
even made observations to the priests, if in his opinion they
were not conducting the service properly, and believed that this
was pleasing God because God loved him.
At two o'clock every one in the warehouse was hard at work,
except the old man, who still went on booming in his deep voice.
To avoid standing idle, Laptev took some trimmings from a
workgirl and let her go; then listened to a customer, a merchant
from Vologda, and told a clerk to attend to him.
"T. V. A.!" resounded on all sides (prices were denoted by
letters in the warehouse and goods by numbers). "R. I. T.!" As
he went away, Laptev said good-bye to no one but Fyodor.
"I shall come to Pyatnitsky Street with my wife to-morrow," he
said; "but I warn you, if father says a single rude thing to
her, I shall not stay there another minute."
"You're the same as ever," sighed Fyodor. "Marriage has not
changed you. You must be patient with the old man. So till
eleven o'clock, then. We shall expect you impatiently. Come
directly after mass, then."
"I don't go to mass."
"That does not matter. The great thing is not to be later than
eleven, so you may be in time to pray to God and to lunch with
us. Give my greetings to my little sister and kiss her hand for
me. I have a presentiment that I shall like her," Fyodor added
with perfect sincerity. "I envy you, brother!" he shouted after
him as Alexey went downstairs.
"And why does he shrink into himself in that shy way as though
he fancied he was naked?" thought Laptev, as he walked along
Nikolsky Street, trying to understand the change that had come
over his brother. "And his language is new, too: 'Brother, dear
brother, God has sent us joy; to pray to God' -- just like
Iudushka in Shtchedrin."
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