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Three Years
by Anton Chekhov
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
IX Laptev lived in one of the turnings out of Little Dmitrovka.
Besides the big house facing the street, he rented also a
two-storey lodge in the yard at the back of his friend
Kotchevoy, a lawyer's assistant whom all the Laptevs called
Kostya, because he had grown up under their eyes. Facing this
lodge stood another, also of two storeys, inhabited by a French
family consisting of a husband and wife and five daughters.
There was a frost of twenty degrees. The windows were frozen
over. Waking up in the morning, Kostya, with an anxious face,
took twenty drops of a medicine; then, taking two dumb-bells out
of the bookcase, he did gymnastic exercises. He was tall and
thin, with big reddish moustaches; but what was most noticeable
in his appearance was the length of his legs.
Pyotr, a middle-aged peasant in a reefer jacket and cotton
breeches tucked into his high boots, brought in the samovar and
made the tea.
"It's very nice weather now, Konstantin Ivanovitch," he said.
"It is, but I tell you what, brother, it's a pity we can't get
on, you and I, without such exclamations."
Pyotr sighed from politeness.
"What are the little girls doing?" asked Kotchevoy.
"The priest has not come. Alexey Fyodorovitch is giving them
their lesson himself."
Kostya found a spot in the window that was not covered with
frost, and began looking through a field-glass at the windows of
the house where the French family lived.
"There's no seeing," he said.
Meanwhile Alexey Fyodorovitch was giving Sasha and Lida a
scripture lesson below. For the last six weeks they had been
living in Moscow, and were installed with their governess in the
lower storey of the lodge. And three times a week a teacher from
a school in the town, and a priest, came to give them lessons.
Sasha was going through the New Testament and Lida was going
through the Old. The time before Lida had been set the story up
to Abraham to learn by heart.
"And so Adam and Eve had two sons," said Laptev. "Very good. But
what were they called? Try to remember them!"
Lida, still with the same severe face, gazed dumbly at the
table. She moved her lips, but without speaking; and the elder
girl, Sasha, looked into her face, frowning.
"You know it very well, only you mustn't be nervous," said
Laptev. "Come, what were Adam's sons called?"
"Abel and Canel," Lida whispered.
"Cain and Abel," Laptev corrected her.
A big tear rolled down Lida's cheek and dropped on the book.
Sasha looked down and turned red, and she, too, was on the point
of tears. Laptev felt a lump in his throat, and was so sorry for
them he could not speak. He got up from the table and lighted a
cigarette. At that moment Kotchevoy came down the stairs with a
paper in his hand. The little girls stood up, and without
looking at him, made curtsies.
"For God's sake, Kostya, give them their lessons," said Laptev,
turning to him. "I'm afraid I shall cry, too, and I have to go
to the warehouse before dinner."
"All right."
Alexey Fyodorovitch went away. Kostya, with a very serious face,
sat down to the table and drew the Scripture history towards
him.
"Well," he said; "where have you got to?"
"She knows about the Flood," said Sasha.
"The Flood? All right. Let's peg in at the Flood. Fire away
about the Flood." Kostya skimmed through a brief description of
the Flood in the book, and said: "I must remark that there
really never was a flood such as is described here. And there
was no such person as Noah. Some thousands of years before the
birth of Christ, there was an extraordinary inundation of the
earth, and that's not only mentioned in the Jewish Bible, but in
the books of other ancient peoples: the Greeks, the Chaldeans,
the Hindoos. But whatever the inundation may have been, it
couldn't have covered the whole earth. It may have flooded the
plains, but the mountains must have remained. You can read this
book, of course, but don't put too much faith in it."
Tears trickled down Lida's face again. She turned away and
suddenly burst into such loud sobs, that Kostya started and
jumped up from his seat in great confusion.
"I want to go home," she said, "to papa and to nurse."
Sasha cried too. Kostya went upstairs to his own room, and spoke
on the telephone to Yulia Sergeyevna.
"My dear soul," he said, "the little girls are crying again;
there's no doing anything with them."
Yulia Sergeyevna ran across from the big house in her indoor
dress, with only a knitted shawl over her shoulders, and chilled
through by the frost, began comforting the children.
"Do believe me, do believe me," she said in an imploring voice,
hugging first one and then the other. "Your papa's coming
to-day; he has sent a telegram. You're grieving for mother, and
I grieve too. My heart's torn, but what can we do? We must bow
to God's will!"
When they left off crying, she wrapped them up and took them out
for a drive. They stopped near the Iverskoy chapel, put up
candles at the shrine, and, kneeling down, prayed. On the way
back they went in Filippov's, and had cakes sprinkled with
poppy-seeds.
The Laptevs had dinner between two and three. Pyotr handed the
dishes. This Pyotr waited on the family, and by day ran to the
post, to the warehouse, to the law courts for Kostya; he spent
his evenings making cigarettes, ran to open the door at night,
and before five o'clock in the morning was up lighting the
stoves, and no one knew where he slept. He was very fond of
opening seltzer-water bottles and did it easily, without a bang
and without spilling a drop.
"With God's blessing," said Kostya, drinking off a glass of
vodka before the soup.
At first Yulia Sergeyevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice,
his phrases such as "Landed him one on the beak," "filth,"
"produce the samovar," etc., his habit of clinking glasses and
making sentimental speeches, seemed to her trivial. But as she
got to know him better, she began to feel very much at home with
him. He was open with her; he liked talking to her in a low
voice in the evening, and even gave her novels of his own
composition to read, though these had been kept a secret even
from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev. She read these novels
and praised them, so that she might not disappoint him, and he
was delighted because he hoped sooner or later to become a
distinguished author.
In his novels he described nothing but country-house life,
though he had only seen the country on rare occasions when
visiting friends at a summer villa, and had only been in a real
country-house once in his life, when he had been to Volokolamsk
on law business. He avoided any love interest as though he were
ashamed of it; he put in frequent descriptions of nature, and in
them was fond of using such expressions as, "the capricious
lines of the mountains, the miraculous forms of the clouds, the
harmony of mysterious rhythms. . . ." His novels had never been
published, and this he attributed to the censorship.
He liked the duties of a lawyer, but yet he considered that his
most important pursuit was not the law but these novels. He
believed that he had a subtle, ?thetic temperament, and he
always had leanings towards art. He neither sang nor played on
any musical instrument, and was absolutely without an ear for
music, but he attended all the symphony and philharmonic
concerts, got up concerts for charitable objects, and made the
acquaintance of singers. . . .
They used to talk at dinner.
"It's a strange thing," said Laptev, "my Fyodor took my breath
away again! He said we must find out the date of the centenary
of our firm, so as to try and get raised to noble rank; and he
said it quite seriously. What can be the matter with him? I
confess I begin to feel worried about him."
They talked of Fyodor, and of its being the fashion nowadays to
adopt some pose or other. Fyodor, for instance, tried to appear
like a plain merchant, though he had ceased to be one; and when
the teacher came from the school, of which old Laptev was the
patron, to ask Fyodor for his salary, the latter changed his
voice and deportment, and behaved with the teacher as though he
were some one in authority.
There was nothing to be done; after dinner they went into the
study. They talked about the decadents, about "The Maid of
Orleans," and Kostya delivered a regular monologue; he fancied
that he was very successful in imitating Ermolova. Then they sat
down and played whist. The little girls had not gone back to the
lodge but were sitting together in one arm-chair, with pale and
mournful faces, and were listening to every noise in the street,
wondering whether it was their father coming. In the evening
when it was dark and the candles were lighted, they felt deeply
dejected. The talk over the whist, the footsteps of Pyotr, the
crackling in the fireplace, jarred on their nerves, and they did
not like to look at the fire. In the evenings they did not want
to cry, but they felt strange, and there was a load on their
hearts. They could not understand how people could talk and
laugh when their mother was dead.
"What did you see through the field-glasses today?" Yulia
Sergeyevna asked Kostya.
"Nothing to-day, but yesterday I saw the old Frenchman having
his bath."
At seven o'clock Yulia and Kostya went to the Little Theatre.
Laptev was left with the little girls.
"It's time your father was here," he said, looking at his watch.
"The train must be late."
The children sat in their arm-chair dumb and huddling together
like animals when they are cold, while he walked about the room
looking impatiently at his watch. It was quiet in the house. But
just before nine o'clock some one rang at the bell. Pyotr went
to open the door.
Hearing a familiar voice, the children shrieked, burst into
sobs, and ran into the hall. Panaurov was wearing a sumptuous
coat of antelope skin, and his head and moustaches were white
with hoar frost. "In a minute, in a minute," he muttered, while
Sasha and Lida, sobbing and laughing, kissed his cold hands, his
hat, his antelope coat. With the languor of a handsome man
spoilt by too much love, he fondled the children without haste,
then went into the study and said, rubbing his hands:
"I've not come to stay long, my friends. I'm going to Petersburg
to-morrow. They've promised to transfer me to another town."
He was staying at the Dresden Hotel.
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