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Three Years
by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
X A friend who was often at the Laptevs' was Ivan Gavrilitch
Yartsev. He was a strong, healthy man with black hair and a
clever, pleasant face. He was considered to be handsome, but of
late he had begun to grow stout, and that rather spoilt his face
and figure; another thing that spoilt him was that he wore his
hair cut so close that the skin showed through.
At the University his tall figure and physical strength had won
him the nickname of "the pounder" among the students. He had
taken his degree with the Laptev brothers in the faculty of
philology -- then he went in for science and now had the degree
of magister in chemistry. But he had never given a lecture or
even been a demonstrator. He taught physics and natural history
in the modern school, and in two girls' high schools. He was
enthusiastic over his pupils, especially the girls, and used to
maintain that a remarkable generation was growing up. At home he
spent his time studying sociology and Russian history, as well
as chemistry, and he sometimes published brief notes in the
newspapers and magazines, signing them "Y." When he talked of
some botanical or zoological subject, he spoke like an
historian; when he was discussing some historical question, he
approached it as a man of science.
Kish, nicknamed "the eternal student," was also like one of the
family at the Laptevs'. He had been for three years studying
medicine. Then he took up mathematics, and spent two years over
each year's course. His father, a provincial druggist, used to
send him forty roubles a month, to which his mother, without his
father's knowledge, added another ten. And this sum was not only
sufficient for his board and lodging, but even for such luxuries
as an overcoat lined with Polish beaver, gloves, scent, and
photographs (he often had photographs taken of himself and used
to distribute them among his friends). He was neat and demure,
slightly bald, with golden side-whiskers, and he had the air of
a man nearly always ready to oblige. He was always busy looking
after other people's affairs. At one time he would be rushing
about with a subscription list; at another time he would be
freezing in the early morning at a ticket office to buy tickets
for ladies of his acquaintance, or at somebody's request would
be ordering a wreath or a bouquet. People simply said of him:
"Kish will go, Kish will do it, Kish will buy it." He was
usually unsuccessful in carrying out his commissions. Reproaches
were showered upon him, people frequently forgot to pay him for
the things he bought, but he simply sighed in hard cases and
never protested. He was never particularly delighted nor
disappointed; his stories were always long and boring; and his
jokes invariably provoked laughter just because they were not
funny. Thus, one day, for instance, intending to make a joke, he
said to Pyotr: "Pyotr, you're not a sturgeon;" and this aroused
a general laugh, and he, too, laughed for a long time, much
pleased at having made such a successful jest. Whenever one of
the professors was buried, he walked in front with the mutes.
Yartsev and Kish usually came in the evening to tea. If the
Laptevs were not going to the theatre or a concert, the evening
tea lingered on till supper. One evening in February the
following conversation took place:
"A work of art is only significant and valuable when there are
some serious social problems contained in its central idea,"
said Kostya, looking wrathfully at Yartsev. "If there is in the
work a protest against serfdom, or the author takes up arms
against the vulgarity of aristocratic society, the work is
significant and valuable. The novels that are taken up with
'Ach!' and 'Och!' and 'she loved him, while he ceased to love
her,' I tell you, are worthless, and damn them all, I say!"
"I agree with you, Konstantin Ivanovitch," said Yulia
Sergeyevna. "One describes a love scene; another, a betrayal;
and the third, meeting again after separation. Are there no
other subjects? Why, there are many people sick, unhappy,
harassed by poverty, to whom reading all that must be
distasteful."
It was disagreeable to Laptev to hear his wife, not yet
twenty-two, speaking so seriously and coldly about love. He
understood why this was so.
"If poetry does not solve questions that seem so important,"
said Yartsev, "you should turn to works on technical subjects,
criminal law, or finance, read scientific pamphlets. What need
is there to discuss in 'Romeo and Juliet,' liberty of speech, or
the disinfecting of prisons, instead of love, when you can find
all that in special articles and textbooks?"
"That's pushing it to the extreme," Kostya interrupted. "We are
not talking of giants like Shakespeare or Goethe; we are talking
of the hundreds of talented mediocre writers, who would be
infinitely more valuable if they would let love alone, and would
employ themselves in spreading knowledge and humane ideas among
the masses."
Kish, lisping and speaking a little through his nose, began
telling the story of a novel he had lately been reading. He
spoke circumstantially and without haste. Three minutes passed,
then five, then ten, and no one could make out what he was
talking about, and his face grew more and more indifferent, and
his eyes more and more blank.
"Kish, do be quick over it," Yulia Sergeyevna could not resist
saying; "it's really agonizing!"
"Shut up, Kish!" Kostya shouted to him.
They all laughed, and Kish with them.
Fyodor came in. Flushing red in patches, he greeted them all in
a nervous flurry, and led his brother away into the study. Of
late he had taken to avoiding the company of more than one
person at once.
"Let the young people laugh, while we speak from the heart in
here," he said, settling himself in a deep arm-chair at a
distance from the lamp. "It's a long time, my dear brother,
since we've seen each other. How long is it since you were at
the warehouse? I think it must be a week."
"Yes, there's nothing for me to do there. And I must confess
that the old man wearies me."
"Of course, they could get on at the warehouse without you and
me, but one must have some occupation. 'In the sweat of thy brow
thou shalt eat bread,' as it is written. God loves work."
Pyotr brought in a glass of tea on a tray. Fyodor drank it
without sugar, and asked for more. He drank a great deal of tea,
and could get through as many as ten glasses in the evening.
"I tell you what, brother," he said, getting up and going to his
brother. "Laying aside philosophic subtleties, you must get
elected on to the town council, and little by little we will get
you on to the local Board, and then to be an alderman. And as
time goes on -- you are a clever man and well-educated -- you
will be noticed in Petersburg and asked to go there -- active
men on the provincial assemblies and town councils are all the
fashion there now -- and before you are fifty you'll be a privy
councillor, and have a ribbon across your shoulders."
Laptev made no answer; he knew that all this -- being a privy
councillor and having a ribbon over his shoulder -- was what
Fyodor desired for himself, and he did not know what to say.
The brothers sat still and said nothing. Fyodor opened his watch
and for a long, long time gazed into it with strained attention,
as though he wanted to detect the motion of the hand, and the
expression of his face struck Laptev as strange.
They were summoned to supper. Laptev went into the dining-room,
while Fyodor remained in the study. The argument was over and
Yartsev was speaking in the tones of a professor giving a
lecture:
"Owing to differences of climate, of energy, of tastes, of age,
equality among men is physically impossible. But civilised man
can make this inequality innocuous, as he has already done with
bogs and bears. A learned man succeeded in making a cat, a
mouse, a falcon, a sparrow, all eat out of one plate; and
education, one must hope, will do the same thing with men. Life
continually progresses, civilisation makes enormous advances
before our eyes, and obviously a time will come when we shall
think, for instance, the present condition of the factory
population as absurd as we now do the state of serfdom, in which
girls were exchanged for dogs."
"That won't be for a long while, a very long while," said
Kostya, with a laugh, "not till Rothschild thinks his cellars
full of gold absurd, and till then the workers may bend their
backs and die of hunger. No; that's not it. We mustn't wait for
it; we must struggle for it. Do you suppose because the cat eats
out of the same saucer as the mouse -- do you suppose that she
is influenced by a sense of conscious intelligence? Not a bit of
it! She's made to do it by force."
"Fyodor and I are rich; our father's a capitalist, a
millionaire. You will have to struggle with us," said Laptev,
rubbing his forehead with his hand. "Struggle with me is an idea
I cannot grasp. I am rich, but what has money given me so far?
What has this power given me? In what way am I happier than you?
My childhood was slavery, and money did not save me from the
birch. When Nina was ill and died, my money did not help her. If
people don't care for me, I can't make them like me if I spend a
hundred million."
"But you can do a great deal of good," said Kish.
"Good, indeed! You spoke to me yesterday of a mathematical man
who is looking for a job. Believe me, I can do as little for him
as you can. I can give money, but that's not what he wants -- I
asked a well-known musician to help a poor violinist, and this
is what he answered: 'You apply to me just because you are not a
musician yourself.' In the same way I say to you that you apply
for help to me so confidently because you've never been in the
position of a rich man."
"Why you bring in the comparison with a well-known musician I
don't understand!" said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed
crimson. "What has the well-known musician to do with it!"
Her face was quivering with hatred, and she dropped her eyes to
conceal the feeling. And not only her husband, but all the men
sitting at the table, knew what the look in her face meant.
"What has the well-known musician got to do with it?" she said
slowly. "Why, nothing's easier than helping some one poor."
Silence followed. Pyotr handed the woodcock, but they all
refused it, and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember
what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his
words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the
conversation at all.
After supper he went into his study; intently, with a beating
heart, expecting further humiliation, he listened to what was
going on in the hall. An argument had sprung up there again.
Then Yartsev sat down to the piano and played a sentimental
song. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he could play and
sing, and even perform conjuring tricks.
"You may please yourselves, my friends, but I'm not going to
stay at home," said Yulia. "We must go somewhere."
They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish to the
merchant's club to order a three-horse sledge. They did not ask
Laptev to go with them because he did not usually join these
expeditions, and because his brother was sitting with him; but
he took it to mean that his society bored them, and that he was
not wanted in their light-hearted youthful company. And his
vexation, his bitter feeling, was so intense that he almost shed
tears. He was positively glad that he was treated so
ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull
husband, a money-bag; and it seemed to him, that he would have
been even more glad if his wife were to deceive him that night
with his best friend, and were afterwards to acknowledge it,
looking at him with hatred. . . . He was jealous on her account
of their student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev,
even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a passionate
longing for her really to be unfaithful to him. He longed to
find her in another man's arms, and to be rid of this nightmare
forever. Fyodor was drinking tea, gulping it noisily. But he,
too, got up to go.
"Our old father must have got cataract," he said, as he put on
his fur coat. "His sight has become very poor."
Laptev put on his coat, too, and went out. After seeing his
brother part of the way home, he took a sledge and drove to
Yar's.
"And this is family happiness!" he said, jeering at himself.
"This is love!"
His teeth were chattering, and he did not know if it were
jealousy or something else. He walked about near the tables;
listened to a comic singer in the hall. He had not a single
phrase ready if he should meet his own party; and he felt sure
beforehand that if he met his wife, he would only smile
pitifully and not cleverly, and that every one would understand
what feeling had induced him to come here. He was bewildered by
the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the
fact that the ladies he met looked at him. He stood at the doors
trying to see and to hear what was going on in the private
rooms, and it seemed to him that he was somehow playing a mean,
contemptible part on a level with the comic singers and those
ladies. Then he went to Strelna, but he found none of his circle
there, either; and only when on the way home he was again
driving up to Yar's, a three-horse sledge noisily overtook him.
The driver was drunk and shouting, and he could hear Yartsev
laughing: "Ha, ha, ha!"
Laptev returned home between three and four. Yulia Sergeyevna
was in bed. Noticing that she was not asleep, he went up to her
and said sharply:
"I understand your repulsion, your hatred, but you might spare
me before other people; you might conceal your feelings."
She got up and sat on the bed with her legs dangling. Her eyes
looked big and black in the lamplight.
"I beg your pardon," she said.
He could not utter a single word from excitement and the
trembling of his whole body; he stood facing her and was dumb.
She trembled, too, and sat with the air of a criminal waiting
for explanations.
"How I suffer!" he said at last, and he clutched his head. "I'm
in hell, and I'm out of my mind."
"And do you suppose it's easy for me?" she asked, with a quiver
in her voice. "God alone knows what I go through."
"You've been my wife for six months, but you haven't a spark of
love for me in your heart. There's no hope, not one ray of
light! Why did you marry me?" Laptev went on with despair. "Why?
What demon thrust you into my arms? What did you hope for? What
did you want?"
She looked at him with terror, as though she were afraid he
would kill her.
"Did I attract you? Did you like me?" he went on, gasping for
breath. "No. Then what? What? Tell me what?" he cried. "Oh, the
cursed money! The cursed money!"
"I swear to God, no!" she cried, and she crossed herself. She
seemed to shrink under the insult, and for the first time he
heard her crying. "I swear to God, no!" she repeated. "I didn't
think about your money; I didn't want it. I simply thought I
should do wrong if I refused you. I was afraid of spoiling your
life and mine. And now I am suffering for my mistake. I'm
suffering unbearably!"
She sobbed bitterly, and he saw that she was hurt; and not
knowing what to say, dropped down on the carpet before her.
"That's enough; that's enough," he muttered. "I insulted you
because I love you madly." He suddenly kissed her foot and
passionately hugged it. "If only a spark of love," he muttered.
"Come, lie to me; tell me a lie! Don't say it's a mistake! . .
."
But she went on crying, and he felt that she was only enduring
his caresses as an inevitable consequence of her mistake. And
the foot he had kissed she drew under her like a bird. He felt
sorry for her.
She got into bed and covered her head over; he undressed and got
into bed, too. In the morning they both felt confused and did
not know what to talk about, and he even fancied she walked
unsteadily on the foot he had kissed.
Before dinner Panaurov came to say good-bye. Yulia had an
irresistible desire to go to her own home; it would be nice, she
thought, to go away and have a rest from married life, from the
embarrassment and the continual consciousness that she had done
wrong. It was decided at dinner that she should set off with
Panaurov, and stay with her father for two or three weeks until
she was tired of it.
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