|
|
|
Anton Chekhov
- The Murder
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
III
The story ran that the tavern had been built
in the time of Alexander I, by a widow who had settled here with
her son; her name was Avdotya Terehov. The dark roofed-in
courtyard and the gates always kept locked excited, especially
on moonlight nights, a feeling of depression and unaccountable
uneasiness in people who drove by with posting-horses, as though
sorcerers or robbers were living in it; and the driver always
looked back after he passed, and whipped up his horses.
Travellers did not care to put up here, as the people of the
house were always unfriendly and charged heavily. The yard was
muddy even in summer; huge fat pigs used to lie there in the
mud, and the horses in which the Terehovs dealt wandered about
untethered, and often it happened that they ran out of the yard
and dashed along the road like mad creatures, terrifying the
pilgrim women. At that time there was a great deal of traffic on
the road; long trains of loaded waggons trailed by, and all
sorts of adventures happened, such as, for instance, that thirty
years ago some waggoners got up a quarrel with a passing
merchant and killed him, and a slanting cross is standing to
this day half a mile from the tavern; posting-chaises with bells
and the heavy dormeuses of country gentlemen drove by; and herds
of homed cattle passed bellowing and stirring up clouds of dust.
When the railway came there was at first at this place only a
platform, which was called simply a halt; ten years afterwards
the present station, Progonnaya, was built. The traffic on the
old posting-road almost ceased, and only local landowners and
peasants drove along it now, but the working people walked there
in crowds in spring and autumn. The posting-inn was transformed
into a restaurant; the upper storey was destroyed by fire, the
roof had grown yellow with rust, the roof over the yard had
fallen by degrees, but huge fat pigs, pink and revolting, still
wallowed in the mud in the yard. As before, the horses sometimes
ran away and, lashing their tails dashed madly along the road.
In the tavern they sold tea, hay oats and flour, as well as
vodka and beer, to be drunk on the premises and also to be taken
away; they sold spirituous liquors warily, for they had never
taken out a licence.
The Terehovs had always been distinguished by their piety, so
much so that they had even been given the nickname of the "Godlies."
But perhaps because they lived apart like bears, avoided people
and thought out all their ideas for themselves, they were given
to dreams and to doubts and to changes of faith and almost each
generation had a peculiar faith of its own. The grandmother
Avdotya, who had built the inn, was an Old Believer; her son and
both her grandsons (the fathers of Matvey and Yakov) went to the
Orthodox church, entertained the clergy, and worshipped before
the new ikons as devoutly as they had done before the old. The
son in old age refused to eat meat and imposed upon himself the
rule of silence, considering all conversation as sin; it was the
peculiarity of the grandsons that they interpreted the Scripture
not simply, but sought in it a hidden meaning, declaring that
every sacred word must contain a mystery.
Avdotya's great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early
childhood with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been
almost ruined by it; the other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanitch,
was orthodox, but after his wife's death he gave up going to
church and prayed at home. Following his example, his sister
Aglaia had turned, too; she did not go to church herself, and
did not let Dashutka go. Of Aglaia it was told that in her youth
she used to attend the Flagellant meetings in Vedenyapino, and
that she was still a Flagellant in secret, and that was why she
wore a white kerchief.
Yakov Ivanitch was ten years older than Matvey -- he was a very
handsome tall old man with a big grey beard almost to his waist,
and bushy eyebrows which gave his face a stern, even ill-natured
expression. He wore a long jerkin of good cloth or a black
sheepskin coat, and altogether tried to be clean and neat in
dress; he wore goloshes even in dry weather. He did not go to
church, because, to his thinking, the services were not properly
celebrated and because the priests drank wine at unlawful times
and smoked tobacco. Every day he read and sang the service at
home with Aglaia. At Vedenyapino they left out the "Praises" at
early matins, and had no evening service even on great holidays,
but he used to read through at home everything that was laid
down for every day, without hurrying or leaving out a single
line, and even in his spare time read aloud the Lives of the
Saints. And in everyday life he adhered strictly to the rules of
the church; thus, if wine were allowed on some day in Lent "for
the sake of the vigil," then he never failed to drink wine, even
if he were not inclined.
He read, sang, burned incense and fasted, not for the sake of
receiving blessings of some sort from God, but for the sake of
good order. Man cannot live without religion, and religion ought
to be expressed from year to year and from day to day in a
certain order, so that every morning and every evening a man
might turn to God with exactly those words and thoughts that
were befitting that special day and hour. One must live, and,
therefore, also pray as is pleasing to God, and so every day one
must read and sing what is pleasing to God--that is, what is
laid down in the rule of the church. Thus the first chapter of
St. John must only be read on Easter Day, and "It is most meet"
must not be sung from Easter to Ascension, and so on. The
consciousness of this order and its importance afforded Yakov
Ivanitch great gratification during his religious exercises.
When he was forced to break this order by some necessity -- to
drive to town or to the bank, for instance his conscience was
uneasy and he fit miserable.
When his cousin Matvey had returned unexpectedly from the
factory and settled in the tavern as though it were his home, he
had from the very first day disturbed his settled order. He
refused to pray with them, had meals and drank tea at wrong
times, got up late, drank milk on Wednesdays and Fridays on the
pretext of weak health; almost every day he went into the
prayer-room while they were at prayers and cried: "Think what
you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!" These words threw
Yakov into a fury, while Aglaia could not refrain from beginning
to scold; or at night Matvey would steal into the prayer-room
and say softly: "Cousin, your prayer is not pleasing to God. For
it is written, First be reconciled with thy brother and then
offer thy gift. You lend money at usury, you deal in vodka --
repent!"
In Matvey's words Yakov saw nothing but the usual evasions of
empty-headed and careless people who talk of loving your
neighbour, of being reconciled with your brother, and so on,
simply to avoid praying, fasting and reading holy books, and who
talk contemptuously of profit and interest simply because they
don't like working. Of course, to be poor, save nothing, and put
by nothing was a great deal easier than being rich.
But yet he was troubled and could not pray as before. As soon as
he went into the prayer-room and opened the book he began to be
afraid his cousin would come in and hinder him; and, in fact,
Matvey did soon appear and cry in a trembling voice: "Think what
you are doing, brother! Repent, brother!" Aglaia stormed and
Yakov, too, flew into a passion and shouted: "Go out of my
house!" while Matvey answered him: "The house belongs to both of
us."
Yakov would begin singing and reading again, but he could not
regain his calm, and unconsciously fell to dreaming over his
book. Though he regarded his cousin's words as nonsense, yet for
some reason it had of late haunted his memory that it is hard
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, that the year
before last he had made a very good bargain over buying a stolen
horse, that one day when his wife was alive a drunkard had died
of vodka in his tavern. . . .
He slept badly at nights now and woke easily, and he could hear
that Matvey, too, was awake, and continually sighing and pining
for his tile factory. And while Yakov turned over from one side
to another at night he thought of the stolen horse and the
drunken man, and what was said in the gospels about the camel.
It looked as though his dreaminess were coming over him again.
And as ill-luck would have it, although it was the end of March,
every day it kept snowing, and the forest roared as though it
were winter, and there was no believing that spring would ever
come. The weather disposed one to depression, and to quarrelling
and to hatred and in the night, when the wind droned over the
ceiling, it seemed as though someone were living overhead in the
empty storey; little by little the broodings settled like a
burden on his mind, his head burned and he could not sleep.
|
|
|
