At Home by
Chekhov
I II
III
III For two days Auntie Dasha went about with a tear-stained and
heavily powdered face, and at dinner she kept sighing and
looking towards the ikon. And it was impossible to make out what
was the matter with her. But at last she made up her mind, went
in to Vera, and said in a casual way:
"The fact is, child, we have to pay interest on the bank loan,
and the tenant hasn't paid his rent. Will you let me pay it out
of the fifteen thousand your papa left you?"
All day afterwards Auntie Dasha spent in making cherry jam in
the garden. Alyona, with her cheeks flushed with the heat, ran
to and from the garden to the house and back again to the
cellar.
When Auntie Dasha was making jam with a very serious face as
though she were performing a religious rite, and her short
sleeves displayed her strong, little, despotic hands and arms,
and when the servants ran about incessantly, bustling about the
jam which they would never taste, there was always a feeling of
martyrdom in the air. . . .
The garden smelt of hot cherries. The sun had set, the charcoal
stove had been carried away, but the pleasant, sweetish smell
still lingered in the air. Vera sat on a bench in the garden and
watched a new labourer, a young soldier, not of the
neighbourhood, who was, by her express orders, making new paths.
He was cutting the turf with a spade and heaping it up on a
barrow.
"Where were you serving?" Vera asked him.
"At Berdyansk."
"And where are you going now? Home?"
"No," answered the labourer. "I have no home."
"But where were you born and brought up?"
"In the province of Oryol. Till I went into the army I lived
with my mother, in my step-father's house; my mother was the
head of the house, and people looked up to her, and while she
lived I was cared for. But while I was in the army I got a
letter telling me my mother was dead. . . . And now I don't seem
to care to go home. It's not my own father, so it's not like my
own home."
"Then your father is dead?"
"I don't know. I am illegitimate."
At that moment Auntie Dasha appeared at the window and said:
"Il ne faut pas parler aux gens. . . . Go into the kitchen, my
good man. You can tell your story there," she said to the
soldier.
And then came as yesterday and every day supper, reading, a
sleepless night, and endless thinking about the same thing. At
three o'clock the sun rose; Alyona was already busy in the
corridor, and Vera was not asleep yet and was trying to read.
She heard the creak of the barrow: it was the new labourer at
work in the garden. . . . Vera sat at the open window with a
book, dozed, and watched the soldier making the paths for her,
and that interested her. The paths were as even and level as a
leather strap, and it was pleasant to imagine what they would be
like when they were strewn with yellow sand.
She could see her aunt come out of the house soon after five
o'clock, in a pink wrapper and curl-papers. She stood on the
steps for three minutes without speaking, and then said to the
soldier:
"Take your passport and go in peace. I can't have any one
illegitimate in my house."
An oppressive, angry feeling sank like a stone on Vera's heart.
She was indignant with her aunt, she hated her; she was so sick
of her aunt that her heart was full of misery and loathing. But
what was she to do? To stop her mouth? To be rude to her? But
what would be the use? Suppose she struggled with her, got rid
of her, made her harmless, prevented her grandfather from
flourishing his stick -- what would be the use of it? It would
be like killing one mouse or one snake in the boundless steppe.
The vast expanse, the long winters, the monotony and dreariness
of life, instil a sense of helplessness; the position seems
hopeless, and one wants to do nothing -- everything is useless.
Alyona came in, and bowing low to Vera, began carrying out the
arm-chairs to beat the dust out of them.
"You have chosen a time to clean up," said Vera with annoyance.
"Go away."
Alyona was overwhelmed, and in her terror could not understand
what was wanted of her. She began hurriedly tidying up the
dressing-table.
"Go out of the room, I tell you," Vera shouted, turning cold;
she had never had such an oppressive feeling before. "Go away!"
Alyona uttered a sort of moan, like a bird, and dropped Vera's
gold watch on the carpet.
"Go away!" Vera shrieked in a voice not her own, leaping up and
trembling all over. "Send her away; she worries me to death!"
she went on, walking rapidly after Alyona down the passage,
stamping her feet. "Go away! Birch her! Beat her!" Then suddenly
she came to herself, and just as she was, unwashed, uncombed, in
her dressing-gown and slippers, she rushed out of the house. She
ran to the familiar ravine and hid herself there among the
sloe-trees, so that she might see no one and be seen by no one.
Lying there motionless on the grass, she did not weep, she was
not horror-stricken, but gazing at the sky open-eyed, she
reflected coldly and clearly that something had happened which
she could never forget and for which she could never forgive
herself all her life.
"No, I can't go on like this," she thought. "It's time to take
myself in hand, or there'll be no end to it. . . . I can't go on
like this. . . ."
At midday Dr. Neshtchapov drove by the ravine on his way to the
house. She saw him and made up her mind that she would begin a
new life, and that she would make herself begin it, and this
decision calmed her. And following with her eyes the doctor's
well-built figure, she said, as though trying to soften the
crudity of her decision:
"He's a nice man. . . . We shall get through life somehow."
She returned home. While she was dressing, Auntie Dasha came
into the room, and said:
"Alyona upset you, darling; I've sent her home to the village.
Her mother's given her a good beating and has come here,
crying."
"Auntie," said Vera quickly, "I'm going to marry Dr. Neshtchapov.
Only talk to him yourself . . . I can't."
And again she went out into the fields. And wandering aimlessly
about, she made up her mind that when she was married she would
look after the house, doctor the peasants, teach in the school,
that she would do all the things that other women of her circle
did. And this perpetual dissatisfaction with herself and every
one else, this series of crude mistakes which stand up like a
mountain before one whenever one looks back upon one's past, she
would accept as her real life to which she was fated, and she
would expect nothing better. . . . Of course there was nothing
better! Beautiful nature, dreams, music, told one story, but
reality another. Evidently truth and happiness existed somewhere
outside real life. . . . One must give up one's own life and
merge oneself into this luxuriant steppe, boundless and
indifferent as eternity, with its flowers, its ancient barrows,
and its distant horizon, and then it would be well with one. . .
.
A month later Vera was living at the works.
NOTES
yawned and crossed herself: Russian superstition, to keep the
Devil from entering the body
vint: a bridge-like card game
Saur's Grave: Saur is the hero of certain legends of Tartar
origin; the name is applied locally to several different burial
mounds in the steppe
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