Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (360 page)

] V

Pressing close to the fence, he stood near to the house and waited for his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and fiddles, gay, bold, impudent and sad, mingled into chaos in the air, and this confusion was, as before, as if an unseen orchestra were tuning in the dark over the roof-tops. If he looked up towards the darkness, then all the background was scattered with white, moving points : it was snowing. The flakes, coming into the light, spun lazily in the air like feathers, and still more lazily fell. Flakes of snow crowded whirling about Vassiliev, and hung on his beard, his eyelashes, his eyebrows. The cabmen, the horses, and the passersby, all were white.

“How dare the snow fall in this street ? “ thought Vassiliev. “ A curse on these houses.”

Because of his headlong rush down the staircase his feet failed him from weariness ; he was out of breath as if he had climbed a mountain. His heart beat so loud that he could hear it. A longing came over him to get out of this street as soon as possible and go home ; but still stronger was his desire to wait for his friends and to vent upon them his feeling of heaviness.

He had not understood many things in the houses. The souls of the perishing women were to him a mystery as before ; but it was clear to him that the business was much worse than one would have thought. If the guilty woman who poisoned herself was called a prostitute, then it was hard to find a suitable name for all these creatures, who danced to the muddling music and said long, disgusting phrases. They were not perishing ; they were already done for.

“Vice is here,” he thought ; “ but there is neither confession of sin nor hope of salvation. They are bought and sold, drowned in wine and torpor, and they are dull and indifferent as sheep and do not understand. My God, my God ! “

It was so clear to him that all that which is called human dignity, individuality, the image and likeness of God, was here dragged down to the gutter, as they say of drunkards, and that not only the street and the stupid women were to blame for it.

A crowd of students white with snow, talking and laughing gaily, passed by. One of them, a tall, thin man, peered into Vassiliev’s face and said drunkenly, “ He’s one of ours. Logged, old man ? Aha ! my lad. Never mind. Walk up, never say die, uncle.”

He took Vassiliev by the shoulders and pressed his cold wet moustaches to his cheek, then slipped, staggered, brandished his arms, and cried out :

“Steady there — don’t fall.”

Laughing, he ran to join his comrades.

Through the noise the painter’s voice became audible.

“You dare beat women ! I won’t have it. Go to Hell. You’re regular swine.”

The medico appeared at the door of the house. He glanced round and on seeing Vassiliev, said in alarm :

“Is that you ? My God, it’s simply impossible to go anywhere with Yegor. I can’t understand a chap like that. He kicked up a row — can’t you hear ? Yegor,” he called from the door. “ Yegor ! “

“I won’t have you hitting women.” The painter’s shrill voice was audible again from upstairs.

Something heavy and bulky tumbled down the staircase. It was the painter coming head over heels. He had evidently been thrown out.

He lifted himself up from the ground, dusted his hat, and with an angry indignant face, shook his fist at the upstairs.

“Scoundrels ! Butchers ! Bloodsuckers ! I won’t have you hitting a weak, drunken woman. Ah, you. . . .”

“Yegor . . . Yegor ! “ the medico began to implore, “ I give my word I’ll never go out with you again. Upon my honour, I won’t.”

The painter gradually calmed, and the friends went home.

“To these sad shores unknowing “ — the medico began — “ An unknown power entices. . . .”

“Behold the mill,” the painter sang with him after a pause, “ Now fallen into ruin.” How the snow is falling, most Holy Mother. Why did you go away, Grisha ? You’re a coward ; you’re only an old woman.”

Vassiliev was walking behind his friends. He stared at their backs and thought : “ One of two things : either prostitution only seems to us an evil and we exaggerate it, or if prostitution is really such an evil as is commonly thought, these charming friends of mine are just as much slavers, violators, and murderers as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo whose photographs appear in ‘ The Field.’ They’re singing, laughing, arguing soundly now, but haven’t they just been exploiting starvation, ignorance, and stupidity? They have, I saw them at it. Where does their humanity, their science, and their painting come in, then ? The science, art, and lofty sentiments of these murderers remind me of the lump of fat in the story. Two robbers killed a beggar in a forest ; they began to divide his clothes between themselves and found in his bag a lump of pork fat. ‘ In the nick of time,’ said one of them. ‘ Let’s have a bite ! ‘ ‘ How can you ? ‘ the other cried in terror. ‘Have you forgotten to-day’s Friday?’ So they refrained from eating. After having cut the man’s throat they walked out of the forest confident that they were pious fellows. These two are just the same. When they’ve paid for women they go and imagine they’re painters and scholars. . . .

“Listen, you two,” he said angrily and sharply. “ Why do you go to those places ? Can’t you understand how horrible they are ? Your medicine tells you every one of these women dies prematurely from consumption or something else ; your arts tell you that she died morally still earlier. Each of them dies because during her lifetime she accepts on an average, let us say, five hundred men. Each of them is killed by five hundred men, and you’re amongst the five hundred. Now if each of you comes here and to places like this two hundred and fifty times in his lifetime, then it means that between you you have killed one woman. Can’t you understand that ? Isn’t it horrible ? “

“ Ah, isn’t this awful, my God ? “

“There, I knew it would end like this,” said the painter frowning. “ We oughtn’t to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I suppose you think your head’s full of great thoughts and great ideas now. Devil knows what they are, but they’re not ideas. You’re staring at me now with hatred and disgust; but if you want my opinion you’d better build twenty more of the houses than look like that. There’s more vice in your look than in the whole street. Let’s clear out, Volodya, damn him ! He’s a fool. He’s a blockhead, and that’s all he is.”

“Human beings are always killing each other,” said the medico. “ That is immoral, of course. But philosophy won’t help you. Good-bye ! “

The friends parted at Trubnoi Square and went their way. Left alone, Vassiliev began to stride along the boulevard. He was frightened of the dark, frightened of the snow, which fell to the earth in little flakes, but seemed to long to cover the whole world ; he was frightened of the street-lamps, which glimmered faintly through the clouds of snow. An inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul. Now and then people passed him ; but he gave a start and stepped aside. It seemed to him that from everywhere there came and stared at him women, only women. . . .

“It’s coming on,” he thought, “ I’m going to have a fit.”

VI

At home he lay on his bed and began to talk, shivering all over his body.

“ Live women, live. . . . My God, they’re alive.”

He sharpened the edge of his imagination in every possible way. Now he was the brother of an unfortunate, now her father. Now he was himself a fallen woman, with painted cheeks ; and all this terrified him.

It seemed to him somehow that he must solve this question immediately, at all costs, and that the problem was not strange to him, but was his own. He made a great effort, conquered his despair, and, sitting on the side of the bed, his head clutched in his hands, he began to think :

How could all the women he had seen that night be saved ? The process of solving a problem was familiar to him as to a learned person ; and notwithstanding all his excitement he kept strictly to this process. He recalled to mind the history of the question, its literature, and just after three o’clock he was pacing up and down, trying to remember all the experiments which are practised nowadays for the salvation of women. He had a great many good friends who lived in furnished rooms, Falzfein, Galyashkin, Nechaiev, Yechkin . . . not a few among them were honest and self-sacrificing, and some of them had attempted to save these women. . . .

All these few attempts, thought Vassiliev, rare attempts, may be divided into three groups. Some having rescued a woman from a brothel hired a room for her, bought her a sewing-machine and she became a dressmaker, and the man who saved her kept her for his mistress, openly or otherwise, but later when he had finished his studies and was going away, he would hand her over to another decent fellow. So the fallen woman remained fallen. Others after having bought her out also hired a room for her, bought the inevitable sewing-machine and started her off reading and writing and preached at her. The woman sits and sews as long as it is novel and amusing, but later, when she is bored, she begins to receive men secretly, or runs back to where she can sleep till three in the afternoon, drink coffee, and eat till she is full. Finally, the most ardent and self-sacrificing take a bold, determined step. They marry, and when the impudent, self-indulgent, stupefied creature becomes a wife, a lady of the house, and then a mother, her life and outlook are utterly changed, and in the wife and mother it is hard to recognise the unfortunate woman. Yes, marriage is the best, it may be the only, resource.

“But it’s impossible,” Vassiliev said aloud and threw himself down on his bed. “ First of all, I could not marry one. One would have to be a saint to be able to do it, unable to hate, not knowing disgust. But let us suppose that the painter, the medico, and I got the better of our feelings and married, that all these women got married, what is the result ? What kind of effect follows? The result is that while the women get married here in Moscow, the Smolensk bookkeeper seduces a fresh lot, and these will pour into the empty places, together with women from Saratov, Nijni-Novgorod, Warsaw. . . . And what happens to the hundred thousand in London ? What can be done with those in Hamburg ?

The oil in the lamp was used up and the lamp began to smell. Vassiliev did not notice it. Again he began to pace up and down, thinking. Now he put the question differently. What can be done to remove the demand for fallen women ? For this it is necessary that the men who buy and kill them should at once begin to feel all the immorality of their role of slaveowners, and this should terrify them. It is necessary to save the men.

Science and art apparently won’t do, thought Vassiliev. There is only one way out — to be an apostle.

And he began to dream how he would stand to-morrow evening at the corner of the street and say to each passer-by : “ Where are you going and what for ? Fear God ! “

He would turn to the indifferent cabmen and say to them :

“Why are you standing here ? Why don’t you revolt ? You do believe in God, don’t you ? And you do know that this is a crime, and that people will go to Hell for this ? Why do you keep quiet, then ? True, the women are strangers to you, but they have fathers and brothers exactly the same as you. ...”

Some friend of Vassiliev’s once said of him that he was a man of talent. There is a talent for writing, for the theatre, for painting ; but Vassiliev’s was peculiar, a talent for humanity. He had a fine and noble
flair
for every kind of suffering. As a good actor reflects in himself the movement and voice of another, so Vassiliev could reflect in himself another’s pain. Seeing tears, he wept. With a sick person, he himself became sick and moaned. If he saw violence done, it seemed to him that he was the victim. He was frightened like a child, and, frightened, ran for help. Another’s pain roused him, excited him, threw him into a state of ecstasy. . . .

Whether the friend was right I do not know, but what happened to Vassiliev when it seemed to him that the question was solved was very much like an ecstasy. He sobbed, laughed, said aloud the things he would say to-morrow, felt a burning love for the men who would listen to him and stand by his side at the corner of the street, preaching. He sat down to write to them ; he made vows.

All this was the more like an ecstasy in that it did not last. Vassiliev was soon tired. The London women, the Hamburg women, those from Warsaw, crushed him with their mass, as the mountains crush the earth. He quailed before this mass ; he lost himself ; he remembered he had no gift for speaking, that he was timid and faint-hearted, that strange people would hardly want to listen to and understand him, a law-student in his third year, a frightened and insignificant figure. The true apostleship consisted, not only in preaching, but also in deeds. . . .