Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (95 page)

POLINKA

Translated by Constance Garnett 1887

IT is one o’clock in the afternoon. Shopping is at its height at the “Nouveauté’s de Paris,” a drapery establishment in one of the Arcades. There is a monotonous hum of shopmen’s voices, the hum one hears at school when the teacher sets the boys to learn something by heart. This regular sound is not interrupted by the laughter of lady customers nor the slam of the glass door, nor the scurrying of the boys.

Polinka, a thin fair little person whose mother is the head of a dressmaking establishment, is standing in the middle of the shop looking about for some one. A dark-browed boy runs up to her and asks, looking at her very gravely:

“What is your pleasure, madam?”

“Nikolay Timofeitch always takes my order,” answers Polinka.

Nikolay Timofeitch, a graceful dark young man, fashionably dressed, with frizzled hair and a big pin in his cravat, has already cleared a place on the counter and is craning forward, looking at Polinka with a smile.

“Morning, Pelagea Sergeevna!” he cries in a pleasant, hearty baritone voice. “What can I do for you?”

“Good-morning!” says Polinka, going up to him. “You see, I’m back again.... Show me some gimp, please.”

“Gimp -- for what purpose?”

“For a bodice trimming -- to trim a whole dress, in fact.”

“Certainly.”

Nickolay Timofeitch lays several kinds of gimp before Polinka; she looks at the trimmings languidly and begins bargaining over them.

“Oh, come, a rouble’s not dear,” says the shopman persuasively, with a condescending smile. “It’s a French trimming, pure silk.... We have a commoner sort, if you like, heavier. That’s forty-five kopecks a yard; of course, it’s nothing like the same quality.”

“I want a bead corselet, too, with gimp buttons,” says Polinka, bending over the gimp and sighing for some reason. “And have you any bead motifs to match?”

“Yes.”

Polinka bends still lower over the counter and asks softly:

“And why did you leave us so early on Thursday, Nikolay Timofeitch?”

“Hm! It’s queer you noticed it,” says the shopman, with a smirk. “You were so taken up with that fine student that... it’s queer you noticed it!”

Polinka flushes crimson and remains mute. With a nervous quiver in his fingers the shopman closes the boxes, and for no sort of object piles them one on the top of another. A moment of silence follows.

“I want some bead lace, too,” says Polinka, lifting her eyes guiltily to the shopman.

“What sort? Black or coloured? Bead lace on tulle is the most fashionable trimming.”

“And how much is it?”

“The black’s from eighty kopecks and the coloured from two and a half roubles. I shall never come and see you again,” Nikolay Timofeitch adds in an undertone.

“Why?”

“Why? It’s very simple. You must understand that yourself. Why should I distress myself? It’s a queer business! Do you suppose it’s a pleasure to me to see that student carrying on with you? I see it all and I understand. Ever since autumn he’s been hanging about you and you go for a walk with him almost every day; and when he is with you, you gaze at him as though he were an angel. You are in love with him; there’s no one to beat him in your eyes. Well, all right, then, it’s no good talking.”

Polinka remains dumb and moves her finger on the counter in embarrassment.

“I see it all,” the shopman goes on. “What inducement have I to come and see you? I’ve got some pride. It’s not every one likes to play gooseberry. What was it you asked for?”

“Mamma told me to get a lot of things, but I’ve forgotten. I want some feather trimming too.”

“What kind would you like?”

“The best, something fashionable.”

“The most fashionable now are real bird feathers. If you want the most fashionable colour, it’s heliotrope or
kanak
-- that is, claret with a yellow shade in it. We have an immense choice. And what all this affair is going to lead to, I really don’t understand. Here you are in love, and how is it to end?”

Patches of red come into Nikolay Timofeitch’s face round his eyes. He crushes the soft feather trimming in his hand and goes on muttering:

“Do you imagine he’ll marry you -- is that it? You’d better drop any such fancies. Students are forbidden to marry. And do you suppose he comes to see you with honourable intentions? A likely idea! Why, these fine students don’t look on us as human beings... they only go to see shopkeepers and dressmakers to laugh at their ignorance and to drink. They’re ashamed to drink at home and in good houses, but with simple uneducated people like us they don’t care what any one thinks; they’d be ready to stand on their heads. Yes! Well, which feather trimming will you take? And if he hangs about and carries on with you, we know what he is after.... When he’s a doctor or a lawyer he’ll remember you: ‘Ah,’ he’ll say, ‘I used to have a pretty fair little thing! I wonder where she is now?’ Even now I bet you he boasts among his friends that he’s got his eye on a little dressmaker.”

Polinka sits down and gazes pensively at the pile of white boxes.

“No, I won’t take the feather trimming,” she sighs. “Mamma had better choose it for herself; I may get the wrong one. I want six yards of fringe for an overcoat, at forty kopecks the yard. For the same coat I want cocoa-nut buttons, perforated, so they can be sown on firmly. . . .”

Nikolay Timofeitch wraps up the fringe and the buttons. She looks at him guiltily and evidently expects him to go on talking, but he remains sullenly silent while he tidies up the feather trimming.

“I mustn’t forget some buttons for a dressing-gown . . .” she says after an interval of silence, wiping her pale lips with a handkerchief.

“What kind?”

“It’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, so give me something rather striking.”

“Yes, if it’s for a shopkeeper’s wife, you’d better have something bright. Here are some buttons. A combination of colours -- red, blue, and the fashionable gold shade. Very glaring. The more refined prefer dull black with a bright border. But I don’t understand. Can’t you see for yourself? What can these... walks lead to?”

“I don’t know,” whispers Polinka, and she bends over the buttons; “I don’t know myself what’s come to me, Nikolay Timofeitch.”

A solid shopman with whiskers forces his way behind Nikolay Timofeitch’s back, squeezing him to the counter, and beaming with the choicest gallantry, shouts:

“Be so kind, madam, as to step into this department. We have three kinds of jerseys: plain, braided, and trimmed with beads! Which may I have the pleasure of showing you?”

At the same time a stout lady passes by Polinka, pronouncing in a rich, deep voice, almost a bass:

“They must be seamless, with the trade mark stamped in them, please.”

“Pretend to be looking at the things,” Nikolay Timofeitch whispers, bending down to Polinka with a forced smile. “Dear me, you do look pale and ill; you are quite changed. He’ll throw you over, Pelagea Sergeevna! Or if he does marry you, it won’t be for love but from hunger; he’ll be tempted by your money. He’ll furnish himself a nice home with your dowry, and then be ashamed of you. He’ll keep you out of sight of his friends and visitors, because you’re uneducated. He’ll call you ‘my dummy of a wife.’ You wouldn’t know how to behave in a doctor’s or lawyer’s circle. To them you’re a dressmaker, an ignorant creature.”

“Nikolay Timofeitch!” somebody shouts from the other end of the shop. “The young lady here wants three yards of ribbon with a metal stripe. Have we any?”

Nikolay Timofeitch turns in that direction, smirks and shouts:

“Yes, we have! Ribbon with a metal stripe, ottoman with a satin stripe, and satin with a moiré stripe!”

“Oh, by the way, I mustn’t forget, Olga asked me to get her a pair of stays!” says Polinka.

“There are tears in your eyes,” says Nikolay Timofeitch in dismay. “What’s that for? Come to the corset department, I’ll screen you -- it looks awkward.”

With a forced smile and exaggeratedly free and easy manner, the shopman rapidly conducts Polinka to the corset department and conceals her from the public eye behind a high pyramid of boxes.

“What sort of corset may I show you?” he asks aloud, whispering immediately: “Wipe your eyes!”

“I want... I want... size forty-eight centimetres. Only she wanted one, lined... with real whalebone... I must talk to you, Nikolay Timofeitch. Come to-day!”

“Talk? What about? There’s nothing to talk about.”

“You are the only person who... cares about me, and I’ve no one to talk to but you.”

“These are not reed or steel, but real whalebone.... What is there for us to talk about? It’s no use talking.... You are going for a walk with him to-day, I suppose?”

“Yes; I... I am.”

“Then what’s the use of talking? Talk won’t help.... You are in love, aren’t you?”

“Yes . . .” Polinka whispers hesitatingly, and big tears gush from her eyes.

“What is there to say?” mutters Nikolay Timofeitch, shrugging his shoulders nervously and turning pale. “There’s no need of talk.... Wipe your eyes, that’s all. I... I ask for nothing.”

At that moment a tall, lanky shopman comes up to the pyramid of boxes, and says to his customer:

“Let me show you some good elastic garters that do not impede the circulation, certified by medical authority . . .”

Nikolay Timofeitch screens Polinka, and, trying to conceal her emotion and his own, wrinkles his face into a smile and says aloud:

“There are two kinds of lace, madam: cotton and silk! Oriental, English, Valenciennes, crochet, torchon, are cotton. And rococo, soutache, Cambray, are silk.... For God’s sake, wipe your eyes! They’re coming this way!”

And seeing that her tears are still gushing he goes on louder than ever:

“Spanish, Rococo, soutache, Cambray... stockings, thread, cotton, silk . . .”

NOTES

“Nouveauté’s de Paris”: Fancy Articles from Paris

drapery establishment: dry goods store

DRUNK

Translated by Constance Garnett 1887

A MANUFACTURER called Frolov, a handsome dark man with a round beard, and a soft, velvety expression in his eyes, and Almer, his lawyer, an elderly man with a big rough head, were drinking in one of the public rooms of a restaurant on the outskirts of the town. They had both come to the restaurant straight from a ball and so were wearing dress coats and white ties. Except them and the waiters at the door there was not a soul in the room; by Frolov’s orders no one else was admitted.

They began by drinking a big wine-glass of vodka and eating oysters.

“Good!” said Almer. “It was I brought oysters into fashion for the first course, my boy. The vodka burns and stings your throat and you have a voluptuous sensation in your throat when you swallow an oyster. Don’t you?”

A dignified waiter with a shaven upper lip and grey whiskers put a sauceboat on the table.

“What’s that you are serving?” asked Frolov.

“Sauce Provençale for the herring, sir. . . .”

“What! is that the way to serve it?” shouted Frolov, not looking into the sauceboat. “Do you call that sauce? You don’t know how to wait, you blockhead!”

Frolov’s velvety eyes flashed. He twisted a corner of the table-cloth round his finger, made a slight movement, and the dishes, the candlesticks, and the bottles, all jingling and clattering, fell with a crash on the floor.

The waiters, long accustomed to pot-house catastrophes, ran up to the table and began picking up the fragments with grave and unconcerned faces, like surgeons at an operation.

“How well you know how to manage them!” said Almer, and he laughed. “ But... move a little away from the table or you will step in the caviare.”

“Call the engineer here!” cried Frolov.

This was the name given to a decrepit, doleful old man who really had once been an engineer and very well off; he had squandered all his property and towards the end of his life had got into a restaurant where he looked after the waiters and singers and carried out various commissions relating to the fair sex. Appearing at the summons, he put his head on one side respectfully.

“Listen, my good man,” Frolov said, addressing him. “What’s the meaning of this disorder? How queerly you fellows wait! Don’t you know that I don’t like it? Devil take you, I shall give up coming to you!”

“I beg you graciously to excuse it, Alexey Semyonitch!” said the engineer, laying his hand on his heart. “I will take steps immediately, and your slightest wishes shall be carried out in the best and speediest way.”

“Well, that’ll do, you can go. . . .”

The engineer bowed, staggered back, still doubled up, and disappeared through the doorway with a final flash of the false diamonds on his shirt-front and fingers.

The table was laid again. Almer drank red wine and ate with relish some sort of bird served with truffles, and ordered a matelote of eelpouts and a sterlet with its tail in its mouth. Frolov only drank vodka and ate nothing but bread. He rubbed his face with his open hands, scowled, and was evidently out of humour. Both were silent. There was a stillness. Two electric lights in opaque shades flickered and hissed as though they were angry. The gypsy girls passed the door, softly humming.

“One drinks and is none the merrier,” said Frolov. “The more I pour into myself, the more sober I become. Other people grow festive with vodka, but I suffer from anger, disgusting thoughts, sleeplessness. Why is it, old man, that people don’t invent some other pleasure besides drunkenness and debauchery? It’s really horrible!”

“You had better send for the gypsy girls.”

“Confound them!”

The head of an old gypsy woman appeared in the door from the passage.

“Alexey Semyonitch, the gypsies are asking for tea and brandy,” said the old woman. “May we order it?”

“Yes,” answered Frolov. “You know they get a percentage from the restaurant keeper for asking the visitors to treat them. Nowadays you can’t even believe a man when he asks for vodka. The people are all mean, vile, spoilt. Take these waiters, for instance. They have countenances like professors, and grey heads; they get two hundred roubles a month, they live in houses of their own and send their girls to the high school, but you may swear at them and give yourself airs as much as you please. For a rouble the engineer will gulp down a whole pot of mustard and crow like a cock. On my honour, if one of them would take offence I would make him a present of a thousand roubles.”

“What’s the matter with you?” said Almer, looking at him with surprise. “Whence this melancholy? You are red in the face, you look like a wild animal.... What’s the matter with you?”

“It’s horrid. There’s one thing I can’t get out of my head. It seems as though it is nailed there and it won’t come out.”

A round little old man, buried in fat and completely bald, wearing a short reefer jacket and lilac waistcoat and carrying a guitar, walked into the room. He made an idiotic face, drew himself up, and saluted like a soldier.

“Ah, the parasite!” said Frolov, “let me introduce him, he has made his fortune by grunting like a pig. Come here!” He poured vodka, wine, and brandy into a glass, sprinkled pepper and salt into it, mixed it all up and gave it to the parasite. The latter tossed it off and smacked his lips with gusto.

“He’s accustomed to drink a mess so that pure wine makes him sick,” said Frolov. “Come, parasite, sit down and sing.”

The old man sat down, touched the strings with his fat fingers, and began singing:

“Neetka, neetka, Margareetka. . . .”

After drinking champagne Frolov was drunk. He thumped with his fist on the table and said:

“Yes, there’s something that sticks in my head! It won’t give me a minute’s peace!”

“Why, what is it?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s a secret. It’s something so private that I could only speak of it in my prayers. But if you like... as a sign of friendship, between ourselves... only mind, to no one, no, no, no,... I’ll tell you, it will ease my heart, but for God’s sake... listen and forget it. . . .”

Frolov bent down to Almer and for a minute breathed in his ear.

“I hate my wife!” he brought out.

The lawyer looked at him with surprise.

“Yes, yes, my wife, Marya Mihalovna,” Frolov muttered, flushing red. “ I hate her and that’s all about it.”

“What for?”

“I don’t know myself! I’ve only been married two years. I married as you know for love, and now I hate her like a mortal enemy, like this parasite here, saving your presence. And there is no cause, no sort of cause! When she sits by me, eats, or says anything, my whole soul boils, I can scarcely restrain myself from being rude to her. It’s something one can’t describe. To leave her or tell her the truth is utterly impossible because it would be a scandal, and living with her is worse than hell for me. I can’t stay at home! I spend my days at business and in the restaurants and spend my nights in dissipation. Come, how is one to explain this hatred? She is not an ordinary woman, but handsome, clever, quiet.”

The old man stamped his foot and began singing:

“I went a walk with a captain bold, And in his ear my secrets told.”

“I must own I always thought that Marya Mihalovna was not at all the right person for you,” said Almer after a brief silence, and he heaved a sigh.

“Do you mean she is too well educated?... I took the gold medal at the commercial school myself, I have been to Paris three times. I am not cleverer than you, of course, but I am no more foolish than my wife. No, brother, education is not the sore point. Let me tell you how all the trouble began. It began with my suddenly fancying that she had married me not from love, but for the sake of my money. This idea took possession of my brain. I have done all I could think of, but the cursed thing sticks! And to make it worse my wife was overtaken with a passion for luxury. Getting into a sack of gold after poverty, she took to flinging it in all directions. She went quite off her head, and was so carried away that she used to get through twenty thousand every month. And I am a distrustful man. I don’t believe in anyone, I suspect everybody. And the more friendly you are to me the greater my torment. I keep fancying I am being flattered for my money. I trust no one! I am a difficult man, my boy, very difficult!”

Frolov emptied his glass at one gulp and went on.

“But that’s all nonsense,” he said. “One never ought to speak of it. It’s stupid. I am tipsy and I have been chattering, and now you are looking at me with lawyer’s eyes -- glad you know some one else’s secret. Well, well!... Let us drop this conversation. Let us drink! I say,” he said, addressing a waiter, “is Mustafa here? Fetch him in!”

Shortly afterwards there walked into the room a little Tatar boy, aged about twelve, wearing a dress coat and white gloves.

“Come here!” Frolov said to him. “Explain to us the following fact: there was a time when you Tatars conquered us and took tribute from us, but now you serve us as waiters and sell dressing-gowns. How do you explain such a change?”

Mustafa raised his eyebrows and said in a shrill voice, with a sing-song intonation: “The mutability of destiny!”

Almer looked at his grave face and went off into peals of laughter.

“Well, give him a rouble!” said Frolov. “He is making his fortune out of the mutability of destiny. He is only kept here for the sake of those two words. Drink, Mustafa! You will make a gre-eat rascal! I mean it is awful how many of your sort are toadies hanging about rich men. The number of these peaceful bandits and robbers is beyond all reckoning! Shouldn’t we send for the gypsies now? Eh? Fetch the gypsies along!”

The gypsies, who had been hanging about wearily in the corridors for a long time, burst with whoops into the room, and a wild orgy began.

“Drink!” Frolov shouted to them. “Drink! Seed of Pharaoh! Sing! A-a-ah!”

“In the winter time... o-o-ho!... the sledge was flying . . .”

The gypsies sang, whistled, danced. In the frenzy which sometimes takes possession of spoilt and very wealthy men, “broad natures,” Frolov began to play the fool. He ordered supper and champagne for the gypsies, broke the shade of the electric light, shied bottles at the pictures and looking-glasses, and did it all apparently without the slightest enjoyment, scowling and shouting irritably, with contempt for the people, with an expression of hatred in his eyes and his manners. He made the engineer sing a solo, made the bass singers drink a mixture of wine, vodka, and oil.

At six o’clock they handed him the bill.

“Nine hundred and twenty-five roubles, forty kopecks,” said Almer, and shrugged his shoulders. “What’s it for? No, wait, we must go into it!”

“Stop!” muttered Frolov, pulling out his pocket-book. “Well!... let them rob me. That’s what I’m rich for, to be robbed!... You can’t get on without parasites!... You are my lawyer. You get six thousand a year out of me and what for? But excuse me,... I don’t know what I am saying.”

As he was returning home with Almer, Frolov murmured:

“Going home is awful to me! Yes!... There isn’t a human being I can open my soul to.... They are all robbers... traitors.... Oh, why did I tell you my secret? Yes... why? Tell me why?”

At the entrance to his house, he craned forward towards Almer and, staggering, kissed him on the lips, having the old Moscow habit of kissing indiscriminately on every occasion.

“Good-bye... I am a difficult, hateful man, he said. “A horrid, drunken, shameless life. You are a well-educated, clever man, but you only laugh and drink with me... there’s no help from any of you.... But if you were a friend to me, if you were an honest man, in reality you ought to have said to me: ‘Ugh, you vile, hateful man! You reptile!’ “