Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Part 27

Fiodor was flattered that his brother had found him at the same table with a famous actor.

When Y. spoke or ate, his beard moved as if he had no teeth in his mouth.

Ivas.h.i.+n loved Nadya Vishnyevsky and was afraid of his love. When the butler told him that the old lady had just gone out, but the young lady was at home, he fumbled in his fur coat and dress-coat pocket, found his card, and said: "Right."

But it was not all right. Driving from his house in the morning, to pay a visit, he thought that he was compelled to it by conventions of society, which weighed heavily upon him. But now it was clear to him that he went to pay calls only because somewhere far away in the depths of his soul, as under a veil, there lay hidden a hope that he would see Nadya.... And he suddenly felt pitiful, sad, and a little frightened....

In his soul, it seemed to him, it was snowing, and everything faded away. He was afraid to love Nadya, because he was too old for her, thought his appearance unattractive, and did not believe that young girls like Nadya could love men for their minds and spiritual qualities. Still there would at times rise in him something like a hope. But now, from the moment when the officer's spurs jingled and then died away, there also died away his timid love.... All was at an end, hope was impossible.... "Yes, now all is finished," he thought, "I am glad, very glad."

He imagined his wife to be not Nadya, but always, for some reason, a stout woman with a large bosom, covered with Venetian lace.

The clerks in the office of the Governor of the island have a drunken headache. They long for a drink. They have no money. What is to be done? One of them, a convict who is serving his time here for forgery, devises a plan. He goes to the church, where a former officer, now exiled for giving his superior a box on the ears, sings in the choir, and says to him panting: "Here! There's a pardon come for you! They have got a telegram in the office."

The late officer turns pale, trembles, and can hardly walk for excitement.

"But for such news you ought to give something for a drink," says the clerk.

"Take all I have! All!"

And he hands him some five roubles.... He arrives at the office. The officer is afraid that he may die from joy and presses his hand to his heart.

"Where is the telegram?"

"The bookkeeper has put it away." (He goes to the bookkeeper.) General laughter and an invitation to drink with them.

"How terrible!"

After that the officer was ill for a week.[1]

[Footnote 1: An episode which Chekhov heard during his journey in the island, Saghalien.]

Fedya, the steward's brother-in-law, told Ivanov that wild-duck were feeding on the other side of the wood. He loaded his gun with slugs.

Suddenly a wolf appeared. He fired and smashed both the wolf's hips.

The wolf was mad with pain and did not see him. "What can I do for you, dear?" He thought and thought, and then went home and called Peter.... Peter took a stick, and with an awful grimace, began to beat the wolf.... He beat and beat and beat until it died.... He broke into a sweat and went away, without saying a single word.

_Vera_: "I do not respect you, because you married so strangely, because nothing came of you.... That is why I have secrets from you."

It is unfortunate that we try to solve the simplest questions cleverly, and therefore make them unusually complicated. We should seek a simple solution.

There is no Monday which will not give its place to Tuesday.

I am happy and satisfied, sister, but if I were born a second time and were asked: "Do you want to marry?" I should answer: "No." "Do you want to have money?" "No...."

Lenstchka liked dukes and counts in novels, not ordinary persons. She loved the chapters in which there is love, pure and ideal not sensual.

Descriptions of nature she did not like. She preferred conversations to descriptions. While reading the beginning she would glance impatiently at the end. She did not remember the names of authors.

She wrote with a pencil in the margins: "Wonderful!" "Beautiful!" or "Serve him right!"

Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth.

_Post coitum_: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health.

He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought: "Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons."

She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows.

The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels that he has overheard everything....

What a lot of idiots there are among ladies. People get so used to it that they do not notice it.

They often go to the theatre and read serious magazines--and yet are spiteful and immoral.