Part 35 (2/2)
His longest story is _The Duel_ and in it we hear of a neurasthenic, Laevsky, who finds that ”'living with a woman who has read Spencer and followed you to the ends of the earth is no more interesting than living with any Anfissa or Kulina. There's the same smell of ironing, of powder, and of medicines, the same curl-papers every morning, the same self-deception.'” He tries every means in his power to raise money by loan to leave the Caucasus and his mistress: there is a clear-headed, cold-blooded zoologist called Von Koren who despises Laevsky for his degeneracy. He thus a.n.a.lyses Laevsky's character:
”'His existence is confined like an egg within its sh.e.l.l. Whether he walks or sits, is angry, writes, rejoices, it may all be reduced to wine, cards, slippers and women. He has had great success with women and therein lies his noxiousness. He is a failure, a superfluous man, a victim of the age.'” Meanwhile Laevsky's mistress had been philandering with other men. He discovers her infidelity just when he is on the point of fighting a duel with Von Koren. He was wounded but slightly and became reconciled to his wife, while Von Koren was the one to go away, leaving lover and mistress almost happy in each other's society.
_Mire_ is a horrible story about two men neither of whom was able to resist the fascinations of a Jewess prost.i.tute.
_Neighbours_ is an account of a visit paid by a brother to his sister who had run away with a married man: his first intention is to wreak his vengeance on her lover for the dishonour he had brought upon his house, but he remains as their friend.
_At Home_ gives us a picture of the dull monotony of life in the country: a girl returns to her aunt's house and out of sheer boredom is induced to marry the local doctor.
_Expensive Lessons_ shows the unrequited pa.s.sion of a research student for a poor French governess whom he had hired to teach him French.
_The Princess_ tells of a rich girl who likes to see others happy and revels in the thought that she is the means of making many content who otherwise would not be. She is taken severely to task by a doctor who tries to show her her true character as seen by her inferiors. '”You look upon the ma.s.s of mankind from the Napoleonic standpoint as food for the cannon. But Napoleon had at least some idea: you have nothing except aversion: your philanthropic work has been a farce from the beginning.
There was nothing but the desire to amuse yourself with living puppets.'” He says too much, is frightened and apologises, and the Princess goes from him once more reinstated to her former position of Lady Bountiful in her own mind. ”'How happy I am!'” she murmured, shutting her eyes. ”'How happy I am!'”
_The Chemist's Wife_ is a charming trifle dealing with a country town in which an officer and a doctor knock up a chemist late at night on the pretext of wanting some peppermints, in reality to talk to the pretty young wife of the chemist. She is flattered: adventure has at last come her way: she stays some time downstairs talking to them while her husband sleeps. Reluctantly her visitors leave her, and when she is once more in bed return, this time waking her husband, who attends to them himself.
”Two minutes later the chemist's wife saw Obvyosov go out of the shop, and after he had gone some steps she saw him throw the packet of peppermints on the dusty road. The doctor came from behind a corner to meet him ... they met, and gesticulating, vanished in the morning mist.”
”'How unhappy I am!'” said the chemist's wife, looking angrily at her husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. ”'Oh, how unhappy I am!'” she repeated. ”'And n.o.body knows, n.o.body knows.'
”'I forgot fourpence on the counter,'” muttered the chemist, pulling the quilt over him. ”Put it away in the till, please....'” And at once he fell asleep again.
In _The Lady with the Dog_ we get one of those notes of optimism which are so characteristic of Tchehov just where the normal writer would be pessimistic.
”The monotonous hollow sound of the sea, rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us: in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.”
The story is about a married man who conceives a violent pa.s.sion for a married woman whom he meets while on holiday.
”Anna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender friends: it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband: and it was as though they were a pair of birds of pa.s.sage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.”
By far the greater number of Tchehov's tales deal with the illicit loves of married women: young girls are compelled to marry husbands who are distasteful to them, and in after years they revenge themselves by giving themselves to sprucer, cleaner, stronger men who flit into and out of their lives only too quickly.
In _A Doctor's Visit_ Tchehov harks back again to a subject which is always dear to him, the uselessness of modern labour. In this case two thousand workpeople work without rest in unhealthy surroundings making bad cotton goods ... for what purpose? The factory owner's family are unhappy: ”the only one who enjoys her life is Christina Dmitryevna, the governess, a stupid, middle-aged maiden lady in pince-nez. All these five blocks of buildings are at work, and inferior cotton is sold in the Eastern markets, simply that Christina Dmitryevna may eat sterlet and drink Madeira.”
The doctor who is called in to attend the daughter of the house ventures on a criticism of present-day life.
”'Our generation sleep badly, are restless, talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether we are right or not. For our children or grandchildren that question will have been settled. Things will be clearer for them than for us. Life will be good in fifty years' time.'”
_Ionitch_ shows us Tchehov in another characteristic vein. Here he indulges in one of his favourite tricks, that of divulging the foolishness of his _dramatis personae_ through their idiotic conversation. Ivan Petrovitch is an irritating buffoon whose idea of wit is to repeat _ad nauseam_ phrases like ”How do you do, if you please?”
and ”Not badsome.”
Tchehov's sense of irony is well shown in the following pa.s.sage which occurs in this story:--
”Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces and Vera Iosiforna read her novel. It began like this: 'The frost was intense ...' The windows were wide open; from the kitchen came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions.... It was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair: the lights had such a friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy plain. Vera read how a beautiful young countess founded a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love with a wandering artist: she read of what never happens in real life, and yet it was pleasant to listen ... it was comfortable, and such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind one had no desire to get up.
”'Not badsome' ... Ivan said softly.”
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