Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

THE FIDGET

I

All of Olga Ivanovna’s friends and good acquaintances were at her wedding.

“Look at him: there’s something in him, isn’t there?” she said to her friends, nodding towards her husband, as if she wished to explain why she had married this simple, very ordinary and in no way remarkable man.

Her husband, Osip Stepanych Dymov, was a doctor and held the rank of titular councillor.¹ He worked in two hospitals: as an intern in one, and as a prosector in the other. Every day from nine o’clock till noon he received patients and was busy with his ward, and in the afternoon he took a horse-tram to the other hospital, where he dissected dead patients. His private practice was negligible, some five hundred roubles a year. That was all. What more could be said of him? And yet Olga Ivanovna and her friends and good acquaintances were not exactly ordinary people. Each of them was remarkable for something and of some renown, already had a name and was considered a celebrity or, if not yet a celebrity, held out the brightest hopes. An actor in the theater, a big, long-recognized talent, a graceful, intelligent, and humble man and an excellent reader, who taught Olga Ivanovna recitation; an opera singer, a fat, good-natured man, who sighed as he assured Olga Ivanovna that she was ruining herself: that if she stopped being lazy and took herself in hand, she would become an excellent singer; then several artists, chief among them the genre, animal, and landscape painter Ryabovsky, a very handsome young man of about twenty-five, who was successful at exhibitions and whose last picture had sold for five hundred roubles; he corrected Olga Ivanovna’s studies and said that something might come of her; then a cellist, whose instrument wept and who confessed sincerely that, of all the women he knew, Olga Ivanovna alone was able to accompany him; then a writer, young but already known, who wrote novellas, plays, and stories. Who else? Well, there was also Vassily Vassilyich, squire, landowner, dilettante illustrator and vignette painter, who had a strong feeling for the old Russian style, heroic song and epic; he literally performed miracles on paper, porcelain, and smoked glass. Amidst this artistic, free, and fate-pampered company, delicate and modest, true, but who remembered the existence of all these doctors only when they were sick, and for whom the name Dymov sounded as nondescript as Sidorov or Tarasov—amidst this company Dymov seemed foreign, superfluous, and small, though he was a tall and broad-shouldered man. It seemed as if he were wearing someone else’s tailcoat and had a salesman’s beard. However, if he had been a writer or an artist, they would have said his little beard made him look like Émile Zola.

The actor told Olga Ivanovna that in her wedding dress, and with her flaxen hair, she very much resembled a slender cherry tree in spring, when it is covered all over with tender white blossoms.

“No, listen!” Olga Ivanovna said to him, seizing his hand. “How could this suddenly happen? Listen, listen … I must tell you that my father worked in the same hospital as Dymov. When my poor father fell ill, Dymov spent whole days and nights watching at his bedside. Such self-sacrifice! Listen, Ryabovsky … And you, writer, you listen, too, it’s very interesting. Come closer. So much self-sacrifice and genuine sympathy! I also stayed up nights, sitting by my father, and suddenly—hello! the fine fellow’s conquered! My Dymov is smitten and head over heels in love. Really, fate is sometimes so whimsical. Well, after my father’s death he called on me occasionally, or I’d meet him in the street, and one fine evening suddenly—bang!—he proposed … like a ton of snow on my head … I cried all night and fell infernally in love myself. And so, as you see, I’ve become a wife. There’s something strong, brawny, bear-like in him, isn’t there? His face is turned three-quarters to us now, and poorly lit, but when he turns this way, look at his forehead. Ryabovsky, what do you say of that forehead? Dymov, we’re talking about you!” she called out to her husband. “Come here. Give your honest hand to Ryabovsky … That’s it. Be friends.”

Dymov, with a naïve and good-natured smile, gave Ryabovsky his hand and said:

“Delighted. I finished my studies with a man named Ryabovsky. Is he a relation of yours?”

II

Olga Ivanovna was twenty-two years old, Dymov thirty-one. They started life excellently after the wedding. Olga Ivanovna hung all the walls of the drawing room with her own and other people’s studies, framed and unframed, and around the grand piano and furniture she arranged a beautiful clutter of Chinese parasols, easels, colorful rags, daggers, little busts, photographs … In the dining room she covered the walls with folk prints, hung up bast shoes and sickles, put a scythe and rake in the corner, and thus achieved a dining room in Russian style. In the bedroom, she draped the ceiling and walls with dark cloth to make it look like a cave, hung a Venetian lantern over the beds, and placed a figure with a halberd by the door. And everybody found that the young spouses had themselves a very sweet little corner.

Every day, getting out of bed at around eleven, Olga Ivanovna would play the piano or, if it was sunny, would paint something in oils. After that, between noon and one, she would go to her dressmaker. Since she and Dymov had very little money, barely enough, she and her dressmaker had to be very clever if she was to appear frequently in new dresses and amaze people with her outfits. Often an old, re-dyed dress, some worthless scraps of tulle, lace, plush, and silk, would be turned into a wonder, something enchanting, not a dress but a dream. From the dressmaker’s, Olga Ivanovna usually went to see some actress she knew, to find out the theater news and incidentally try to get a ticket for the opening night of a new play or for a benefit performance. From the actress, she would have to go to an artist’s studio or a picture exhibition, then to see some celebrity—to make an invitation or return a visit, or for a simple chat. And everywhere she was met gaily and amiably, and was assured that she was nice, sweet, rare … Those whom she called famous and great received her like one of themselves, like an equal, and in one voice prophesied that with her talents, taste, and intelligence, she would have great success if she did not disperse herself She sang, played the piano, painted, sculpted, took part in amateur theatricals, and all of it not just anyhow, but with talent; whether it was making lanterns for a fête, or putting on a disguise, or tying someone’s tie—everything she did came out extraordinarily artistic, graceful, and pretty But nothing showed her talent so strikingly as her ability to become quickly acquainted and on close terms with celebrities. The moment anyone became the least bit famous and was talked about, she made his acquaintance, became his friend that same day, and invited him to her house. Every new acquaintance was a veritable feast for her. She idolized celebrities, took pride in them, and saw them every night in her dreams. She thirsted for them and was never able to quench her thirst. Old ones would go and be forgotten, new ones would come to replace them, but she would get used to them, too, or become disappointed in them, and begin searching greedily for more and more new great people, find them, and search again. Why?

Between four and five she had dinner at home with her husband. His simplicity, common sense, and good nature moved her to tenderness and delight. She kept jumping up, impulsively embracing his head, and showering it with kisses.

“You’re an intelligent and noble person, Dymov,” she said, “but you have one very important shortcoming. You’re not interested in art. You reject music and painting.”

“I don’t understand them,” he said meekly. “I’ve studied natural science and medicine all my life, and haven’t had time to get interested in the arts.”

“But this is terrible, Dymov!”

“Why? Your acquaintances don’t know natural science and medicine, and yet you don’t reproach them for it. To each his own. I don’t understand landscapes and operas, but I think like this: if some intelligent people devote their entire lives to them, and other intelligent people pay enormous amounts of money for them, then it means they’re needed. I don’t understand them, but not to understand doesn’t mean to reject.”

“Allow me to shake your honest hand!”

After dinner Olga Ivanovna would visit some acquaintances, then go to the theater or a concert, and return home past midnight. And so it went every day.

On Wednesdays she had soirées. At these soirées the hostess and her guests did not play cards or dance, but entertained themselves with various arts. The actor recited, the singer sang, the artists did drawings in albums, of which Olga Ivanovna had many, the cellist played, and the hostess herself also drew, sculpted, sang, and accompanied. Between the recitations, music, and singing, they talked and argued about literature, the theater, and painting. There were no ladies, because Olga Ivanovna considered all ladies, except for actresses and her dressmaker, to be boring and banal. Not a single soirée went by without the hostess, giving a start at each ring of the bell, saying with a triumphant expression: “It’s him!”—meaning by the word “him” some new celebrity she had invited. Dymov would not be in the drawing room, and no one remembered his existence. But at exactly half-past eleven, the door to the dining room would open, and Dymov would appear with his meek, good-natured smile and say, rubbing his hands:

“A bite to eat, gentlemen.”

They would all go to the dining room, and each time would see the same things on the table: a plate of oysters, a ham or veal roast, sardines, cheese, caviar, mushrooms, vodka, and two carafes of wine.

“My sweet maître d’hôtel!” Olga Ivanovna would say, clasping her hands in delight. “You’re simply charming! Gentlemen, look at his forehead! Dymov, turn in profile. Look, gentlemen: the face of a Bengal tiger, and an expression as kind and sweet as a deer’s. Oh, my sweet!”

The guests ate and, looking at Dymov, thought: “A nice fellow, actually,” but they soon forgot him and went on talking about the theater, music, and painting.

The young spouses were happy and their life went swimmingly. However, the third week of their honeymoon passed not altogether happily, even sadly. Dymov caught erysipelas in the hospital, spent six days in bed, and had to shave his beautiful black hair. Olga Ivanovna sat with him and wept bitterly, but when he felt better, she put a white scarf around his cropped head and began painting him as a Bedouin. And they both felt merry. About three days after he recovered and began going to the hospital again, he suffered another mishap.

“I have no luck, mama!” he said over dinner. “Today I had to do four dissections, and I cut myself on two fingers at once. And I only noticed it when I got home.”

Olga Ivanovna became alarmed. He smiled and said it was nothing and that he often cut himself while doing dissections.

“I get carried away, mama, and don’t pay attention.”

Olga Ivanovna worriedly anticipated blood poisoning and prayed to God at night, but nothing bad happened. And again their peaceful, happy life flowed on without sorrows or alarms. The present was beautiful, and it would be replaced by the approaching spring, already smiling from afar and promising a thousand joys. There would be no end of happiness! In April, May, and June a dacha² far from town, walks, sketching, fishing, nightingales, and then, from July right till fall, an artists’ trip to the Volga, and Olga Ivanovna would take part in that trip, too, as a permanent member of the société. She had already had two simple linen traveling outfits made, and had bought some paints, brushes, canvases, and a new palette to take along. Ryabovsky came to her almost every day, to see what progress she had made in painting. When she showed him her paintings, he thrust his hands deep into his pockets, pressed his lips tightly, sniffed, and said:

“Well, now … This cloud you’ve made too loud—it’s not evening light. The foreground is somehow chewed up, and there’s something off here, you see … And your little cottage is choking on something and squealing pitifully … this corner could be a bit darker. But in general it’s not bad at all… My compliments.”

And the more incomprehensibly he spoke, the more easily Olga Ivanovna understood him.

III

On the day after Pentecost, Dymov bought some snacks and sweets after dinner and went to his wife at the dacha. He had not seen her for two weeks and missed her sorely. Sitting on the train and then looking for his dacha in the big woods, he felt hungry and tired all the while, and dreamed of having a leisurely supper with his wife and then dropping off to sleep. And it cheered him to look at his bundle, with its wrapped-up caviar, cheese, and white salmon. By the time he found his dacha and recognized it, the sun was already setting. The old maid said that the lady was not at home but would probably be back soon. The dacha was very unattractive to look at, with low ceilings pasted over with writing paper and cracks between the uneven floorboards, and it consisted of only three rooms. In one room stood a bed, in the second there were canvases, brushes, greasy paper, and men’s jackets and hats lying about on the chairs and windowsills, and in the third Dymov found three men he did not know. Two were dark-haired with little beards, and the third was clean-shaven and fat, apparently an actor. A samovar was boiling on the table.

“What can I do for you?” the actor asked in a bass voice, giving Dymov an unsociable look. “Is it Olga Ivanovna you want? Wait, she’ll come soon.”

Dymov sat down and began to wait. One of the dark-haired men, glancing at him sleepily and sluggishly, poured himself some tea and asked:

“Want some tea?”

Dymov wanted to drink and to eat, but he declined the tea so as not to spoil his appetite. Soon footsteps and familiar laughter were heard; the door banged, and Olga Ivanovna, in a broad-brimmed hat and carrying a paint box, ran into the room, followed by the gay, red-cheeked Ryabovsky with a big parasol and a folding chair.

“Dymov!” Olga Ivanovna cried out and blushed with joy. “Dymov!” she repeated, putting her head and both hands on his chest. “It’s you! Why haven’t you come for so long? Why? Why?”

“How could I, mama? I’m always busy, and whenever I’m free, it always turns out that the train schedule doesn’t suit.”

“But I’m so glad to see you! I dreamed of you all night, all night, and I was afraid you were sick. Ah, if only you knew how sweet you are, how timely you’ve come! You’ll be my savior. You alone can save me! Tomorrow they’re having the most original wedding here,” she went on, laughing and knotting her husband’s tie. “A young telegraphist from the train station, a certain Chikeldeev, is getting married. A handsome young man, well, and not at all stupid, and with something, you know, strong and bear-like in his face … He’d be a good model for a young Viking. All of us summer people sympathize with him and have given our word of honor to come to his wedding … He’s a poor man, lonely, timid, and of course it would be a sin to deny him our sympathy. Imagine, after the liturgy there’ll be the wedding, then we all go on foot from the church to the bride’s place … you understand, the woods, the birds singing, patches of sun on the grass, and all of us like colored spots against the bright green background—most original, in the style of the French Impressionists. But, Dymov, what am I to wear to church?” Olga Ivanovna said, and made a tearful face. “I’ve got nothing here, literally nothing! No dress, no flowers, no gloves … You must save me. Since you’ve come, it means fate itself is telling you to save me. Take the keys, my dear, go home and get my pink dress from the wardrobe. You remember, it’s hanging in front… Then, in the closet, on the floor to the right, you’ll see two boxes. Open the top one and you’ll see tulle, tulle, tulle, and all sorts of scraps, and flowers under them. Take all the flowers out carefully, darling, try not to crush them, I’ll choose what I want later … And buy some gloves.”

“All right,” said Dymov. “I’ll go tomorrow and send it all.”

“Why tomorrow?” Olga Ivanovna asked and looked at him in surprise. “You won’t have time tomorrow. The first train leaves at nine tomorrow, and the wedding’s at eleven. No, dearest, it has to be today, absolutely today! If you can’t come back tomorrow, send it with a courier. Well, go … The train must be coming right now. Don’t be late, darling.”

“All right.”

“Ah, how sorry I am to let you go,” said Olga Ivanovna, tears brimming her eyes. “And why was I such a fool as to give the telegraphist my word?”

Dymov quickly drank a cup of tea, took a pretzel, and, smiling meekly, went to the station. And the caviar, cheese, and white salmon were eaten by the two dark-haired gentlemen and the fat actor.

IV

On a quiet, moonlit July night Olga Ivanovna stood on the deck of a Volga steamer and gazed now at the water, now at the beautiful banks. Beside her stood Ryabovsky, who was saying to her that the black shadows on the water were not shadows but a dream, that at the sight of this magical water with its fantastic gleam, at the sight of the fathomless sky and melancholy, pensive banks that speak of the vanity of our life and the existence of something lofty, eternal, blissful, it would be good to fall into oblivion, to die, to become a memory. The past is banal and uninteresting, the future insignificant, and this wondrous night, unique in their life, will soon end, will merge with eternity—why then live?

And Olga Ivanovna listened now to Ryabovsky’s voice, now to the silence of the night, and thought she was immortal and would never die. The turquoise color of the water, such as she had never seen before, the sky, the banks, the black shadows, and the unaccountable joy that filled her heart, told her that she would become a great artist, and somewhere beyond the distance, beyond the moonlit night, in infinite space, success awaited her, fame, people’s love … When she looked into the distance for a long time without blinking, she imagined crowds of people, lights, the festive sounds of music, shouts of delight, she herself in a white dress, and flowers pouring on her from all sides. She also thought that beside her, leaning his elbows on the bulwark, stood a truly great man, a genius, one of God’s chosen … Everything he had created so far was beautiful, new, and extraordinary, and what he would create in time, when his rare talent was strengthened by maturity, would be astounding, immeasurably lofty, and this could be seen by his face, by his manner of expressing himself, and by his attitude towards nature. Of the shadows, the evening hues, the shining of the moon, he spoke somehow specially, in his own language, so that one inadvertently felt the charm of his power over nature. He himself was very handsome, original, and his life, independent, free, foreign to everything mundane, was like the life of a bird.

“It’s getting cool,” said Olga Ivanovna, shivering.

Ryabovsky wrapped his cloak around her and said sorrowfully:

“I feel I am in your power. I am a slave. What makes you so bewitching today?”

He gazed at her all the while, not tearing himself away, and his eyes were terrible, and she was afraid to look at him.

“I love you madly …” he whispered, breathing on her cheek. “Say one word to me, and I’ll cease living, I’ll abandon art …” he murmured in great agitation. “Love me, love …”

“Don’t speak like that,” said Olga Ivanovna, closing her eyes. “It’s terrible. And Dymov?”

“What of Dymov? Why Dymov? What do I care about Dymov? The Volga, the moon, beauty, my love, my ecstasy, and there isn’t any Dymov… Ah, I know nothing … I need no past, give me one instant… one moment.”

Olga Ivanovna’s heart was pounding. She wanted to think of her husband, but the whole of her past, with the wedding, with Dymov, with her soirées, seemed small to her, worthless, faded, unnecessary, and far, far away… What Dymov, indeed? Why Dymov? What did she care about Dymov? Did he really exist in nature, or was he merely a dream?

“For him, a simple and ordinary man, the happiness he has already received is enough,” she thought, covering her face with her hands. “Let them condemn me there, let them curse me, and I’ll just up and ruin myself, ruin myself to spite them all… One must experience everything in life. Oh, God, how scary and how good!”

“Well, what? What?” the artist murmured, embracing her and greedily kissing her hands, with which she tried weakly to push him away. “You love me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! A wondrous night!”

“Yes, what a night!” she whispered, looking into his eyes, glistening with tears. Then she glanced around quickly, embraced him, and kissed him hard on the lips.

“Approaching Kineshma!” someone said on the other side of the deck.

Heavy footsteps were heard. It was a man from the buffet walking by.

“Listen,” Olga Ivanovna said to him, laughing and crying from happiness, “bring us some wine.”

The artist, pale with excitement, sat down on a bench, looked at Olga Ivanovna with adoring, grateful eyes, then closed his eyes and said, smiling languidly:

“I’m tired.”

And he leaned his head against the bulwark.

V

The second day of September was warm and still, but gray. Early in the morning a light mist wandered over the Volga, and after nine a drizzling rain set in. And there was no hope that the sky would clear. Over tea Ryabovsky was saying to Olga Ivanovna that painting was the most ungrateful and boring of arts, that he was not an artist, and that only fools thought he had talent, and suddenly, out of the blue, he seized a knife and scratched the best of his studies. After tea he sat gloomily by the window and looked at the Volga. And the Volga was without a gleam, dull, lusterless, and cold-looking. Everything, everything recalled the approach of melancholy, dismal autumn. And it seemed as if nature now stripped the Volga of the luxurious green carpets on its banks, the diamond glints of the sun, the transparent blue distance, and all that was smart and showy, and packed it away in trunks till next spring, and the crows flew about the Volga, teasing her: “Bare! Bare!” Ryabovsky listened to their cawing and thought that he was already played out and had lost his talent, and that everything in this world was conventional, relative, and stupid, and that he should not have tied himself to this woman … In short, he was in a foul and splenetic mood.

Olga Ivanovna sat on the bed behind the partition and, fingering her beautiful flaxen hair, imagined herself now in the drawing room, now in the bedroom, now in her husband’s study; her imagination carried her to the theater, to the dressmaker’s, and to her famous friends. What were they doing now? Did they remember her? The season had already begun, and it was time to be thinking of soirées. And Dymov? Dear Dymov! How meekly and with what childlike plaintiveness he asked her in his letters to come home soon! Every month he sent her seventy-five roubles, and when she wrote to him that she owed the artists a hundred roubles, he sent her the hundred as well. What a kind, generous man! Olga Ivanovna was tired of traveling, she was bored and wanted to get away quickly from these peasants, from the smell of river dampness, and to shake off the feeling of physical uncleanness she had experienced all the while she had been living in peasant cottages and migrating from village to village. If Ryabovsky had not given the artists his word of honor that he would stay with them till the twentieth of September, they might have left that same day. And how good it would be!

“My God,” moaned Ryabovsky, “but when will there finally be some sun? I can’t go on working on a sunny landscape without the sun!…

“But you have a study with a cloudy sky,” said Olga Ivanovna, appearing from behind the partition. “Remember, a woods to the right and a herd of cows or some geese to the left. You could finish it now.”

“Eh!” the artist winced. “Finish it! Maybe you think I myself am so stupid that I don’t know what I should do!”

“How you’ve changed towards me!” Olga Ivanovna sighed.

“Well, splendid.”

Olga Ivanovna’s face trembled, she went over to the stove and began to cry.

“Yes, we only lacked tears. Stop it! I have a thousand reasons to cry, but I don’t cry.”

“A thousand reasons!” Olga Ivanovna sobbed. “The main reason is that I’m already a burden to you. Yes!” she said, and burst into tears. “If the truth were told, you’re ashamed of our love. You try to keep the artists from noticing it, though it’s impossible to hide it and they’ve all known for a long time.”

“Olga, I ask one thing of you,” the artist said pleadingly, placing his hand on his heart, “just one thing: don’t torture me! I don’t need anything else from you!”

“But swear that you still love me!”

“This is torture!” the artist said through his teeth and jumped up. “It will end with me throwing myself into the Volga or losing my mind! Let me be!”

“Then kill me, kill me!” cried Olga Ivanovna. “Kill me!”

She burst into tears again and went behind the partition. Rain began to patter on the thatched roof of the cottage. Ryabovsky clutched his head and paced from corner to corner, then, with a resolute face, as if wishing to prove something to someone, he put on his cap, shouldered his gun, and walked out of the cottage.

After he left, Olga Ivanovna lay on the bed for a long time and cried. First she thought it would be good to poison herself, so that Ryabovsky would find her dead when he came back, then she was carried in her thoughts to the drawing room, to her husband’s study, and she imagined herself sitting motionless beside Dymov, enjoying the physical peace and cleanness, and sitting in the theater in the evening listening to Mazzini.³ And the longing for civilization, for city noise and famous people, wrung her heart. A peasant woman came into the cottage and began unhurriedly to fire the stove in order to cook supper. There was a smell of burning, and the air turned blue with smoke. Artists in dirty high boots and with rain-wet faces came in, looked at their studies and said, to comfort themselves, that the Volga had its charm even in bad weather. And the cheap clock on the wall said: tick, tick, tick … Chilled flies crowded into the front corner by the icons and buzzed there, and cockroaches could be heard stirring in the fat portfolios under the benches …

Ryabovsky returned home as the sun was going down. He threw his cap on the table and, pale, worn out, in dirty boots, sank onto a bench and closed his eyes.

“I’m tired …” he said and moved his eyebrows in an effort to raise his eyelids.

To show her tenderness and let him know that she was not angry, Olga Ivanovna went over to him, kissed him silently, and passed her comb over his blond hair. She wanted to comb it for him.

“What’s that?” he asked with a start, as if something cold had touched him, and he opened his eyes. “What’s that? Leave me alone, I beg you.”

He moved her aside with his hands and walked away, and it seemed to her that his face expressed disgust and vexation. Just then the woman was carefully carrying a plate of cabbage soup to him with both hands, and Olga Ivanovna saw her thumbs dip into the soup. The dirty woman with her cross-tied belly, and the soup that Ryabovsky began eating greedily, and the cottage, and that whole life, which she had liked so much at the beginning for its simplicity and artistic disorder, now seemed horrible to her. She suddenly felt offended and said coldly:

“We must part for a time, otherwise we may quarrel seriously out of boredom. I’m sick of it. I’ll leave today.”

“How? Riding on a stick?”

“Today is Thursday, which means the steamer will be coming at nine-thirty”

“Ah, yes, yes … Well, go then …” Ryabovsky said gently, wiping his mouth with a towel instead of a napkin. “You’re bored here and have nothing to do, and one would have to be a great egoist to keep you here. Go, and we’ll see each other after the twentieth.”

Olga Ivanovna packed cheerfully, and her cheeks even burned with pleasure. Could it be true, she asked herself, that she would soon sit painting in a living room, and sleep in a bedroom, and dine on a tablecloth? Her heart felt relieved, and she was no longer angry with the artist.

“I’ll leave the paints and brushes for you, Ryabusha,” she said. “Bring back whatever’s left … See that you don’t get lazy here without me, or splenetic, but work. I think you’re a fine fellow, Ryabusha.”

At nine o’clock Ryabovsky kissed her good-bye, to avoid, as she thought, having to kiss her on the steamer, in front of the artists, and brought her to the wharf The steamer soon came and took her away

She arrived home two and a half days later. Not taking off her hat and waterproof, breathless with excitement, she went to the drawing room and from there to the dining room. Dymov, in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, was sitting at the table and sharpening his knife on his fork; on a plate in front of him lay a grouse. As Olga Ivanovna was entering the apartment, she felt convinced that it was necessary to hide everything from her husband, and that she would have skill and strength enough to do it, but now, when she saw his broad, meek, happy smile and his shining, joyful eyes, she felt that to hide anything from this man was as base, as loathsome, and as impossible and beyond her strength, as to slander, steal, or kill, and she instantly resolved to tell him all that had happened. After letting him kiss and embrace her, she sank to her knees before him and covered her face.

“What? What is it, mama?” he asked tenderly. “You missed me?”

She raised her face, red with shame, and looked at him guiltily and imploringly, but fear and shame prevented her from telling the truth.

“Never mind …” she said. “I’m just so …”

“Let’s sit down,” he said, raising her up and sitting her at the table. “There … Have some grouse. You must be hungry, poor little thing.”

She greedily breathed in the air of her home and ate the grouse, and he gazed at her lovingly and laughed with joy.

VI

Apparently, by the middle of winter Dymov began to suspect that he was being deceived. As if his own conscience were not clean, he could no longer look his wife straight in the eye, did not smile joyfully when he met her, and, to avoid being alone with her, often brought to dinner his friend Korostelev, a crop-headed little man with a crumpled face, who, as he spoke with Olga Ivanovna, in his embarrassment would undo all the buttons of his jacket and button them up again, and then would start twisting his left mustache with his right hand. Over dinner the two doctors spoke of the irregular heartbeat that sometimes occurs if the diaphragm is positioned high, or of how multiple neuritis had become more prevalent lately, or how the day before, having dissected a corpse diagnosed as having “malignant anemia,” Dymov had found cancer of the pancreas. And it looked as if the two men conducted a medical conversation only so that Olga Ivanovna could keep silent—that is, not lie. After dinner Korostelev sat down at the piano, and Dymov sighed and said to him:

“Eh, brother! Well, now! Play us something sad.”

Hunching his shoulders and spreading his fingers wide, Korostelev played a few chords and began singing “Show me such a haven where the Russian muzhik does not groan”⁴ in a tenor voice, and Dymov sighed again, propped his head on his fist, and fell to thinking.

Lately Olga Ivanovna had been behaving very imprudently. She woke up every morning in a bad mood and with the thought that she no longer loved Ryabovsky, and thank God it was all over. But after coffee she would realize that Ryabovsky had taken her husband from her, and that she now had neither husband nor Ryabovsky; then she would recall what her acquaintances had said about Ryabovsky preparing something astounding for the exhibition, a mixture of landscape and genre painting in the style of Polenov,⁵ over which everyone who visited his studio was in ecstasies; but this, she thought, he had created under her influence, and generally, thanks to her influence, he had changed greatly for the better. Her influence was so beneficial and essential that, if she were to leave him, he might even perish. And she also recalled that he had come to her last time in some gray little frock coat with flecks and a new tie, and had asked languidly: “Am I handsome?” And, graceful, with his long hair and blue eyes, he was indeed very handsome (or perhaps only seemed so), and he was tender with her.

Having recalled and realized many things, Olga Ivanovna would get dressed and, in great agitation, go to see Ryabovsky in his studio. She would find him cheerful and delighted with his indeed magnificent painting; he would clown, hop about, and answer serious questions with jokes. Olga Ivanovna was jealous of the painting and hated it, but out of politeness she would stand silently before it for some five minutes and, sighing as one sighs before some sacred thing, say softly:

“Yes, you’ve never yet painted anything like that. You know, it’s even frightening.”

Then she would begin imploring him to love her, not to abandon her, to have pity on her, poor and unhappy as she was. She would weep, kiss his hands, demand that he swear his love for her, insist that without her good influence he would go astray and perish. And, having ruined his good spirits and feeling humiliated herself, she would go to her dressmaker or to some actress acquaintance to obtain a ticket.

If she did not find him in his studio, she would leave a note for him, in which she swore that if he did not come to her that day, she would certainly poison herself. He would get alarmed, come to her, and stay for dinner. Unembarrassed by her husband’s presence, he would say impertinent things to her, and she would respond in kind. They both felt that they were hampering each other, that they were despots and enemies, and they were angry. And in their anger, they did not notice that they were being indecent, and that even crop-headed Korostelev understood everything. After dinner, Ryabovsky would hurriedly say good-bye and leave.

“Where are you going?” Olga Ivanovna would ask him in the front hall, looking at him with hatred.

Wincing and narrowing his eyes, he would name some lady of their acquaintance, and it was clear that he was making fun of her jealousy and wanted to vex her. She would go to her bedroom and lie down on the bed; from jealousy, vexation, a feeling of humiliation and shame, she would bite her pillow and begin crying loudly. Dymov would leave Korostelev in the drawing room, come to the bedroom, and, embarrassed and perplexed, say softly:

“Don’t cry so loudly, mama … Why? You must keep it quiet … You mustn’t show … You know you can’t mend what’s happened.”

Not knowing how to suppress her painful jealousy, which even made her temples ache, and thinking that things could still be put right, she would wash, powder her tear-stained face, and fly to the lady acquaintance. Not finding Ryabovsky there, she would go to another, then a third … In the beginning she was ashamed of going around like that, but then she got used to it, and it would happen that in one evening she would visit all the ladies of her acquaintance, searching for Ryabovsky, and they all understood it.

She had once said of her husband to Ryabovsky:

“The man crushes me with his magnanimity!”

She liked the phrase so much that, whenever she met artists who knew about her affair with Ryabovsky, she would say of her husband, with an energetic gesture of the hand:

“The man crushes me with his magnanimity!”

The order of life was the same as the year before. There were soirées on Wednesdays. The actor recited, the artists painted, the cellist played, the singer sang, and at half-past eleven, unfailingly, the door to the dining room would open, and Dymov, smiling, would say:

“A bite to eat, gentlemen.”

As before, Olga Ivanovna sought great people, found them and was unsatisfied, and sought again. As before, she returned home late every night, but Dymov would not be asleep, as last year, but sitting in his study and working on something. He would go to bed at around three and get up at eight.

One evening, as she was standing in front of the pier glass getting ready for the theater, Dymov came into the bedroom in a tailcoat and white tie. He was smiling meekly and, as before, looked joyfully straight into his wife’s eyes. His face was beaming.

“I’ve just defended my thesis,” he said, sitting down and patting his knees.

“Successfully?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“Uh-huh!” he laughed and craned his neck so as to see his wife’s face in the mirror, as she went on standing with her back to him, straightening her hair. “Uh-huh!” he repeated. “You know, it’s very likely I’ll be offered a post as assistant professor of general pathology. It’s in the air.”

It was clear from his blissfully beaming face that, if Olga Ivanovna could share his joy and triumph with him, he would forgive her anything, both present and future, and forget everything, but she did not understand what an assistant professor of general pathology was, and besides she was afraid to be late to the theater, and so she said nothing.

He sat for a couple of minutes, smiled guiltily, and left.

VII

This was a most troublesome day.

Dymov had a bad headache. He did not have tea in the morning, did not go to the hospital, and spent the whole time lying on the Turkish divan in his study. After twelve, as usual, Olga Ivanovna went to Ryabovsky to show him her study for a nature morte and ask him why he had not come the day before. The study was nothing to her, and she had painted it only so as to have a further pretext for calling on the artist.

She went in without ringing the bell, and as she was removing her galoshes in the front hall, she seemed to hear something run softly across the studio, a rustling as of a woman’s dress, and when she hastened to peek into the studio, she saw just a bit of brown skirt flash for a moment and disappear behind a big painting which, together with its easel, was covered to the floor with black cloth. There was no possible doubt, it was a woman hiding. How often Olga Ivanovna herself had taken refuge behind that painting! Ryabovsky, obviously quite embarrassed, seemed surprised by her visit, gave her both hands, and said with a forced smile:

“A-a-ah! Very glad to see you. What’s the good news?”

Olga Ivanovna’s eyes filled with tears. She felt ashamed, bitter, and not for any amount would she have consented to speak in the presence of a strange woman, a rival, a liar, who was now standing behind the painting, probably tittering gleefully.

“I’ve brought you a study …” she said timidly, in a thin little voice, and her lips trembled, “a nature morte.”

“A-a-ah … a study?”

The artist took the study and, as he examined it, went as if mechanically into the other room.

Olga Ivanovna obediently followed him.

“Nature morte… best sort,” he muttered, choosing a rhyme, “resort… port… wart…”

Hurried footsteps were heard in the studio and the rustle of a dress. It meant she had gone. Olga Ivanovna wanted to shout loudly, hit the artist on the head with something heavy, and leave, but she could see nothing through her tears, was crushed by her shame, and felt herself no longer an Olga Ivanovna, nor an artist, but a little bug.

“I’m tired …” the artist said languidly, looking at the study and shaking his head to overcome his drowsiness. “It’s sweet, of course, but it’s a study today, and a study last year, and in a month another study … Aren’t you bored? If I were you, I’d drop painting and take up something seriously, music or whatever. You’re not an artist, you’re a musician. Anyhow, I’m so tired! I’ll have tea served … Eh?”

He left the room, and Olga Ivanovna heard him give some order to his servant. So as not to say good-bye, not to explain, and, above all, not to burst into tears, she quickly ran to the front hall before Ryabovsky came back, put on her galoshes, and went outside. There she breathed easily and felt herself free forever from Ryabovsky, and from painting, and from the heavy shame that had so oppressed her in the studio. It was all finished!

She went to her dressmaker, then to the actor Barnay,⁶ who had arrived the day before, from Barnay to a music shop, thinking all the while of how she was going to write Ryabovsky a cold, stern letter, filled with dignity, and how in the spring or summer she and Dymov would go to the Crimea, there definitively free themselves of the past, and start a new life.

She returned home late in the evening and, without changing her clothes, sat down in the drawing room to write the letter. Ryabovsky had told her that she was not an artist, and she, in revenge, would write to him that he painted the same thing every year and said the same thing every day, that he was stuck, and nothing would come from him except what had already come. She also wanted to write that he owed a lot to her good influence, and if he acted badly, it was only because her influence was paralyzed by various ambiguous persons, like the one who had been hiding behind the painting that day.

“Mama!” Dymov called from the study, without opening the door. “Mama!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Mama, don’t come in, just come to the door. The thing is … Two days ago I caught diphtheria in the hospital, and now … I’m not well. Send for Korostelev quickly.”

Olga Ivanovna had always called her husband, as she did all the men she knew, not by his first but by his last name. She did not like his first name, Osip, because it reminded her of Gogol’s Osip⁷ and of the tongue twister: “Osip’s hoarse, his horse has pip.” But now she cried out:

“Osip, it can’t be!”

“Send quickly! I’m not well …” Dymov said behind the door, and she heard him go to the divan and lie down. “Send quickly!” came his muted voice.

“What does it mean?” thought Olga Ivanovna, turning cold with terror. “But this is dangerous!”

Quite unnecessarily she took a candle and went to her bedroom, and there, trying to think what she must do, she accidentally looked at herself in the pier glass. With a pale, frightened face, in a puff-sleeved jacket, yellow flounces on her breast, and an unusual pattern of stripes on her skirt, she appeared dreadful and vile to herself. She suddenly felt painfully sorry for Dymov, for his boundless love for her, for his young life, and even for this orphaned bed of his, in which he had not slept for a long time, and she remembered his usual meek, obedient smile. She wept bitterly and wrote an imploring letter to Korostelev. It was two o’clock in the morning.

VIII

As Olga Ivanovna, her head heavy after a sleepless night, her hair undone, looking guilty and unattractive, emerged from the bedroom at around eight in the morning, some black-bearded gentleman, apparently a doctor, passed her on his way to the front hall. There was a smell of medications. Korostelev stood by the door of the study, twisting his left mustache with his right hand.

“Sorry, I can’t let you see him,” he said glumly to Olga Ivanovna. “You might catch it. And in fact there’s no need. He’s delirious anyway.”

“He has real diphtheria?” Olga Ivanovna asked in a whisper.

“Those who ask for trouble really should be taken to court,” Korostelev muttered without answering Olga Ivanovna’s question. “Do you know how he caught it? On Tuesday he sucked diphtherial membranes from a sick boy’s throat with a tube. And what for? Stupid … Just like that, foolishly …”

“Is it dangerous? Very?” asked Olga Ivanovna.

“Yes, they say it’s an acute form. In fact, we ought to send for Schreck.”

A little red-headed man with a long nose and a Jewish accent came, then a tall one, stoop-shouldered, disheveled, looking like a protodeacon; then a young one, very fat, with a red face and in spectacles. They were doctors, come to attend their colleague’s sickbed. Korostelev, having finished his turn, did not go home, but stayed and wandered like a shadow through all the rooms. The maid served tea to the attending doctors and kept running to the pharmacy, and there was no one to put the rooms in order. It was quiet and dismal.

Olga Ivanovna sat in her bedroom and thought that this was God punishing her for deceiving her husband. A silent, unprotesting, incomprehensible being, depersonalized by his own meekness, characterless, weak from excessive kindness, suffered mutely somewhere on his divan, and did not complain. And if he should complain, even in his delirium, the attending doctors would learn that it was not diphtheria alone that was to blame. They should ask Korostelev: he knew everything, and it was not without reason that he looked at his friend’s wife with such eyes, as if she were the chief, the real villain, and diphtheria were only her accomplice. She no longer remembered the moonlit evening on the Volga, or the declarations of love, or the poetic life in the cottage, but remembered only that for an empty whim, an indulgence, she had become smeared all over, hands and feet, with something dirty, sticky, that could never be washed off…

“Ah, how terribly I lied!” she thought, remembering the turbulent love between her and Ryabovsky. “A curse on it all! …”

At four o’clock she had dinner with Korostelev. He ate nothing, only drank red wine and scowled. She also ate nothing. First she prayed mentally and vowed to God that if Dymov recovered, she would love him again and be a faithful wife. Then, oblivious for a moment, she gazed at Korostelev and thought: “Isn’t it boring to be a simple, completely unremarkable and unknown man, with such a crumpled face and bad manners besides?” Then it seemed to her that God would kill her that very instant, because, for fear of catching the illness, she had not once gone near her husband’s study. And generally there was a dull, dismal feeling and a certainty that life was already ruined and nothing could put it right …

After dinner it grew dark. When Olga Ivanovna went out to the drawing room, Korostelev was sleeping on a couch, with a gold-embroidered silk pillow under his head. “Khi-puah,” he snored, “khi-puah.”

And the doctors who came to attend the sick man and then left, did not notice this disorder. That there was a strange man sleeping in the drawing room and snoring, and the studies on the walls, and the whimsical furnishings, and that the hostess had her hair undone and was carelessly dressed—all that did not arouse the slightest interest now. One of the doctors accidentally laughed at something, and this laughter sounded somehow strange and timid, and even felt eerie.

The next time Olga Ivanovna came out to the drawing room, Korostelev was not asleep but sitting and smoking.

“He has diphtheria of the nasal cavity,” he said in a low voice. “His heart is already not working very well. In fact, things are bad.”

“Send for Schreck,” said Olga Ivanovna.

“He’s already been here. It was he who noticed that the diphtheria had passed into the nose. Eh, and what of Schreck! In fact, Schreck’s nothing. He’s Schreck, I’m Korostelev—nothing more.”

The time dragged on terribly long. Olga Ivanovna lay on the bed, unmade since morning, and dozed. She imagined that the whole apartment, from floor to ceiling, was taken up by a huge piece of iron, and if only the iron could be taken away, everybody would be cheerful and light. Coming to herself, she remembered that this was not iron, but Dymov’s illness.

“Nature morte, port …” she thought, sinking into oblivion again, “sport… resort… And how about Schreck? Schreck, wreck, vreck … creck. And where are my friends now? Do they know about our misfortune? Lord, save us … deliver us. Schreck, wreck …”

And again the iron … The time dragged on long, and the clock on the ground floor struck frequently. And the doorbell kept ringing all the time; doctors came … The maid came in with an empty cup on a tray and asked:

“Shall I make the bed, ma’am?”

And, receiving no answer, she left. The clock struck downstairs, she had been dreaming of rain on the Volga, and again someone came into the bedroom, a stranger, she thought. Olga Ivanovna jumped up and recognized Korostelev.

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Around three.”

“Well, so?”

“So, I’ve come to tell you: he’s going …”

He sobbed, sat down on the bed beside her, and wiped the tears with his sleeve. She did not understand at once, but turned all cold and slowly began to cross herself.

“He’s going …” he repeated in a thin little voice and sobbed again. “He’s dying, because he sacrificed himself… What a loss for science!” he said bitterly. “Compared to us all, he was a great, extraordinary man! So gifted! What hopes we all had in him!” Korostelev went on, wringing his hands. “Lord God, he’d have been a scientist such as you won’t find anywhere now. Oska Dymov, Oska Dymov, what have you done! Ai, ai, my God!”

Korostelev covered his face with both hands in despair and shook his head.

“And what moral strength!” he went on, growing more and more angry with someone. “A kind, pure, loving soul—not a man, but crystal! He served science and died from science. And he worked like an ox, day and night, nobody spared him, and the young scientist, the future professor, had to look for patients, to do translations by night, in order to pay for these … mean rags!”

Korostelev looked hatefully at Olga Ivanovna, seized the sheet with both hands, and tore at it angrily, as if it were to blame.

“He didn’t spare himself, and no one else spared him. Ah, there’s nothing to say!”

“Yes, a rare person!” some bass voice said in the drawing room.

Olga Ivanovna recalled her whole life with him, from beginning to end, in all its details, and suddenly understood that he was indeed an extraordinary, rare man and, compared with those she knew, a great man. And, recalling the way her late father and all his fellow doctors had treated him, she understood that they had all seen a future celebrity in him. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp, and the rug on the floor winked at her mockingly, as if wishing to say: “You missed it! You missed it!” In tears, she rushed from the bedroom, slipped past some unknown man in the drawing room, and ran into her husband’s study. He lay motionless on the Turkish divan, covered to the waist with a blanket. His face was terribly pinched, thin, and of a gray-yellow color such as living people never have; and only by his forehead, his black eyebrows, and the familiar smile could one tell that this was Dymov. Olga Ivanovna quickly touched his chest, forehead, and hands. His chest was still warm, but his forehead and hands were unpleasantly cold. And his half-open eyes looked not at Olga Ivanovna but down at the blanket.

“Dymov!” she called loudly. “Dymov!”

She wanted to explain to him that this was a mistake, that all was not lost yet, that life could still be beautiful and happy, that he was a rare, extraordinary, and great man, and that she would stand in awe of him all her life, worship him and feel a holy dread …

“Dymov!” she called to him, patting him on the shoulder and refusing to believe that he would never wake up. “Dymov, but, Dymov!”

And in the drawing room Korostelev was saying to the maid:

“What is there to ask? Go to the church caretaker and find out where the almshouse women live. They’ll wash the body and prepare it—they’ll do everything necessary.”

JANUARY 1892