Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

ANYUTA

In the cheapest furnished rooms of the Hotel Lisbon, the third- year medical student, Stepan Klochkov, paced up and down and diligently ground away at his medicine. The relentless, strenuous grinding made his mouth dry, and sweat stood out on his forehead. By the window, coated at the edges with icy designs, his roommate Anyuta sat on a stool. She was a small, thin brunette of about twenty-five, very pale, with meek gray eyes. Her back bent, she was embroidering the collar of a man’s shirt with red thread. It was an urgent job … The clock in the corridor hoarsely struck two, but the room had not yet been tidied. A crumpled blanket, scattered pillows, books, clothes, a large, dirty basin filled with soapy swill, in which cigarette butts floated, litter on the floor—it all looked as if it had been piled in a heap, purposely confused, crumpled …

“The right lung consists of three sections …” repeated Klochkov. “The boundaries! The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest, the fourth rib at the side … the spina scapulae in the back …”

Klochkov, straining to visualize what he had just read, raised his eyes to the ceiling. Getting no clear impression, he began feeling his own upper ribs through his waistcoat.

“These ribs are like piano keys,” he said. “To avoid confusion in counting them, one absolutely must get used to them. I’ll have to study it with a skeleton and a living person … Come here, Anyuta, let me try to get oriented!”

Anyuta stopped embroidering, took off her blouse, and straightened up. Klochkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began counting her ribs.

“Hm … The first rib can’t be felt … It’s behind the collarbone … Here’s the second rib … Right … Here’s the third … Here’s the fourth … Hm … Right … Why are you flinching?”

“Your fingers are cold!”

“Well, well … you won’t die, don’t fidget. So then, this is the third rib, and this is the fourth … You’re so skinny to look at, yet I can barely feel your ribs. The second … the third … No, I’ll get confused this way and won’t have a clear picture … I’ll have to draw it … Where’s my charcoal?”

Klochkov took a piece of charcoal and drew several parallel lines with it on Anyuta’s chest, corresponding to the ribs.

“Excellent. All just like the palm of your hand … Well, and now we can do some tapping. Stand up!”

Anyuta stood up and lifted her chin. Klochkov started tapping and got so immersed in this occupation that he did not notice that Anyuta’s lips, nose, and fingers had turned blue with cold. Anyuta was shivering and feared that the medical student, noticing her shivering, would stop drawing with charcoal and tapping, and would perhaps do poorly at the examination.

“Now it’s all clear,” said Klochkov, and he stopped tapping. “You sit like that, without wiping off the charcoal, while I go over it a little more.”

And the medical student again began pacing and repeating. Anyuta, as if tattooed, black stripes on her chest, shrunken with cold, sat and thought. She generally spoke very little, was always silent and kept thinking, thinking …

In all her six or seven years of wandering through various furnished rooms, she had known some five men like Klochkov. Now they had all finished their studies, had made their way in life, and, of course, being decent people, had long forgotten her. One of them lived in Paris, two had become doctors, the fourth an artist, and the fifth was even said to be a professor already. Klochkov was the sixth … Soon he, too, would finish his studies and make his way. The future would no doubt be beautiful, and Klochkov would probably become a great man, but the present was thoroughly bad: Klochkov had no tobacco, no tea, and there were only four pieces of sugar left. She had to finish her embroidery as quickly as possible, take it to the customer, and, with the twenty-five kopecks she would get, buy tea and tobacco.

“Can I come in?” came from outside the door.

Anyuta quickly threw a woolen shawl over her shoulders. The painter Fetisov came in.

“I’ve come to you with a request,” he began, addressing Klochkov and looking ferociously from under the hair hanging on his forehead. “Be so good as to lend me your beautiful maiden for an hour or two! I’m working on a painting, and I can’t do without a model!”

“Ah, with pleasure!” Klochkov agreed. “Go on, Anyuta.”

“What business do I have there?” Anyuta said softly.

“Well, really! The man’s asking for the sake of art, not for some trifle. Why not help if you can?”

Anyuta began to dress.

“And what are you painting?” asked Klochkov.

“Psyche. A nice subject, but it somehow won’t come out right. I have to use different models all the time. Yesterday there was one with blue feet. Why are your feet blue? I ask. My stockings ran, she says. And you keep grinding away! Lucky man, you’ve got patience.”

“Medicine’s that sort of thing, you have to grind away at it.”

“Hm … I beg your pardon, Klochkov, but you live like an awful swine. Devil knows how you can live this way!”

“How do you mean? I can’t live any other way … I get only twelve roubles a month from the old man, and it’s a real trick to live decently on that.”

“So it is …” said the artist, wincing squeamishly, “but all the same you could live better … A developed man absolutely must be an aesthete. Isn’t that true? And here you’ve got devil knows what! The bed isn’t made, there’s swill, litter … yesterday’s kasha on a plate … pah!”

“That’s true,” said the medical student, and he became embarrassed, “but Anyuta didn’t manage to tidy up today. She’s busy all the time.”

When the artist and Anyuta left, Klochkov lay down on the sofa and began to study lying down, then accidentally fell asleep, woke up an hour later, propped his head on his fists and pondered gloomily. He remembered the artist’s words, that a developed man absolutely must be an aesthete, and his room indeed seemed disgusting, repulsive to him now. It was as if he foresaw the future with his mental eye, when he would receive patients in his office, have tea in a spacious dining room in company with his wife, a respectable woman—and now this basin of swill with cigarette butts floating in it looked unbelievably vile. Anyuta, too, seemed homely, slovenly, pitiful … And he decided to separate from her, at once, whatever the cost.

When she came back from the artist’s and began taking off her coat, he stood up and said to her seriously:

“The thing is this, my dear … Sit down and listen to me. We have to separate! In short, I don’t wish to live with you anymore.”

Anyuta had come back from the artist’s so tired, so worn out. She had posed for so long that her face had become pinched, thin, and her chin had grown sharper. She said nothing in reply to the medical student’s words, only her lips began to tremble.

“You must agree that we’ll have to separate sooner or later anyway,” said the medical student. “You’re good, kind, and not stupid—you’ll understand …”

Anyuta put her coat back on, silently wrapped her embroidery in paper, gathered up her needles and thread; she found the little packet with four pieces of sugar in it on the windowsill and put it on the table near the books.

“It’s yours … some sugar …” she said softly and turned away to hide her tears.

“Well, what are you crying for?” asked Klochkov.

He walked across the room in embarrassment and said:

“You’re strange, really … You know yourself that we have to separate. We can’t be together forever.”

She had already picked up all her bundles and turned to him to say good-bye, but he felt sorry for her.

“Why not let her stay another week?” he thought. “Yes, indeed, let her stay, and in a week I’ll tell her to leave.”

And, annoyed at his own lack of character, he shouted at her sternly:

“Well, why are you standing there! If you’re going, go, and if you don’t want to, take your coat off and stay! Stay!”

Silently, quietly, Anyuta took off her coat, then blew her nose, also quietly, gave a sigh, and noiselessly went to her permanent post—the stool by the window.

The student drew the textbook towards him and again began pacing up and down.

“The right lung consists of three sections …” he ground away. “The upper section reaches the fourth or fifth rib on the front wall of the chest …”

And someone in the corridor shouted at the top of his voice:

“Gr-r-rigory, the samovar!”

FEBRUARY 1886