Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov

THE MAN IN A CASE

At the very edge of the village of Mironositskoe, in the headman Prokofy’s shed, some belated hunters had settled down for the night. There were only two of them: the veterinarian Ivan Ivanych and the high-school teacher Burkin. Ivan Ivanych had a rather strange double surname—Chimsha-Himalaysky—which did not go with him at all, and throughout the province he was known simply by his first name and patronymic; he lived on a stud farm near town and had gone hunting now to get a breath of fresh air. The high-school teacher Burkin visited Count P. every summer and had long been a familiar man in those parts.

They were not asleep. Ivan Ivanych, a tall, lean old man with a long mustache, sat outside by the entrance and smoked his pipe; the moon shone on him. Burkin lay inside on the hay, and could not be seen in the darkness.

They told various stories. Among other things they talked about the headman’s wife, Mavra, a healthy woman and not stupid—that she had never gone anywhere outside her native village, had never seen a town or a railroad, and for the last ten years had always sat behind the stove and went outside only at night.

“What’s surprising about that!” said Burkin. “There are not a few naturally solitary people in this world, who try to hide in their shells like hermit crabs or snails. Maybe what we have here is the phenomenon of atavism, a return to the time when man’s ancestors were not yet social animals and lived solitarily in their dens, or maybe it’s simply one of the varieties of human character—who knows? I’m not a natural scientist, and it’s not my business to touch on such questions; I only want to say that people like Mavra are not a rare phenomenon. No need to look far, about two months ago a certain Belikov died in our town, a teacher of Greek, my colleague. You’ve heard of him, of course. He was remarkable for always going out, even in the finest weather, in galoshes and with an umbrella, and unfailingly wearing a warm, padded coat. His umbrella had a cover, and his watch a cover of gray suede, and when he took out his penknife to sharpen a pencil, the penknife, too, had a little cover; and his face also seemed to have a cover over it, because he always hid it behind his turned-up collar. He wore dark glasses, a quilted jacket, stopped his ears with cotton, and whenever he took a cab, ordered the top put up. In short, the man showed a constant and insuperable impulse to envelop himself, to create a case for himself, so to speak, that would isolate him, protect him from outside influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in constant anxiety, and, maybe in order to justify his timidity, his aversion to the present, he always praised the past and what had never been; the ancient languages he taught were for him essentially the same galoshes and umbrella, in which he hid from real life.

“‘Oh, how sonorous, how beautiful the Greek language is!’ he used to say, with a sweet expression; and, as if to prove his words, he would narrow his eyes and, raising a forefinger, pronounce: ‘Anthropos!’

“And Belikov tried to hide his thoughts in a case as well. The only things that were clear for him were circulars and newspaper articles in which something was forbidden. When a circular forbade the schoolboys to go out after nine o’clock in the evening, or some article forbade carnal love, he found that clear, definite; it’s forbidden, and—basta! But the permitting, the authorizing of something always concealed an element of dubiousness for him, something vague and not quite spoken. When a dramatic circle, a reading room or tearoom was permitted in town, he would shake his head and say softly:

“‘That’s very well, of course, it’s all splendid, but something may come of it.’

“Any sort of violation, deviation, departure from the rules threw him into dejection, though you might wonder what business it was of his. If some colleague of his was late for prayers, or rumor reached him of some schoolboy prank, or a mistress from the girls’ school was seen late at night with an officer, he would become very worried and keep saying that something might come of it. And at faculty meetings he simply oppressed us with his prudence, suspiciousness, and purely case-like reasonings about how the students in the boys’ and girls’ high schools behave badly, they’re very noisy in class—ah, what if it gets to the authorities, ah, something may come of it—and if we expel Petrov from the second grade and Yegorov from the fourth, it would be a very good thing. And what then? With his sighing, his whining, his dark glasses on his pale little face—you know, a little face, like a weasel’s—he crushed us all, and we gave in, lowered Petrov’s and Yegorov’s marks for conduct, locked them up, and finally expelled them both. He had a strange habit—of visiting our apartments. He would call on a teacher, sit down, and say nothing, as if he were spying something out. He would sit like that, silently, for an hour or two, and then leave. He called it ‘maintaining good relations with his colleagues,’ and it was obviously painful for him to come to us and sit, and he came only because he considered it his comradely duty. We teachers were afraid of him. And even the director was afraid. Figure, our teachers were all profoundly respectable, thinking people, brought up on Turgenev and Shchedrin,¹ yet this little man, who always went about in galoshes and with an umbrella, held the whole school in his hands for as long as fifteen years! School, nothing! The whole town! Our ladies refused to arrange home dramatic performances on Saturdays for fear he might find out; and the clergy were embarrassed to eat non-lenten fare and play cards in his presence. During the last ten or fifteen years, under the influence of people like Belikov, our town developed a fear of everything. A fear of talking loudly, of sending letters, of making acquaintances, reading books, helping the poor, teaching reading and writing …”

Ivan Ivanych, wishing to say something, coughed, but first lit his pipe, looked at the moon, and only then said measuredly:

“Yes. Thinking people, respectable, reading Shchedrin and Turgenev, and all sorts of Buckles² and so on, and yet they gave in and endured … There you have it.”

“Belikov lived in the same house I did,” Burkin went on, “on the same floor, his door faced mine, we saw each other often, and I knew his home life. At home it was the same story: dressing gown, nightcap, shutters, latches, a whole array of restrictions, limitations, and—ah, something may come of it! Lenten fare isn’t good for you, and non-lenten food is forbidden, because people might say Belikov didn’t observe the fasts,³ so he ate pike-perch fried in butter—not lenten food, but you couldn’t say it was non-lenten. He didn’t keep a serving woman for fear people might think ill of him, but he kept a cook, Afanasy, an old man of about sixty, drunk and half-crazy, who had served as an orderly and was able to slap a meal together. This Afanasy usually stood by the door, his arms crossed, and always muttered one and the same thing with a deep sigh:

“‘There’s a lot of them around nowadays!’

“Belikov’s bedroom was small, like a box, and the bed had a canopy over it. Lying down to sleep, he would cover his head with a blanket; it was hot, stuffy, the wind knocked at the closed doors, the stove howled; sighs came from the kitchen, sinister sighs …

“And he was afraid under his blanket. He feared that something might happen, that Afanasy might put a knife in him, that thieves might come, and then all night he would have troubled dreams, and in the morning, when he and I walked to school together, he would be dull, pale, and you could see that the crowded school he was going to was frightening, contrary to his whole being, and that for him, a naturally solitary man, walking beside me was very painful.

“‘It’s too noisy in our classrooms,’ he would say, as if trying to find an explanation for his painful feeling. ‘I’ve never seen the like.’

“And this teacher of Greek, this man in a case, if you can imagine it, nearly got married.”

Ivan Ivanych quickly glanced into the shed and said:

“You’re joking!”

“Yes, he nearly got married, strange as it sounds. A new teacher of history and geography was appointed to us, a certain Kovalenko, Mikhail Savvich, a Ukrainian. He didn’t come alone, but with his sister Varenka. He was young, tall, swarthy, with enormous hands, and by the looks of him you could see he had a bass voice, and in fact he boomed like a barrel: boo, boo, boo … And she was no longer young, about thirty, but also tall, trim, dark-browed, red-cheeked—in short, not a girl but a sugarplum—and so saucy and loud, and she sang Ukrainian romances and laughed all the time. At the least thing she’d burst into peals of laughter: ha, ha, ha! Our first real acquaintance with the Kovalenkos came, I remember, at the director’s name-day party. Amidst the stern, tensely dull pedagogues, who even came to name-day parties out of duty, we suddenly see: a new Aphrodite rising from the foam. She walks about, arms akimbo, laughs, sings, dances … She sang ‘The Winds Waft’ with feeling, then another romance, and another, and charmed us all—all, even Belikov. He sat down beside her and said with a sweet smile:

“‘The Ukrainian language, in its softness and pleasing sonority, is reminiscent of the ancient Greek.’

“This flattered her, and she began telling him, with feeling and conviction, that she had a farmstead in the Gadyach district, that her dear mama lived on that farmstead, and they had such pears there, such melons, such squash! In the Ukraine pumpkins are called squash, and squash are called gourds, and they make borscht out of them with little red peppers and little blue eggplants, ‘so tasty, so tasty, it’s simply—awful!’

“We listened and listened, and suddenly the same thought occurred to us all.

“‘It would be nice to get them married,’ the director’s wife said to me softly.

“We all remembered for some reason that our Belikov wasn’t married, and now it seemed strange to us that we had somehow never noticed, had completely lost sight of such an important detail of his life. What generally was his attitude towards women, and how did he resolve this essential question for himself? Earlier that hadn’t interested us at all; maybe we hadn’t even admitted the thought that a man who wore galoshes in all weather and slept under a canopy was able to love.

‘He’s well over forty, and she’s thirty …’ the director’s wife clarified her thought. ‘I think she’d accept him.’

“So many things are done in our provinces out of boredom, so much that’s unnecessary, absurd! That’s because what’s necessary doesn’t get done at all. Well, so why did we suddenly have to marry off this Belikov, whom it was even impossible to imagine married? The director’s wife, the inspector’s wife, and our lady teachers all livened up, even became prettier, as if they suddenly saw some purpose in life. The director’s wife reserved a box in the theater, and we looked—there was Varenka sitting in her box with a fan, radiant, happy, and beside her Belikov, small, hunched up, as if they’d pulled him out of his house with pliers. I gave a party and the ladies demanded that I invite Belikov and Varenka without fail. In short, the machine got going. It turned out that Varenka wouldn’t have minded getting married. Her life with her brother was not so happy, all they could do was argue and quarrel the whole day long. Here’s a scene for you: Kovalenko goes walking down the street, a tall, hefty hulk in an embroidered shirt, his forelock falling over his forehead from under his cap; a pile of books in one hand, a thick, knotty stick in the other. Behind him comes his sister, also with books.

“‘But Mikhailik, you haven’t read this one!’ she protests loudly. ‘I’m telling you, I swear, you haven’t read it at all!’

“‘And I tell you I have!’ shouts Kovalenko, rapping his stick on the sidewalk.

“‘Ah, my God, Minchik! Why are you getting angry, we’re having a conversation of principle.’

“‘And I tell you I’ve read it!’ Kovalenko shouts still louder.

“And at home, whenever an outsider comes, there’s some spat. Such a life was probably boring, she wanted a corner of her own, and age was also a consideration; there was no time for choosing, she’d marry anybody, even the teacher of Greek. And to tell the truth, for the majority of our young ladies, it didn’t matter whom they married, as long as they got married. Be that as it may, Varenka began to show our Belikov a marked benevolence.

“And Belikov? He called on Kovalenko just as he did on us. He’d come to him and say nothing. He’d say nothing, and Varenka would sing ‘The Winds Waft’ for him, or look at him pensively with her dark eyes, or suddenly dissolve:

“‘Ha, ha, ha!’

“In amorous matters, especially in marriage, insinuation plays a major role. Everybody—his colleagues and the ladies—started assuring Belikov that he must marry, that there was nothing left for him in life but to marry; we all congratulated him and with important faces uttered various banalities, such as that marriage was a serious step; besides, Varenka was interesting and not bad-looking, she was the daughter of a state councillor and owned a farmstead, and, above all, she was the first woman who had treated him gently, cordially—his head got in a whirl, and he decided that he really did have to marry.”

“That was the time to take away his galoshes and umbrella,” said Ivan Ivanych.

“Imagine, that turned out to be impossible. He put Varenka’s portrait on his desk and kept coming to me and talking about Varenka, about family life, about marriage being a serious step, he visited the Kovalenkos frequently, but he didn’t change his way of life in the least. Even the opposite, the decision to marry affected him somehow morbidly, he lost weight, grew pale, and seemed to withdraw further into his case.

“‘I like Varvara Savvishna,’ he said to me with a faint, crooked little smile, ‘and I know that every man needs to marry, but … you know, all this has happened somehow suddenly … I have to think.’

“‘What’s there to think about?’ I say to him. ‘Marry her, and that’s that.’

“‘No, marriage is a serious step, I must first weigh my future duties, responsibilities … or something may come of it later. It bothers me so much that I’ve now stopped sleeping at night. And, I confess, I’m afraid: she and her brother have some strange way of thinking, they reason, you know, somehow strangely, and her character is very sprightly. I’ll get married and then, for all I know, wind up in some kind of trouble.’

“And he didn’t propose, he kept postponing it, to the great vexation of the director’s wife and our other ladies; he kept weighing his future duties and responsibilities and meanwhile went strolling with Varenka almost every day, perhaps thinking it was necessary in his position, and came to me to talk about family life. And, in all probability, he would have proposed in the end, and one of those needless, stupid marriages would have taken place, such as take place here by the thousand out of boredom and idleness, if a kolossalische Scandal had not suddenly occurred. It must be said that Varenka’s brother, Kovalenko, had hated Belikov from the first day of their acquaintance and could not bear him.

“‘I don’t understand,’ he said to us, shrugging his shoulders, ‘I don’t understand how you stomach that snitcher, that vile mug! Eh, gentlemen, how can you live here? The atmosphere is nasty, stifling. Are you pedagogues, teachers? No, you’re rank-grabbers, your school isn’t a temple of knowledge, it’s an office of public order, and there’s a sour stink to it, like in a sentry’s box. No, brothers, I’ll live with you a little longer and then go back to my farmstead to catch crayfish and teach little Ukrainians. I’ll leave you, and you can stay here with your Judas till he bursts.’

“Or else he’d laugh, laugh himself to tears, now in a bass, now in a thin, squeaky voice, and ask me, spreading his hands:

“‘Why is he sitting with me? What does he want? He sits and looks.’

“He even gave Belikov the name of ‘the bloodsucker, alias the spider.’ And, to be sure, we avoided talking to him about his sister Varenka marrying ‘alias the spider.’ And once when the director’s wife hinted to him that it would be nice to have his sister settle down with such a solid, well-respected man as Belikov, he scowled and said gruffly:

“‘It’s none of my business. She can even marry a viper, I don’t like interfering in other people’s affairs.’

“Now hear what happened next. Some prankster drew a caricature: Belikov walking in his galoshes, with his tucked-in trousers, under an umbrella, and Varenka arm-in-arm with him; the caption underneath: ‘Anthropos in love.’ The expression was really caught remarkably well. The artist must have worked more than one night, because all the teachers in the boys’ and girls’ schools, the seminary teachers, the officials—everybody got a copy. Belikov got one, too. The caricature made a most painful impression on him.

“We’re leaving the house together—it was the first of May, a Sunday, and all of us, teachers and students, had arranged to meet by the school and then go on foot together to the woods outside town—we’re leaving the house, and he’s green, dark as a cloud.

“‘What bad, wicked people there are!’ he said, and his lips trembled.

“I even felt sorry for him. We’re walking along and suddenly, if you can imagine, Kovalenko rides by on a bicycle, followed by Varenka, also on a bicycle, red, tired, but cheerful, joyful.

“‘And we’re going on ahead!’ she cries. ‘The weather’s so fine, so fine, it’s simply awful!’

“And they both vanished. My Belikov turned from green to white and froze. He stopped and stared at me …

“‘Excuse me, but what is that?’ he asked. ‘Or maybe my eyes are deceiving me? Is it proper for schoolmasters and women to ride bicycles?’

“‘What’s improper about it?’ I said. ‘They can ride as much as they like.’

“‘But how is this possible?’ he cried, amazed at my calmness. ‘What are you saying?!’

“He was so struck that he refused to go any further and turned back home.

“The next day he kept rubbing his hands nervously and twitching all the time, and you could see from his face that he wasn’t well. And he left class, which happened to him for the first time in his life. And he ate no dinner. Towards evening he got dressed warmly, though it was quite summery outside, and trudged to the Kovalenkos. Varenka was not at home, he found only her brother.

“‘Kindly sit down,’ Kovalenko said coldly and scowled; his face was sleepy, he had just finished his after-dinner nap and was in a very bad humor.

“Belikov sat silently for some ten minutes and then began:

“‘I’ve come to you to ease my soul. I’m very, very distressed. Some lampoonist has portrayed me and another person close to us both in a ridiculous way. I consider it my duty to assure you that I have nothing to do with it … I never gave any pretext for such mockery—on the contrary, I’ve always behaved as a perfectly decent man.’

“Kovalenko sat pouting and said nothing. Belikov waited a little and went on softly, in a mournful voice:

“‘And I have something else to tell you. I have been teaching for a long time, while you are just beginning, and I consider it my duty, as an older colleague, to warn you. You ride a bicycle, and that is an amusement absolutely improper for a teacher of youth.’

“‘Why so?’ Kovalenko asked in a bass voice.

“‘But is there anything here that needs more explaining, Mikhail Savvich, is there anything that isn’t clear? If the teacher rides on a bicycle, what remains for the students? It remains only for them to walk on their heads! And since it is not permitted by the circulars, you cannot do it. I was horrified yesterday! When I saw your sister, my eyes went dim. A woman or a girl on a bicycle—it’s awful!’

“‘What exactly do you want?’

“‘I want just one thing—to warn you, Mikhail Savvich. You are a young man, you have a future ahead of you, you must behave very, very carefully, yet you are negligent, oh, so negligent! You go around in an embroidered shirt, you’re always outside with some sort of books, and now there’s also the bicycle. The director will find out that you and your sister ride bicycles, then it will reach the superintendent … What’s the good of it?’

“‘That my sister and I ride bicycles is nobody’s business!’ Kovalenko said and turned purple. ‘And if anybody meddles in my domestic and family affairs, I’ll send him to all the devils in hell.’

“Belikov paled and got up.

“‘If you talk with me in such a tone, I cannot go on,’ he said. ‘And I beg you never to speak like that in my presence about our superiors. You must treat the authorities with respect.’

“‘Did I say anything bad about the authorities?’ Kovalenko asked, looking at him spitefully. ‘Kindly leave me in peace. I’m an honest man and have no wish to talk with gentlemen like you. I don’t like snitchers.’

“Belikov fussed about nervously and quickly began to dress, with a look of horror on his face. It was the first time in his life that he’d heard such rude things.

“‘You may say whatever you like,’ he said, as he went out from the front hall to the landing. ‘Only I must warn you: someone may have heard us, and, since our conversation might be misunderstood and something might come of it, I will have to report the content of our conversation to the director … in its main features. It is my duty to do so.’

“‘Report? Go on, report!’

“Kovalenko seized him from behind by the collar and shoved, and Belikov went tumbling down the stairs, his galoshes clunking. The stairs were high and steep, but he reached the bottom safely, got up, and felt his nose: were his glasses broken? But just as he was tumbling down the stairs, Varenka came in and there were two ladies with her; they stood below and watched—and for Belikov this was the most terrible thing of all. It would have been better, he thought, to break his neck and both legs than to become a laughingstock: now the whole town would know, it would reach the director, the superintendent—ah, something might come of it!— there would be a new caricature, and the upshot of it all would be that he would be ordered to resign …

“When he got up, Varenka recognized him and, looking at his ridiculous face, his crumpled overcoat, his galoshes, not understanding what it was about, and supposing he had fallen accidentally, could not help herself and laughed for the whole house to hear:

“‘Ha, ha, ha!’

“And this rolling, pealing ‘ha, ha, ha!’ put an end to everything: both the engagement and the earthly existence of Belikov. He did not hear what Varenka said, nor did he see anything. Returning home, he first of all removed the portrait from the desk, and then he lay down and never got up again.

“Three days later Afanasy came to me and asked if he ought to send for the doctor, because, he said, something was wrong with his master. I went to see Belikov. He lay under the canopy, covered with a blanket, and said nothing; you ask him, and he just says yes or no—and not another sound. He lies there, and Afanasy walks around, gloomy, scowling, and sighs deeply; and he reeks of vodka like a tavern.

“A month later Belikov died. We all went to his burial, that is, both schools and the seminary. Now, lying in the coffin, his expression was meek, pleasant, even cheerful, as if he were glad that he had finally been put in a case he would never have to leave. Yes, he had attained his ideal! And, as if in his honor, the weather during the burial was gray, rainy, and we were all in galoshes and carrying umbrellas. Varenka was also at the burial, and she wept a little when the coffin was lowered into the grave. I’ve noticed that Ukrainian girls only weep or laugh, they have no in-between state.

“I confess, burying people like Belikov is a great pleasure. As we came back from the cemetery, we had modest, lenten physiognomies; nobody wanted to show this feeling of pleasure—a feeling like that experienced long, long ago, in childhood, when the grown-ups went away and we could spend an hour or two running around in the garden, relishing our full freedom. Ah, freedom, freedom! Even a hint, even a faint hope of it lends the soul wings, isn’t that so?

“We came back from the cemetery in good spirits. But no more than a week went by, and life flowed on as before, the same grim, wearisome, witless life, not forbidden by the circulars, yet not fully permitted. Things didn’t get any better. And, indeed, we had buried Belikov, but how many more men in cases there still are, and how many more there will be!”

“Right you are,” said Ivan Ivanych, and he lit his pipe.

“How many more there will be!” Burkin repeated.

The schoolteacher came out of the shed. He was a short man, fat, completely bald, with a black beard almost down to his waist. Two dogs came out with him.

“What a moon!” he said, looking up.

It was already midnight. To the right the whole village was visible, the long street stretching into the distance a good three miles. Everything was sunk in a hushed, deep sleep; not a movement, not a sound, it was hard to believe that nature could be so hushed. When you see a wide village street on a moonlit night, with its cottages, haystacks, sleeping willows, your own soul becomes hushed; in that peace, hiding from toil, care, and grief in the shadows of the night, it turns meek, mournful, beautiful, and it seems that the stars, too, look down on it tenderly and with feeling, and that there is no more evil on earth, and all is well. Fields spread out to the left from the edge of the village; they were visible as far as the horizon, and across the whole breadth of those fields, flooded with moonlight, there was also no movement or sound.

“Right you are,” Ivan Ivanych repeated. “And that we live in town, stifled, crowded, writing useless papers, playing cards—isn’t that a case? And that we spend our lives among do-nothings, pettifoggers, stupid, idle women, that we say and hear all kinds of nonsense—isn’t that a case? Here, if you like, I’ll tell you an instructive story.”

“No, it’s time to sleep,” said Burkin. “Good night.”

They both went into the shed and lay down in the hay. And they had both already covered themselves and dozed off when light footsteps were heard: tap, tap … Someone was walking near the shed; walked and then stopped, and after a moment again: tap, tap … The dogs growled.

“That’s Mavra out walking,” said Burkin.

The steps died away.

“To see and hear people lie,” said Ivan Ivanych, turning over on the other side, “and to be called a fool yourself for putting up with the lie; to endure insults, humiliations, not daring to say openly that you’re on the side of honest, free people, and to have to lie yourself, to smile, and all that for a crust of bread, a warm corner, some little rank that’s not worth a penny—no, it’s impossible to live like that any longer!”

“Well, that’s from another opera, Ivan Ivanych,” said the teacher. “Let’s get some sleep.”

And ten minutes later Burkin was asleep. But Ivan Ivanych kept tossing from side to side and sighing. Then he got up, went out again, sat by the doorway, and lit his pipe.

JULY 1898