The Undiscovered Chekhov

CONFESSION—

OR

OLYA,

ZHENYA,

ZOYA

A

LETTER

MA CHÈRE, YOU ASKED me, among other things, in .your sweet letter, my dear unforgettable friend, why, although I am thirty-nine years old, I have to this day never married.

My dear friend, I hold family life in the highest possible esteem. I never married simply because goddamn Fate was not propitious. I set out to get married a good fifteen times, but did not manage to because everything in this world—and particularly in my life—seems to hinge on chance. Everything depends on it! Chance, that despot! Let me cite a few incidents thanks to which I still lead a contemptibly lonely life.

First Incident

It was a delightful June morning. The sky was as clear as the clearest Prussian blue. The sun played on the waters of the river and brushed the dewy grass with its rays. The river and the meadow were strewn with rich diamonds of light. The birds were singing, as if with one voice. We walked down the path of yellowish sand, and with happy hearts drank in the sweet aromas of the June morning. The trees looked upon us so gently, and whispered all kinds of nice—I’m sure—and tender things. Olya Gruzdofska’s hand (she’s now married to the son of your chief of police) lay in mine, and her tiny little finger kept brushing over my thumb.... Her cheeks glowed, and her eyes... O ma chère, what exquisite eyes! There was so much charm, truth, innocence, joyousness, childish naïveté, in those blue sparkling eyes of hers! I fell in love with her blond braids, and with the little footprints her tiny feet left in the sand.

“I have devoted my life, Olga Maksimovna, to science!” I whispered, terrified that her little finger would slip off my thumb. “The future will bring with it a professorial chair... on my conscience there are questions... scientific ones... my life is filled with hard work, troubles, lofty... I mean... well, basically, I’m going to be a professor... I am an honest man, Olga Maksimovna... I’m not rich, but... I need someone who with her presence... (Olya blushed and shyly lowered her eyes; her little finger was trembling) who with her presence... Olya! Look up at the sky! Look how pure it is... my life is just as boundlessly pure!”

My tongue didn’t have time to scramble out of this quagmire of drivel: Olya suddenly lifted her head, snatched her hand away from mine, and clapped her palms together. A flock of geese with little goslings was waddling towards us. Olya ran over to them and, laughing out loud, stretched her arms toward them.... O what beauteous arms, ma chere!

“Squawk, squawk, squawk!” the geese called out, craning their necks, peering at Olya from the side.

“Here goosey-goose, here goosey-goose!” Olya shouted, and reached out to touch a little gosling.

The gosling was quite bright for its age. It ran from Olya’s approaching fingers straight to its daddy, a very large foolish- looking gander, and seemed to complain to him. The gander spread his wings. Naughty Olya reached out to touch some other goslings. At that moment something terrible happened: the gander lowered his neck to the ground and, hissing like a snake, marched fiercely toward Olya. Olya squealed and retreated, the gander close at her heels. Olya looked back, squealed even louder, and went completely white. Her pretty, girlish face was twisted with terror and despair. It was as if she were being chased by three hundred devils.

I rushed to help her and banged the gander on the head with my walking stick. The damn gander still managed to quickly snap at the hem of her dress. With wide eyes and terror-stricken face, trembling all over, Olya fell into my arms.

“You’re such a coward!” I said to her.

“Thrash that goose!” she moaned, and burst into tears.

Suddenly I no longer saw naïveté or childishness in her frightened little face—but idiocy! Ma chère, I cannot abide faintheartedness! I cannot imagine being married to a fainthearted, cowardly woman!

The gander ruined everything. After calming Olya down, I went home. I couldn’t get that expression of hers—cowardly to the point of idiocy—out of my mind. In my eyes, Olya had lost all her charm. I dropped her.

Second Incident

As you know, my friend, I am a writer. The gods ignited within my breast the sacred flame, and I have seen it as my duty to take up the pen! I am a high priest of Apollo! Every beat of my heart, every breath I take, in short—I have sacrificed everything on the altar of my muse. I write and I write and I write... take away my pen, and I’m dead! You laugh! You do not believe me! I swear most solemnly that it is true!

But as you surely know, ma chère, this world of ours is a bad place for art. The world is big and bountiful, but a writer can find no place for himself in it! A writer is an eternal orphan, an exile, a scapegoat, a defenseless child! I divide mankind into two categories: writers and enviers! The former write, and the latter die of jealousy and spend all their time plotting and scheming against them. I have always Men prey, and always will, to these plotters! They have ruined my life! They have taken over the writing business, calling themselves editors and publishers, striving with all their might to ruin us writers! Damn them!

Anyway.... For a while I was courting Zhenya Pshikova. You must remember her, that sweet, dreamy, black-haired girl... she’s now married to your neighbor, Karl Ivanovitch Wanze (à propos, in German Wanze means “bedbug.” But please don’t tell Zhenya, she’d be very upset). Zhenya was in love with the writer within me. She believed in my calling as deeply as I did. She cherished my hopes. But she was so young! She had not yet grasped the aforementioned division of humanity into two categories! She did not believe in this division! She did not believe it, and one fine day... catastrophe!

I was staying at the Pshikovs’ dacha. The family looked on me as the groom-to-be and Zhenya as the bride. I wrote—she read. What a critic she was, ma chère! She was as objective as Aristides and as stern as Cato. I dedicated my works to her. One of these pieces she really liked. She wanted to see it in print, so I sent it to one of the magazines. I sent it on the first of July and waited two weeks for the answer. The fifteenth of July came, and Zhenya and I finally received the letter we had been waiting for. We opened it; she went red, I went white. Beneath the address the following was written: “Shlendovo village, Mr. M. B. You don’t have a drop of talent in you. God knows what the hell you’re writing about. Please don’t waste your stamps and our time! Find yourself another occupation!”

Ridiculous... it was obvious that a bunch of idiots had written this.

“I see...” Zhenya mumbled.

“The damn... swine!” I muttered. So, ma chère Yevgenia Markovna, are you still smiling at my division of the world into writers and enviers?

Zhenya thought for a while and then yawned.

“Well,” she said, “maybe you don’t have any talent after all. They surely know best. Last year Fyodor Fyodosevitch spent the whole summer fishing by the river with me. All you do is write, write, write! It’s so boring!”

Well! How do you like that! After all those sleepless nights we spent together, I writing, she reading! With both of us sacrificing ourselves to my muse! Ha!

Zhenya cooled to my writing, and by extension to me. We broke up. It had to be.

Third Incident

You know, of course, my dear unforgettable friend, that I am a fervent music lover. Music is my passion, my true element. The names Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Gounod, are not the names of men—they are the names of giants! I love classical music. I scorn operettas, as I scorn vaudeville! I am a true habitué of the opera. Our stars Khokhlov, Kochetova, Barzal, Usatov, Korsov... are simply wonderful people! How I regret that I do not know any singers personally. Were I to know one, I would bare my soul in humble gratitude!

Last winter I went to the opera particularly often. I did not go alone—I went with the Pepsinov family. It is such a pity that you do not know this dear family! Each winter the Pepsinovs book a loge. They are devoted to music, heart and soul. The crown of this dear family is Colonel Pepsinov’s daughter Zoya. What a girl, my dear friend! Her pink lips alone could drive someone like me out of his mind! She is shapely, beautiful, clever. I loved her... I loved her madly, passionately, terribly! My blood was boiling when I sat next to her. You smile, ma chère? You can smile! You cannot comprehend the love a writer feels! A writers love is—Mount Etna coupled with Mount Vesuvius! Zoya loved me. Her eyes always rested on my eyes, which were constantly seeking out her eyes. We were happy. It was but one step to marriage.

But we foundered.

Faust was playing. Faust, my dear friend, was written by Gounod, and Gounod is one of the greatest musicians on earth. On the way to the theater, I decided to declare my love to Zoya during the first act. I have never understood that act—it was a mistake on the part of the great Gounod to have written that first act!

The opera began. Zoya and I slipped out to the foyer. She sat next to me and, shivering with expectation and happiness, nervously fanned herself. Flow beautiful she looked in the glittering lights, ma chère, how terribly beautiful!

“The overture,” I began my declaration, “led me to some reflections, Zoya Egorovna... so much feeling, so much... you listen and you long... you long for, well, for that something, and you listen...”

I hiccupped, and continued:

“You long for something... special! You long for something unearthly... Love? Passion? Yes... it must be... love (I hic-cupped). Yes, love!”

Zoya smiled in confusion, and fanned herself harder. I hiccupped. I can’t stand hiccups!

“Zoya Egorovna! Tell me, I beg of you! Do you know this feeling? (I hiccupped.) Zoya Egorovna! I am trembling for your answer!”

“I... I... don’t understand...”

“Sorry, that was just a hiccup... It’ll pass... I’m talking about that all-embracing feeling that... damn!”

“Have some water!”

I’ll make my declaration, and then I’ll quickly go down to the buffet, I thought to myself, and continued:

“In a nutshell, Zoya Egorovna... you, of course, will have noticed...”

I hiccupped, and then in my consternation bit my tongue.

“You will, of course, have noticed (I hiccupped)... you’ve known me almost a year now... well... I’m an honest man, Zoya Egorovna! I am a hardworking man! I am not rich, it’s true, but...”

I hiccupped and leaped up.

“I think you should have some water!” Zoya suggested. I moved a few steps away from the sofa, tapped my finger on my throat, and hiccupped again. Ma chère, I was in a terrible predicament! Zoya stood up, and marched off to the loge with me close on her heels. After escorting her, I hiccupped and quickly ran off to the buffet. I drank five or six glasses of water, and the hiccups seemed somehow to quiet down. I smoked a cigarette and returned to the loge. Zoya’s brother got up and gave me his seat, the seat next to my darling Zoya. I sat down, and at that very moment... hiccupped! About five minutes passed, I hiccupped, hiccupped somehow strangely, with a wheeze. I got up and went to stand by the loge door. It is bet- ter, ma chère, to hiccup by a door than into the ear of the woman one loves! I hiccupped. A schoolboy from the loge next to ours looked at me and laughed out loud. The joy with which that little brute laughed! And the joy with which I would have gladly ripped the horrible little brat’s ear off! He laughed as they were singing the great “Faust” aria on stage! What blasphemy¹ No, ma chère! As children we would never have comported ourselves in this manner! Cursing the impertinent schoolboy, I hiccupped again.... Laughter broke out in the neighboring loges. “Encore!” the schoolboy loudly whispered.

“What the hell!” Colonel Pepsinov mumbled. “Couldn’t you have hiccupped at home, sir?”

Zoya went red. I hiccupped one last time and, furiously clenching my fists, ran out of the loge. I started walking up and down the corridor. I walked and walked and walked— hiccupping constantly. I ate, I drank, I tried everything— finally at the beginning of the fourth act I gave up and went home. The moment I unlocked the door, as if to spite me, my hiccups stopped. I slapped my neck, and shouted:

“Go on, hiccup! Now you can hiccup all you want, you poor, booed-off fiancé! No, you were not booed off, you were hiccupped off!”

The following day I went to visit the Pepsinovs the way I always did. Zoya didn’t come down for dinner, and sent word that she couldn’t see me as she wasn’t feeling well, while Pepsi- nov spoke at length about certain young people who didn’t know how to comport themselves in public. The fool! He’s obviously not aware that the organs that induce hiccupping are not subject to voluntary stimuli! Stimuli, ma chère, means “shakers.”

“Would you give your daughter—that is, if you had one—to a man who wouldn’t think twice about belching in public?” Pepsinov asked me after dinner. “Ha? Well?”

“Um, yes... I would,” I muttered.

“Quite a mistake!”

That was the end of Zoya as far as I was concerned. She could not forgive my hiccupping. For her that was the end of me. Would you like me to describe the remaining twelve incidents?

I could, but... enough is enough! The veins on my tem-ples have swollen, tears are flowing freely, and my liver is churning.... “O brother writers, our destiny doth weave fateful threads!” I wish you, ma chère, all the very best! I squeeze your hand tightly, and send my warmest regards to Paul. I hear that he is a good husband and father. God bless him! Pity, though, that he drinks so heavily (this, by the way, ma chère, is not a reproach!).

All the very best, ma chère. Your faithful servant, Baldas- tov.