The Undiscovered Chekhov

THE

GOOD

GERMAN

IVAN KARLOVITCH SCHWEI, the senior foreman at the Funk & Co. steel mill, had been sent by his boss to the town of Tver to carry out a project. After working on it for some four months, he became so bored without his young wife that he lost his appetite, and on two occasions even burst into tears. During the trip back to Moscow he closed his eyes, imagining how he would arrive home, how Marya the cook would open the door, and how his wife Natasha, with a cry of joy, would throw her arms around his neck.

“She’s not expecting me,” he thought. “So much the better—unexpected joy is best!”

He arrived in Moscow in the evening. While the porter went to get his luggage, Ivan Karlovitch had time enough to empty two bottles of beer in the station buffet. The beer made him feel very good, and as the cabman drove him from the station to Presnia he kept muttering: “Cabman, you good cabman! I love Russian peoples! You are a Russian man, my wife is a Russian man, and I am a Russian man. My father is German, but I am a Russian man. I wish to secede from Germany!”

Marya the cook opened the door just as he had imagined she would.

“You’re a Russian man and I’m a Russian man,” he muttered, handing over his luggage to her. “We’re all Russian peoples, and we have Russian languages! Where is Natasha?”

“She’s asleep.”

“In that case, don’t wake her... shhh... I’ll wake her myself. I want to frighten her, I’ll be a surprise! Shhh...”

Sleepy Marya took the luggage and went into the kitchen.

Smiling to himself, blinking, rubbing his hands together, Ivan Karlovitch tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it carefully, fearing it would creak. It was dark and quiet inside.

“I’m going to starde her,” he thought to himself, and lit a match.

But poor German! As the blue sulfur flame of his match flared up, this was the picture he saw: in the bed nearest to the wall, his wife was sleeping, her head covered and only her bare feet showing. In the other bed lay a red-haired giant with long whiskers.

Ivan Karlovitch did not believe his eyes, and lit another match. He lit five matches, one after the other, but the picture remained just as unbelievable, horrifying, and shocking. The Germans feet started shaking, and a chill ran down his spine. The beer cloud suddenly lifted, and he felt as if his soul was fluttering up and down his legs. His first thought, his first urge, was to seize a chair and smash it over the sleeping man’s red head with all his might, and then grab his unfaithful wife by her bare feet and fling her through the window with such force that she would go crashing down onto the pavement.

“Oh, no! That’s not enough!” he decided after some reflection. “First I’ll disgrace them! I’ll go calling the police and her family, and then I’ll be killing them!”

He flung on his coat, and a minute later was out in the street again. He started crying bitterly. He wept and thought of human ingratitude. That barefoot woman had once been a poor seamstress, and he had brought her happiness, turning her into the wife of an educated foreman with a yearly salary of750 rubles at Funk & Co.! She had been a nobody! She had run around in cotton dresses like some parlor maid, and now, thanks to him, she wore a hat and gloves, and even Funk &c Co. called her “Madam.”

He thought, “How spiteful and crafty women are!” Natasha acted as if she had married him out of passionate love, and every week she had sent him tender letters in Tver.

“Oh, the snake!” Schwei thought as he walked down the street. “Oh, why did I marry a Russian person? Russian persons are bad! Barbarian, peasant! I wish to secede from Russia, damn me!”

Then he thought, “And what’s really surprising is that she exchanged me for some red-haired bastard! If it were Funk & Co. she fell in love with, well, that I could forgive! But to be falling in love with the dog who doesn’t have ten kopecks in his pocket! Oh, wretch that I am!”

Schwei dried his eyes and went into a tavern.

“Give me pen and papers,” he told the barkeep. “I wish to write!”

With a trembling hand he first wrote a letter to his wife’s parents, who lived in Serpukhov. He wrote that a respectable and learned foreman like himself did not wish to live with a tramp of a woman, that they, her parents, were swine, that their daughters were swine, that as far as he was concerned, they could all, they knew what... In conclusion, he demanded that they come and remove their daughter along with the redheaded bastard whom he hadn’t killed only because he did not wish to soil his hands!

He left the tavern and dropped the letter in a mailbox. He wandered through the streets until four in the morning, thinking of his sorrow. He looked gaunt and haggard, and came to the conclusion that life, that bitter mockery of fate—that being alive—was foolish and not worthy of a decent German.

He decided not to take revenge on his wife or on the red-headed man. The best thing would be to punish her with a show of great magnanimity.

“I shall go and say to her all I have to say,” he thought as he walked home, “and then I’ll take my own life! May she be happy with her redheaded man! I shall not stand in their way!”

He imagined how he would die, and how his wife would be tormented by her guilty conscience.

“Yes, I shall leave her my worldly possessions!” he muttered, ringing his doorbell. “The redhead is a better man than I, maybe he earns 750 rubles a year too!”

This time, when Marya the cook opened the door, she was surprised to see him.

“Call Natalia Petrovna,” he said, not taking his coat off. “I wish to converse!”

Within minutes his young wife stood in front of him barefoot and in her nightgown, with a startled look on her face. Weeping, throwing his arms in the air, the deceived husband said to her, “I know everything! You can’t trick me! With my own eyes I saw the redheaded brute with the long mustache!”

“You’re out of your mind!” his wife shouted. “Stop yelling! You’ll wake up our boarders!”

“The redheaded bastard!”

“I told you, stop yelling! Look at you, you’re drunk out of your mind and yelling your head off! Go to bed immediately!”

“I have no wish to sleep in the same bed with the redhead! Farewell!

“You’ve gone completely insane!” his wife shouted furiously. “I told you I’ve taken in boarders! A locksmith and his wife have moved into what used to be our bedroom!”

“Huh... huh? What locksmith?”

“A red-haired locksmith with his wife! I’ve rented out the room for four rubles a month! So stop yelling, you’ll wake them up!”

The German’s eyes bulged as he stared at his wife; then he lowered his head.

“Oh,” he whispered.

Soon Ivan Karlovitch’s German soul revived again, and he was in a splendid mood.

“For me, you’re my little Russian,” he muttered. “The cook’s a Russian, I’m a Russian, we all have our Russian languages. The locksmith, he’s a good locksmith, and I wish to embrace him. Funk & Co. is also a good Funk & Co.! Russia is magnificent land! I wish to secede from Germany!”