Ward Number Six and Other Stories

'What,' he asked her, 'have you read since we met last week? Please tell me.'

'Pisernsky.'

'Which book?'

'A Thousand Souls' answered Pussy. 'What a funny name Pisernsky had: Alexis Feofilaktovich.'

'Hey, where are you off to?' Startsev was aghast when she suddenly stood up and made for the house. 'I must talk to you, I've some ex­plaining to do. Stay with me just five minutes, I implore you.'

She stopped as if meaning to say something, then awkwardly thrust a note into his hand and ran to the house, where she sat do^n at the piano again.

'Be in the cemetery near Demetti's tomb at .eleven o'clock tonight,' Startsev read.

'This is really rather silly,' he thought, collecting his wits. 'Why the cemetery? What's the point?'

It was one ofPussy's little games, obviously. But really, who would seriously think of an assignation in a cemetery far outside to^n at night-time, when it could so easily be arranged in the street or muni­cipal park? And was it not beneath him—a country doctor, an intelli­gent, respectable man—to be sighing, receiving billets-doux, hanging round cemeteries and doing things so silly that even schoolboys laugh at them these days? Where would this affair end? What would his colleagues say when they found out? Such were Startsev's thoughts as he wandered among the tables at his club. But at half-past ten he suddenly got up and drove off to the cemetery.

By now he had his own pair ofhorses and a coachman, Panteleymon, complete with velvet waistcoat. The moon was shining. It was quiet and warm, but with a touch of autumn in the air. Dogs were howling near a suburban slaughterhouse. Leaving his carriage in a lane on the edge of to^, Startsev walked on to the cemetery alone.

'We all have our quirks, Pussy included,' thought he. 'Perhaps— who knows—perhaps she wasn't joking. Perhaps she will come.' Yielding to this feeble, insubstantial hope, he felt intoxicated by it.

He walked through fields for a quarter of a mile. The cemetery showed up: a dark strip in the distance resembling a wood or large garden. The white stone wall came into view and the gate. The words on the gate were legible in the moonlight: 'The hour cometh

when ' Startsev went through the side-gate and the first things to

catch his eye were white crosses and tombstones on both sides ofa broad avenue, and black shadows cast by them and by the poplars. There was an extensive panorama in black and white, with sleepy trees drooping their branches over the whiteness below. It seemed lighter here than in the fields. Maple leaves like paws stood out sharply against the yellow sand of paths and against gravestones, and the inscriptions on the monuments were clearly visible. Startsev was struck at once by what he was now seeing for the first time in his life and would probably never see again: a world unlike any other . . . where moonlight was as lovely and soft as if this were its cradle, where there was no living thing, but where each dark poplar and tomb seemed to hold the secret promise of a life tranquil, splendid, everlasting. Mingled with the autumnal smell of leaves, the gravestones and faded flowers breathed forgiveness, melancholy and peace.

It was silent all around. The stars looked down from the sky in utter quiescence, while Startsev's footsteps sounded harsh and out of place. Only when the church clock began to strike, and he fancied himself dead and buried here for ever, did he feel as if someone was watching him. This was not peace and quiet, it seemed for a moment, but the dull misery ofnothingness: a kind of choked despair.

Demetti's tomb was in the form of a shrine with an angel on top. An Italian opera company had once passed through town, one of the singers had died, they had buried her here, and they had put up this monument. She was no longer remembered in town, but the lamp over the entrance reflected the moon and seemed alight.

There was no one about—as ifanyone would come here at midnight! Yet Startsev waited, waited passionately, as if the moonlight were inflaming his desires. He imagined kisses and embraces. He sat near the tomb for about half an hour, then strolled up and down the side-paths with his hat in his hand, waiting. He reflected that in these graves lay buried many women and girls who had been beautiful and entrancing, who had loved and burned with passion in the night, yielding to caresses. Really, what a rotten joke Nature does play on man! And how painful to be conscious of it! So Startsev thought, while wishing to shout aloud that he wanted love, that he expected it—at whatever cost. The white shapes before his eyes were no longer slabs of marble, but beautiful bodies. He saw shapely forms modestly hiding in the shadows ofthe trees, and he sensed their warmth until desire grew hard to bear.

Then, like the drop of a curtain, the moon vanished behind clouds and everything was suddenly dark. Startsev had trouble finding the gate, for the darkness was now truly autumnal. Then he wandered about for an hour and a half looking for the lane where he had left his horses.

'I'm dead on my feet,' he told Panteleymon.

'Dear me, one really should watch one's weight,' he reflected as he settled down luxuriously in his carriage.

III

Next evening he set off for the Turkins' to propose to Catherine. But it turned out inconveniently because she was in her room with her hairdresser in attendance, and was going to a dance at the club.

He found himselflet in for another ofthose long tea-drinking sessions in the dining-room. Seeing his guest bored and preoccupied, Mr. Turkin took some jottings from his waistcoat pocket and read out a funny letter from a German estate-manager about how all the 'racks' on the property had 'gone to lock and ruin', and how the old place had been so knocked about that it had become 'thoroughly bashful'.

'They're bound to put up a decent dowry', thought Startsev, listening absent-mindedly.

After his sleepless night he felt stupefied, felt as if he had been drugged with some sweet sleeping potion. His sensations were con­fused, but warm and happy. And yet

'Stop before it is too late!' a stolid, cold part of his brain argued. 'Is she the wife for you? She's spoilt and capricious, she sleeps till two in the afternoon, while you're a sexton's son, a country doctor '

'Never mind, I don't care,' he answered himself.

'What's more,' went on the voice, 'if you do get married, her family will stop you working in the country and make you move to town.'

'What of it? Then town it shall be,' he thought. 'They'll give a dowry, we'll set up house '

Catherine came in at last, wearing a decollete evening dress. She looked so pretty and fresh that Startsev goggled at' her, and was so trans­ported that he could not get a word out, but just stared at her and laughed.

She began to say good-bye. Having no reason to stay on, he stood up and remarked that it was time to go home as some patients were expecting him.

'You go, then,' said Mr. Turkin. 'It can't be helped. And you might give Puss a lift to the club.'

It was very dark outside and drizzling, with only Panteleymon's raucous cough to guide them to the carriage. They put the hood up.

'Why did the cowslip?' Mr. Turkin said, helping his daughter into the carriage. 'Because she saw the bullrush, of course. Off with you! Cheerio, chin chin!'

And off they went.

'I went to the cemetery yesterday,' Startsev began. 'How mean and heartless of you to '

'You actually went?'

'Yes. And waited till nearly two o'clock. I suffered '

'Serves you right if you can't take a joke.'

Delighted to have played such a mean trick on a man who loved her—delighted, too, to be the object of such a passion—Catherine laughed, then suddenly screamed with fright because the horses were turning sharply in through the club gates at that moment, and the carriage lurched to one side. Startsev put his arm round her waist while she clung to him in terror. He could not resist kissing her passionately on lips and chin, gripping her more tightly.

'That will do,' she said curtly.

A second later she was out ofthe carriage. A policeman stood near the lighted entrance of the club.

'Don't hang around here, you oaf!' he yelled at Panteleymon in a nasty voice. 'Move on!'

Startsev drove home, but was soon back again. Wearing borrowed tails and a stiff white cravat, which somehow kept slipping up and trying to ride off his collar, he sat in the club lounge at midnight ardently haranguing Catherine.

'Those who've never been in love . . . how little they know! I don't think anyone has ever described love properly. Does it, indeed, lend itself to description: this tender, joyous, tormented feeling? No one who has ever experienced it would try to put it into words. But what's the use of preambles and explanations? Or of superfluous eloquence?

I love you infinitely. I ask you, I implore you '

Startsev got it out at last. 'Be my wife.'

'Dmitry Startsev—' said Catherine with a very earnest expression, after some thought. 'I am most grateful to you for the honour, Dmitry,

and I respect you, but '

She stood up and continued, standing. 'I'm sorry, though, I can't be your wife. Let us talk seriously. As you know, Dmitry, I love Art more than anything in the world—I'm mad about music, I adore it, I have dedicated my whole life to it. I want to be a concert pianist. I want fame, success, freedom—whereas you want me to go on living in this to^, pursuing an empty, futile existence which I can't stand. To be a wife . . . no, no, I'm sorry. One must aim at some lofty, brilliant goal, and family life would tie me do^ for ever. Drnitry Startsev—.' She gave a slight smile because, while saying his name, she remembered 'Alexis Feoflaktovich'. 'You're a kind, honourable,

intelligent man, Dmitry, you're the nicest one of all '

Tears came into her eyes. 'I feel for you with all my heart, but, er,

you must understand '

To avoid bursting into tears she turned away and left the lounge. Startsev's heart ceased to throb. Going out of the club into the street, he first tore off the stiff cravat and heaved a deep sigh. He felt a little ashamed and his pride was hurt—for he had not expected a refusal. Nor could he believe that his dreams, his yearnings, his hopes had led to so foolish a conclusion, like something in a little play acted by ama­teurs. And he was sorry for his o^ feelings, for that love of his— so sorry that he felt ready to break into sobs, or to land a really good clout on Panteleymon's broad back with his umbrella.

For a couple of days he let things slide—couldn't eat or sleep. But when rumour reached him that Catherine had gone to Moscow to enrol at the Conservatory, he calmed do^ and resumed his former routine.

Recalling, later, how he had wandered round the cemetery and driven all over to^ in search of a tail-coat, he would stretch himself lazily, saying that it had all been 'oh, such a lot of fuss'.

IV

Four years passed, and Startsev now had a large practice in town. He hastily took surgery at his home in Dyalizh each morning, after which he left to visit his to^ patients. From a two-horse outfit he had graduated to a troika with bells. He would return home late at night. He had grown broad and stout, and he disliked walking because he was always short of breath. Panteleymon had filled out too, and the broader he grew the more dolefully he would sigh and lament his bitter fate. 'The driving's got me down!'

Startsev was received in various houses and met many people, but was intimate with none. The conversations, the attitudes—the appear­ance, even—of the to^sfolk irritated him. Experience had gradually taught him that your average provincial is a peaceable, easy-going and even quite intelligent human being when you play cards or have a meal with him, but that you only have to talk about something which can't be eaten—politics, say, or learning—for him to be put right off his stroke ... or else to launch on generalizations so trite and malicious that there's nothing for it but to write him off and leave. Take the typical local liberal, even—just suppose Startsev should try to tell him that humanity was progressing, thank God, and would manage without passports and capital punishment in time. 'You mean it will be possible to murder people in the street?' the man would ask with a mistrustful sidelong glance. Whenever Startsev spoke in com­pany, at tea or supper, of the need to work—of the impossibility of living without work—-everyone took it as a reproach, becoming angry and tiresomely argumentative. What's more, your average provincial never did a single blessed thing. He had no interests—indeed, you just couldn't think what to talk to him about. So Startsev avoided conversation, and just ate or played bridge. When he chanced on some family celebration and was asked in for a bite, he would sit and cat silently, staring at his plate. Their talk was all dull, prejudiced and stupid, which irritated and upset him. Dut he would still say nothing.

2ĵ8 doctor startsev

This austere silence and habit of staring at his plate earned him a nickname—'the pompous Pole'—in to^, though he was not of Polish origin.

He avoided such entertainments as concerts and the theatre, but enjoyed three hours of bridge every evening. He had another recreation too, which he had slipped into by stages. This was to take from his pockets at night the bank-notes earned on his medical rounds. There were sometimes seventy roubles' worth stuffed in his pockets—yellow and green notes smelling of scent, vinegar, incense and fish oil. When they added up to a few hundreds he would take them to the Mutual Credit Bank and put them in his current account.

In the four years since Catherine's departure he had visited the Turkins only twice—at the behest of Mrs. Turkin, who was still under treatment for migraine. Catherine came and stayed with her parents each summer, but he had not seen her once. It somehow never happened.

But now four years had passed, and on a quiet, warm morning a letter was-delivered at the hospital. Mrs. Turkin informed Dr. Startsev that she greatly missed his company, and asked him to visit her without fail to relieve her sufferings. And by the way today was her birthday.

Below was a postscript:

'I join in Mummy's request. 'C.'

After some thought Startsev drove off to the Turkins' that evening.

'Ah! Pleased to meet you, I'm sure,' Mr. Turkin greeted him, smiling only with his eyes. 'And a very bon jour to you.'

White-haired, looking much older, Mrs. Turkin shook hands with Startsev and sighed affectedly.

'You refuse to be my boy-friend, Doctor,' she said. 'And you never come and see us. I'm too old for you, but there's someone younger here. Perhaps she'll have better luck.'

And what of Pussy? She was slimmer, paler, more handsome, more graceful. Now she was Pussy no longer, but Miss Catherine Turkin— her former freshness and childlike innocent look were gone. In her glance and manner, too, there was a new quality of hesitation or guilt, as if she no longer felt at home here in the family house.

'It seems ages since we met,' she said, giving Startsev her hand, and one could tell that her heart was beating apprehensively. 'How you have filled out.' she went on, staring inquisitively at his face. 'You're sunburnt, you're more mature, but you haven't changed much on the whole.'

She still attracted him, very much so, but now there was something missing ... or added. Just what it was he couldn't have said, but some­thing prevented him from feeling as before. He disliked her pallor, her new expression, her faint smile and voice. Before long he was disliking her dress and the arm-chair in which she sat—disliking, too, something about the past when he had come near to marrying her. He remembered his love, remembered the dreams and hopes which had disturbed him four years ago. And felt uncomfortable.

They had tea and cake. Then Mrs. Turkin read them a Novel, all about things which never happen in real life—while Startsev listened, looked at her handsome, white head, and waited for her to finish.

'A mediocrity is not someone who can't write novels,' he reflected. 'It's someone who writes them and can't keep quiet about it.'

'Not so dusty,' said Mr. Turkin.

Then Catherine played long and noisily on the piano, and when she stopped there were lengthy expressions of delighted appreciation.

'Lucky I didn't marry her,' thought Startsev.

She looked at him, evidently expecting him to suggest going into the garden, but he did not speak.

'Well, let's talk,' she said, going up to him. 'How .ire you? What's your news, eh ?

'I've been thinking about you a lot lately,' she went on nervously. 'I wanted to write to you, wanted to go to Dyalizh myself and sec you. I did decide to go, actually, then changed my mind—heaven knows how you feel about me now. I was so excited today, waiting for you to come. For God's sake let's go into the garden.'

They went into the garden and sat down on the bench under the old maple, as they had four years earlier. It was dark.

'How are you then?' Catherine said.

'Not so bad,' Startsev answered. 'I manage.'

That was all he could think of sayihg. There was a pause.

'I'm so excited,' Catherine said, covering her face with her hands. 'But don't let that worry you. I'm happy to be home, so glad to sec everyone. I just can't get used to it. What a lot of memories! I thought we should go on talking and talking till morning.'

Now he could see her face, her shining eyes near by. Out here in the darkness she looked younger than indoors, and even her old childlike expression seemed to' have returned. She was, indeed, gazing at him with naive curiosity, as ifseeking a closer view and understanding ofa man who had once loved her so ardently, so tenderly, so unhappily. Her eyes thanked him for that love. He remembered what had happened, all the little details—how he had strolled round the cemetery and then gone home exhausted in the small hours. Suddenly he felt sadness and regret for the past, and a spark seemed to come alight inside him.

'Remember how I took you to the club dance?' he said. 'It was dark and rainy-'

The spark inside him was flaring up, and now he felt the urge to speak, to complain about life.

'Ah me,' he sighed. 'Here are you asking about my life. But how do we live here? The answer is, we don't. We grow old and stout, we run to seed. One day follows another, and life passes drearily without impressions or ideas. There's earning your living by day, there's the club of an evening in the company of card-players, alcoholics and loud-mouthed fellows I can't stand. What's good about that?'

'But you have your work, an honourable ambition. You used to like talking about your hospital so much. I was an odd girl in those days, thinking myself a great pianist. Young ladies all play the piano nowadays, and I was just one more of them—nothing remarkable about me. I'm about as much of a pianist as Mother is a writer. I didn't understand you at the time, of course. But in Moscow, later, I often thought of you—in fact I thought of nothing but you. What happiness to be a country doctor, to help the suffering, to serve ordin­ary people.

'What happiness !' Catherine repeated eagerly. 'When I thought of you in Moscow you seemed so admirable, so superior.'

Startsev remembered the bank-notes which he so much enjoyed taking out ofhis pockets in the evenings, and the spark died inside him.

He got up to go into the house, and she took him by the arm.

'You're the best person I've ever kno^,' she went on. 'We shall meet and talk, shan't we? Do promise. I'm no pianist. I've no illusions left, and I won't play music or talk about it when you're there.'

When they were in the house and Startsev saw her face in the lamp­light and her sad, grateful, inquiring eyes fixed on him, he felt uneasy.

'Lucky I never married her,' he thought again.

He began to take his leave.

'You ain't got no statutory right to leave withoutsupper,' Mr. Turkin said as he saw him off. 'Highly perpendicular of you in fact. Well, go on—perform!' he added, addressing Peacock in the hall.

Peacock—now no longer a boy, but a young man with a moustache —struck an attitude, threw up an arm.

'Unhappy woman, die!' he declaimed tragically.

All this irritated Startsev. Climbing into his carriage, he looked at the dark house and garden once so dear and precious to him. It all came back to him at once: Mrs. Turkin's 'novels', Pussy's noisy piano- playing, Mr. Turkin's wit, Peacock's tragic posturings. What, he asked himself, could be said ofa town in which the most brilliant people were so dim?

Three days later Peacock brought a letter from Catherine.

'Why don't you come and see us?' she wrote. 'I'm afraid your feelings for us have changed. I'm afraid—the very idea terrifies me. Do set my mind at rest. Do come and tell me that all is well.

'I simply must talk to you.

'Your 'C. T.'

He read the letter.

'Tell them I can't manage it today, my good fellow, I'm very busy,' he told Peacock after some thought. 'Tell them I'll come over—oh, in a couple of days.'

But three days passed, and then a week—and still he did not go. Once, when driving past the Turkins' house, he remembered that he should at least pay a brief call. But then he thought again. And did not.

Never again did he visit the Turkins.

v

A few more years have passed. Startsev has put on yet more weight —grown really fat. He breathes heavily and goes about with his head thrown back. Plump, red-faced, he drives in his troika with the bells, while Panteleymon—also plump, also red-faced, with a thick, fleshy neck—sits on the box holding his arms straight ahead as if they were wooden.

'Keep to the r-i-ight !' he bellows at oncoming traffic.

It is an impressive scene, suggesting that the passenger is not a man, but a pagan god.

He has a vast practice in the town and scarcely time to draw breath. Already he owns an estate and two town houses, and he is looking for a third—a better bargain. When, in the Mutual Credit Bank, he hears of a house for sale, he marches straight in without ceremony, goes through all the rooms—paying no attention to the half-dressed women and children who stare at him in fascinated horror—prods all the doors with his stick.

'This the study?' he asks. 'That a bedroom? What have we here?'

He breathes heavily all the time, wiping sweat from his brow.

He has a lot to do, but still does not give up his council post, being too greedy and wanting a finger in every pie. At Dyalizh and in to^ he is now known simply as 'the Doc'.

'Where's the Doc off to?' people ask. Or 'Shouldn't we call in the Doc?'

His voice has changed, probably because his throat is so congested with fat, and has become thin and harsh. His character has changed too —he has gro^ ill-humoured and irritable. When taking surgery he usually loses his temper and bangs his stick impatiently on the floor.

'Pray confine yourself to answering my questions!' he shouts unpleasantly. 'Less talk!'

He lives alone. It is a dreary life, he has no interests.

During his entire time at Dyalizh his love for Pussy has been his only joy, and will probably be his last. He plays bridge in the club of an evening, then dines alone at a large table. He is waited on by Ivan, the oldest and most venerable of the club servants, is served with Chateau-La fite No. 17, and everyone—the club officials, the cook, the waiter—knows his likes and dislikes, they all humour him in every way. Otherwise he's liable to fly into a rage and bang his stick on the floor.

While dining he occasionally turns round and breaks into a conversa­tion.

'What are you on about? Eh? Who?'

When, occasionally, talk at a near-by table turns to the Turkins, he asks what Turkins. 'You mean those people whose daughter plays the piannyforty?'

There is no more to be said about him.

What of the Turkins? Mr. Turkin looks no older—hasn't changed a bit, but still keeps joking and telling his funny stories. Mrs. Turkin still enjoys reading those Novels to guests in a jolly, hearty sort of a way. And Pussy plays the piano for four hours a day. She looks much older, she is often unwell, and she goes to the Crimea with her mother every autu^A. Mr. Turkin sees them off at the station, and when the train starts he wipes away his tears.

'Cheerio, chin chin!' he shouts.

And waves a handkerchief

EXPLANATORY NOTES

THE BUTTERFLY

I was a rather junior doctor, literally, 'was a doctor and held the grade of titular councillor' — class nine in the Table of Ranks introduced by Peter the Great in 1722. 9 Kineshma: town on the Volga about 200 miles north-east of Moscow.

II Masini: Angelo Masini (i 844-1926), Italian operatic tenor. I 4 Do you know any place in all Russia . . .: the couplet is a paraphrase of a quatrain from the poem Razmyshleniya и paradnogo podyezda (Reflections by a Main Entrance; 1858) by N. A. Nekrasov (I82I-78).

Polenov: V. D. Polenov (i 844-1927), Russian painter.

Bamay: Ludwig Barnay (1842-1924), German actor.

Gogol's Osip: the comic servant ofKhlestakov, hero of the farce The Inspector General (1836) by N. V. Gogol (1809-52).

old fellow called Osip, who 'grew hoarse from a surfeit of gossip': the original tongue-twister reads Osip okhrip, a Arkhip osip, literally: 'Osip grew hoarse and Arkhip grew husky.'

WARD NUMBER six

24 official ofthe twelfth grade: literally 'aprovincial secretary' (gubcm- sky sekretar), twelfth grade in the Table of Ranks.

2R gendarmes: founded under Nicholas I in 1 Я26, the Corps of Gendarmes constituted the uniformed branch of the Imperial political police force from then until 1917.

the Order of St. Stanislaus: one of the numerous orders, or decorations for distinction in peace and war, instituted by Peter the Great and added to as the years went by.

the paralytic: this refers to the 'tall, lean working-class fellow' mentioned first among the five inmates of the Ward (sec p. 24, above).

34 Pushkin: Russia's greatest poet Alexander Push kin (179!)-! H 37) was fatally wounded in the stomach in the course of his duel with a Frenchman, Georges d'Anthcs, and suffered for two days before dying.

Heine: Heinrich Heine (I797-I 856), the German poet, suffered from spinal disease during the last eight years of his life.

3 5 a senator, founded in I 7 I I by Peter the Great, the Senate functioned as a supreme court of appeal from I 864 onwards and was also empowered to interpret the laws. The Emperor appointed Senators from among holders of the first three grades in the Table of Ranks.

white tie: a white tie was customary wear for Russian doctors in this period.

Svyatogorsk Monastery: founded in I 566 and situated in Pskov Province, the Monastery was the site of Pushkin's tomb.

35-6 The Physician: Vrach; a weekly medical newspaper published in St. Petersburg from I 88o onwards.

3 8 the ideas of the Sixties: during the I 86os, the age of Russian Nihilism, an obsession with utilitarianism, materialism and scientific progress was very much in vogue.

40 Pirogov: N. I. Pirogov (i8io-8i), the Russian surgeon and educationist.

Pasteur: Louis Pasteur (I822-95), the French chemist and bacteriologist.

Koch: Robert Koch (i843-I9io), the German bacteriologist.

44 Dostoyevsky: F. M. Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist.

Voltaire: Jean Franзois Marie Arouet de Voltaire (I694-I778), the French dramatist and historian, and author ofthe remark 'si Die n'existait pas, il faudrait /'inventer,' See Voltaire, Epltres, 96, A /'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs.

as an exile—or as a convict: reference is to the two headings under which a condemned person might be sent to Siberia, the milder status being that of 'exile' (poselenets), the more severe that of 'convict' (katorzhnik).

Marcus Aurelius: Marcus Aurelius (a.d. I2I-8o), the Roman Emperor and Stoic philosopher, author of the celebrated Meditations.

49 Garden of Gethsemane: reference is to the New Testament, Matthew 26: 36-42; Mark 14: 32-6.

Pripet Marshes: the Pripet is a tributary of the River Dnieper and flows through marshlands in southern Belorussia.

the Iverian Madonna: situated near the Red Square in Moscow, the Iverian chapel (Iverskaya chasovnya) housed the most celebrated icon in the city, that of the 'Iverian Madonna'. This was an exact copy of an early eighth-century icon preserved in the Iverian Monastery on Mount Athos. The copy was brought to Russia in 1648 and became famous as a 'miracle-working icon', in which capacity it could be hired out by private individuals.

'Tsar Cannon' and. . .'Tsar Bell': two well-known sights in the Moscow Kremlin. The Bell was cast in I733-5, the Cannon in the sixteenth century.

St. Saviour's Temple: this church (in Russian, Khram Khrista Spasitelya) was built between 1837 and 1883 on the left bank of the Moscow River, south-west ofthe Kremlin, as a memorial to the Napoleonic wars of 1812-14.

Rumyantsev Museum: situated in Mokhovoy Street in the centre ofMoscow, the Museum was built in 1787, and the core ofthe exhibits consisted of collections given to the State by Count Nicholas Rumyantsev (died 1826). Testov's: a well-known Moscow restaurant.

ARIADNE

Volochisk: name of the actual Russian frontier station m Volhynia Province.

Max Nordau: Max Simon Nordau (1848-1923), Hungarian author of the philosophical work Entartung (Degeneration; English translation, I 895) and other works.

Weltmann: A. F. Weltmann [Veltman] (i8oo-7o), minor Rus­sian novelist and poet.

75 Devichy: part of south Moscow, the area of the Novodevichy Convent.

the Slav Fair Hotel. a large hotel in central Moscow at which Chekhov sometimes stayed.

the Hermitage Restaurant: in Moscow in Trubny Square, not to be confused with the Hermitage Variety Theatre in Moscow or the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. 79 Abbazia: [Opatija]: a seaside resort on the west shore ofthe Bay of Fiume. It was Austrian before 1914 and is now part of Yugoslavia.

So Fiume: [Rijeka]: North Adriatic port, now part of Yugoslavia.

It belonged to Hungary before 1914. 8 I Merano: health resort in the southern Tyrol in the Italian

province of Bolzano. 88 Boleslav Markevich: B. M. Markevich ( 1822-84), a minor novelist who held ultra-conservative political views. Turgenev: I. S. Turgenev (181 —1'3), the well-known Russian novelist.

A DREARY STORY

92 Kavelin: K. D. Kavelin (18 г 5-85), the Russian philosopher. Nekrasov: N. A. Nekrasov (i 82 1-78), the Russian poet.

Gruber: V. L. Gruber (1814-90), anatomist and professor at the St. Petersburg Medico-Surgical Academy from 1858. Babukhin: A. I. Babukhin (1835-91), Russian histologist and physiologist, founder of the Moscow school ofhistology. Skobelev: M. D. Skobelev (1843-82), the famous Russian general who led a punitive expedition against Kokand in central Asia (i 875--

Perov: V. G. Perov (1833-82), the Russian painter. Patti: Adelina Patti (1843-1919), the operatic singer.

Chatsky . . . Woe from Wit: Chatsky is the hero of the verse play Woe from Wit (1822-4) by A. S. Griboyedov (1795-1829).

Ufa: city near the Urals, now capital of the Bashkir Autono­mous Republic.

I IO Yalta: town and health resort on the southern coast of the Crimea.

I I 3 kasha: the word describes various forms of gruel and porridge. I I 5 Kharkov: large city in the Ukraine.

How sadly I regard . . . : the first line of the lyric Thought (I838) by the Russian poet M. Yu. Lermontov (18I4-41).

Dobrolyubov: N. A. Dobrolyubov (I836-6I), leading Russian radical literary and social critic.

125 Arakcheyev: General Count A. A. Arakcheyev (Г769-1834), favourite of Alexander I of Russia, who became a symbol of extreme tyranny.

Go, up, thou bald head: a biblical quotation, 2 Kings 2: 23.

Nikita Krylov: N. I. Krylov (I807-79), Professor ofRoman Law at the University of Moscow.

Revel: German name ofpresent Tallinn, capital ofthe Estonian Republic.

An eagle on occasion . . .: the lines come from the fable The Eagle and the Hens (i 808) by the Russian fabulist I. A. Krylov (c. 1769-

I 844).

I 3 7 Berdichev: Ukrainian town about a hundred miles south-west of Kiev.

I 3 8 World Illustrated: Vsemirnaya illyustratsiya, a St. Petersburg weekly, founded 1869.

The Meadow: Niva, a weekly illustrated magazine for family reading, St. Petersburg (i87o-r9i8).

passport system: a Russian citizen was required to possess a passport for purposes of internal as well as external travel.

NEIGHBOURS

143 Her Excell.: the honorific 'Your Excellency' (vashe prevoskhod- itelstvo) was reserved to holders of ranks three, four and five in the official Table of Ranks (see note to p. r), and to the wives and widows of these high officials.

I 48 If you should ever need my life, then come and take it: Chekhov later used this sentence in his play The Seagull (i 896). See further The Oxford Chekhov, vol. ii, pp. 264, 338 and 356.

152 Pisarev . . .: D. I. Pisarev (i84o-68), the Russian politico- literary thinker and critic.

Darwin: Charles Darwin (1809-82), the English naturalist. . . . that weird marriage a la Dostoyevsky: Chekhov must have had in mind such episodes as the marriage of the satanic hero Stavrogin to the idiot girl Mary Lebyadkin in the novel Devils (1871-2) by F. M. Dostoyevsky (1822-81).

I 54 Khoma Brut: a character inthe story Vyinthe collection Mirgorod (1835) by N. V. Gogol.

AN ANONYMOUS STORY

Intermediary editions: The Intermediary (Posrednik) was a pub­lishing house founded in St. Petersburg in I 88 5 for the dissemination of popular works, including the folk tales ofLeo Tolstoy.

Znamensky Square: the large square at the eastern end of the Nevsky Prospekt, the main thoroughfare in St. Petersburg.

Yeliseyev's: the most luxurious food store on the Nevsky Prospekt in St. Petersburg.

Gogol or Shchedrin: N. V. Gogol (1809-52) and M. Ye. Saltykov (1826-89, who wrote under the pseudonym 'Shchedrin' and is often known as 'Saltykov-Shchedrin') were the two leading Russian satirists, and—with Chekhov himself—humorous writers of the nineteenth century.

the fairly senior rank which he held: literally: the 'rank of actual state councillor' (deystvitelny statsky sovetnik): grade four in the Table of Ranks.

Nevsky Prospekt: the main thoroughfare of St. Petersburg. the Senate: see note to p. 35^

Prutkov: 'Kozma Prutkov' was the collective pseudonym used by the poet and playwright A. K. Tolstoy in conjunction with the brothers Zhemchuzhnikov between I 8 5 I and I 884 for the publication of satire directed against Russian officialdom.

WhWhat does the morrow hold for me?: Lensky's words in Canto VI, verse xxi of Eugene Onegin by A. S. Pushkin. The song to which reference is made here is Lensky's aria from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin, based on Pushkin's novel.

Officer Street: a street in the west of central St. Petersburg.

I74 Contant's or Donon's: the restaurants of Contant and Donon,

both on the Moyka Canal, are listed in the I9I2 Baedeker, the latter carrying one star.

the Old Town: literally: 'The Petersburg Side' (Peterburgskaya storona). Lying to the north of the River Neva, this was the oldest part of the city now called Leningrad, containing the Peter and Paul Fortress and Peter the Great's house.

176 Three meetings . . . Vieni, pensando . . .: reference is to Turge- nev's story Three Meetings (I852). The line Vieni, pensando a me segretamente ('Come, thinking of me in secret') forms part of a quatrain from an Italian song, which Turgenev used as the epigraph to the story.

liberate Bulgaria: reference is to Turgenev's novel On the Eve (186o), the hero ofwhich, Insarov, is a Bulgarian struggling for his country's freedom. His inamorata, a Russian girl called Helen, offers (literally) to follow him 'to the ends of the earth'.

I 83 a typical red-tape merchant: literally, 'a hero from Shchedrin': that is, one of those comic civil servants (chinovniki) who form the main butts of the satirist Shchedrin (see also note to p. I65 above).

visiting your superiors to wish them a Happy New Year: the practice ofpaying a formal visit to one's superior officer on this occasion was generally incumbent on subordinate civil servants.

I90 Sergiyevsky Street: in the eastern part of central St. Petersburg, running east from the Summer Garden.

194 the beard-and-caftan brigade: literally 'their worthinesses' (ikh stepenstva), an honorific sometimes bestowed on Russian merchants, here used sardonically.

20I Saint-Saens: Camille Saint-Saens (1835-I92I), the French com­poser.

thegates of Gaza: reference is to Samson's exploit in carrying the gates ofGaza 'to the top ofthe hill that is before Hebron'. Judges

16: 3.

In some novel of Dostoyevsky's: reference is to Insulted and Injured (i86i) by F. M. Dostoyevsky, which includes an episode where an elderly father, Ikhmenev, tramples on a medallion con­taining the portrait of his daughter Natasha, cursing her as he does so.

209 the Neva: the river on which St. Petersburg (Leningrad) was built.

21 I Pиre Goriot: reference is to the novel Le Pиre Goriot (1834) by the French novelist Honorй de Balzac (1799-1850).

2 I 3 Canova:Antonio Canova (1757-1822), the Italian sculptor, who died in Venice.

Faliero: Marino Faliero (c. I274-I355), a Doge of Venice who sided with the mob against the nobility. He was beheaded after leading an unsuccessful coup d'йtat, and his portrait in the Palace of Dages was defaced.

224 Myfate, yegods . . . : a parody of Famusov's celebrated exit lines from the end of Act I of Woefrom Wit (written I 822-4) by A. S. Griboyedov (I795-I829). In Griboyedov's original the 'tiny' daughter mentioned by Orlov was 'grown-up'. The couplet is correctly quoted in Chekhov's short play The Proposal (I888--9); see The Oxford Chekhov, vol. i, p. 77.

DOCTOR STARTSEV

227 'Erefrom the Cup of Life I yet had Drunk the Tears': from the poem An Elegy by A. A. Delvig (I798-I83I).

'Rushlight': a well-known folk-song.

'A thing of beauty is a joy for ever': literally: 'Die, Denis, you '11 not write better!' This remark was made to the eighteenth-century Russian playwright D. I. Fonvizin by Catherine the Great's favourite Potemkin after a performance of Fonvizin's play The Brigadier.

'Your Voice, to me both Languorous and Tender': the first lines of Pushkin's lyric Night (1823) read: 'My voice, to you both languorous and tender.'

Pisemsky . . .A Thousand Souls: reference is to the novel A Thousand Souls (I858) by Alexis Feofilaktovich Pisemsky (I 82o-8 1).

The hour cometh when-: John 4: 23.