Short Fiction, Anton Chekhov [websites to read books for free .TXT] 📗

“Two thousand three hundred.”

“Oho!” said the Jewess, showing another large black eye. “And you call that⁠—a small sum! However, it’s just the same paying it today or paying it in a week, but I’ve had so many payments to make in the last two months since my father’s death.⁠ ⁠… Such a lot of stupid business, it makes my head go round! A nice idea! I want to go abroad, and they keep forcing me to attend to these silly things. Vodka, oats⁠ ⁠…” she muttered, half closing her eyes, “oats, bills, percentages, or, as my head-clerk says, ‘percentage.’⁠ ⁠… It’s awful. Yesterday I simply turned the excise officer out. He pesters me with his Tralles. I said to him: ‘Go to the devil with your Tralles! I can’t see anyone!’ He kissed my hand and went away. I tell you what: can’t your cousin wait two or three months?”

“A cruel question!” laughed the lieutenant. “My cousin can wait a year, but it’s I who cannot wait! You see, it’s on my own account I’m acting, I ought to tell you. At all costs I must have money, and by ill-luck my cousin hasn’t a rouble to spare. I’m forced to ride about and collect debts. I’ve just been to see a peasant, our tenant; here I’m now calling on you; from here I shall go on to somewhere else, and keep on like that until I get together five thousand roubles. I need money awfully!”

“Nonsense! What does a young man want with money? Whims, mischief. Why, have you been going in for dissipation? Or losing at cards? Or are you getting married?”

“You’ve guessed!” laughed the lieutenant, and rising slightly from his seat, he clinked his spurs. “I really am going to be married.”

Susanna Moiseyevna looked intently at her visitor, made a wry face, and sighed.

“I can’t make out what possesses people to get married!” she said, looking about her for her pocket-handkerchief. “Life is so short, one has so little freedom, and they must put chains on themselves!”

“Everyone has his own way of looking at things.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, yes, of course; everyone has his own way of looking at things.⁠ ⁠… But, I say, are you really going to marry someone poor? Are you passionately in love? And why must you have five thousand? Why won’t four do, or three?”

“What a tongue she has!” thought the lieutenant, and answered: “The difficulty is that an officer is not allowed by law to marry till he is twenty-eight; if you choose to marry, you have to leave the Service or else pay a deposit of five thousand.”

“Ah, now I understand. Listen. You said just now that everyone has his own way of looking at things.⁠ ⁠… Perhaps your fiancée is someone special and remarkable, but⁠ ⁠… but I am utterly unable to understand how any decent man can live with a woman. I can’t for the life of me understand it. I have lived, thank the Lord, twenty-seven years, and I have never yet seen an endurable woman. They’re all affected minxes, immoral, liars.⁠ ⁠… The only ones I can put up with are cooks and housemaids, but so-called ladies I won’t let come within shooting distance of me. But, thank God, they hate me and don’t force themselves on me! If one of them wants money she sends her husband, but nothing will induce her to come herself, not from pride⁠—no, but from cowardice; she’s afraid of my making a scene. Oh, I understand their hatred very well! Rather! I openly display what they do their very utmost to conceal from God and man. How can they help hating me? No doubt you’ve heard bushels of scandal about me already.⁠ ⁠…”

“I only arrived here so lately⁠ ⁠…”

“Tut, tut, tut!⁠ ⁠… I see from your eyes! But your brother’s wife, surely she primed you for this expedition? Think of letting a young man come to see such an awful woman without warning him⁠—how could she? Ha, ha!⁠ ⁠… But tell me, how is your brother? He’s a fine fellow, such a handsome man!⁠ ⁠… I’ve seen him several times at mass. Why do you look at me like that? I very often go to church! We all have the same God. To an educated person externals matter less than the idea.⁠ ⁠… That’s so, isn’t it?”

“Yes, of course⁠ ⁠…” smiled the lieutenant.

“Yes, the idea.⁠ ⁠… But you are not a bit like your brother. You are handsome, too, but your brother is a great deal better-looking. There’s wonderfully little likeness!”

“That’s quite natural; he’s not my brother, but my cousin.”

“Ah, to be sure! So you must have the money today? Why today?”

“My furlough is over in a few days.”

“Well, what’s to be done with you!” sighed Susanna Moiseyevna. “So be it. I’ll give you the money, though I know you’ll abuse me for it afterwards. You’ll quarrel with your wife after you are married, and say: ‘If that mangy Jewess hadn’t given me the money, I should perhaps have been as free as a bird today!’ Is your fiancée pretty?”

“Oh yes.⁠ ⁠…”

“H’m!⁠ ⁠… Anyway, better something, if it’s only beauty, than nothing. Though however beautiful a woman is, it can never make up to her husband for her silliness.”

“That’s original!” laughed the lieutenant. “You are a woman yourself, and such a woman-hater!”

“A woman⁠ ⁠…” smiled Susanna. “It’s not my fault that God has cast me into this mould, is it? I’m no more to blame for it than you are for having moustaches. The violin is not responsible for the choice of its case. I am very fond of myself, but when anyone reminds me that I am a woman, I begin to hate myself. Well, you can go away, and I’ll dress. Wait for me in the drawing room.”

The lieutenant went out, and the first thing he did was to draw a deep breath, to get rid of the heavy scent of jasmine, which had begun to irritate his throat and to make him feel giddy.

“What a strange woman!” he thought, looking about him.