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

interpreting his master’s wrath in his own fashion, scratched his head and heaved a sigh.

“I am sorry, Semyon Erastovitch,” he said, “but it’s the summer holidays,⁠ ⁠… one can’t get on without⁠ ⁠… without a woman, I mean.⁠ ⁠…”

And glancing at his master’s eyes glaring at him with anger and astonishment, he cleared his throat guiltily and went on:

“It’s a sin, of course, but there⁠—what is one to do?⁠ ⁠… You’ve forbidden us to have strangers in the house, I know, but we’ve none of our own now. When Agnia was here I had no women to see me, for I had one at home; but now, you can see for yourself, sir,⁠ ⁠… one can’t help having strangers. In Agnia’s time, of course, there was nothing irregular, because⁠ ⁠…”

“Be off, you scoundrel!” Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he went back into the room.

Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby.⁠ ⁠…

“There! there!” Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips into a smile. “It was a joke.⁠ ⁠… It’s not my baby,⁠ ⁠… it’s the washerwoman’s!⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠… I was joking.⁠ ⁠… Take it to the porter.”

From the Diary of a Violent-Tempered Man

I am a serious person and my mind is of a philosophic bent. My vocation is the study of finance. I am a student of financial law and I have chosen as the subject of my dissertation⁠—the Past and Future of the Dog Licence. I need hardly point out that young ladies, songs, moonlight, and all that sort of silliness are entirely out of my line.

Morning. Ten o’clock. My maman pours me out a cup of coffee. I drink it and go out on the little balcony to set to work on my dissertation. I take a clean sheet of paper, dip the pen into the ink, and write out the title: “The Past and Future of the Dog Licence.”

After thinking a little I write: “Historical Survey. We may deduce from some allusions in Herodotus and Xenophon that the origin of the tax on dogs goes back to.⁠ ⁠…”

But at that point I hear footsteps that strike me as highly suspicious. I look down from the balcony and see below a young lady with a long face and a long waist. Her name, I believe, is Nadenka or Varenka, it really does not matter which. She is looking for something, pretends not to have noticed me, and is humming to herself:

“Dost thou remember that song full of tenderness?”

I read through what I have written and want to continue, but the young lady pretends to have just caught sight of me, and says in a mournful voice:

“Good morning, Nikolay Andreitch. Only fancy what a misfortune I have had! I went for a walk yesterday and lost the little ball off my bracelet!”

I read through once more the opening of my dissertation, I trim up the tail of the letter “g” and mean to go on, but the young lady persists.

“Nikolay Andreitch,” she says, “won’t you see me home? The Karelins have such a huge dog that I simply daren’t pass it alone.”

There is no getting out of it. I lay down my pen and go down to her. Nadenka (or Varenka) takes my arm and we set off in the direction of her villa.

When the duty of walking arm-in-arm with a lady falls to my lot, for some reason or other I always feel like a peg with a heavy cloak hanging on it. Nadenka (or Varenka), between ourselves, of an ardent temperament (her grandfather was an Armenian), has a peculiar art of throwing her whole weight on one’s arm and clinging to one’s side like a leech. And so we walk along.

As we pass the Karelins’, I see a huge dog, who reminds me of the dog licence. I think with despair of the work I have begun and sigh.

“What are you sighing for?” asks Nadenka (or Varenka), and heaves a sigh herself.

Here I must digress for a moment to explain that Nadenka or Varenka (now I come to think of it, I believe I have heard her called Mashenka) imagines, I can’t guess why, that I am in love with her, and therefore thinks it her duty as a humane person always to look at me with compassion and to soothe my wound with words.

“Listen,” said she, stopping. “I know why you are sighing. You are in love, yes; but I beg you for the sake of our friendship to believe that the girl you love has the deepest respect for you. She cannot return your love; but is it her fault that her heart has long been another’s?”

Mashenka’s nose begins to swell and turn red, her eyes fill with tears: she evidently expects some answer from me, but, fortunately, at this moment we arrive. Mashenka’s mamma, a good-natured woman but full of conventional ideas, is sitting on the terrace: glancing at her daughter’s agitated face, she looks intently at me and sighs, as though saying to herself: “Ah, these young people! they don’t even know how to keep their secrets to themselves!”

On the terrace with her are several young ladies of various colours and a retired officer who is staying in the villa next to ours. He was wounded during the last war in the left temple and the right hip. This unfortunate man is, like myself, proposing to devote the summer to literary work. He is writing the “Memoirs of a Military Man.” Like me, he begins his honourable labours every morning, but before he has written more than “I was born in⁠ ⁠…” some Varenka or Mashenka is sure to appear under his balcony, and the wounded hero is borne off under guard.

All the party sitting on the terrace are engaged in preparing some miserable fruit for jam. I make my bows and am about to beat a retreat, but the young ladies of various colours seize my hat with a squeal and insist on my staying. I sit