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

A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government clerk, had walked into the drawing room. He had walked in unnoticed. Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned the lovers of his presence, and made them look round. It was the husband.

They had looked round too late.

He had seen Groholsky’s arm round Liza’s waist, and had seen Liza hanging on Groholsky’s white and aristocratic neck.

“He saw us!” Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes.⁠ ⁠…

The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white.

An agonising, strange, soul-revolting silence lasted for three minutes. Oh, those three minutes! Groholsky remembers them to this day.

The first to move and break the silence was the husband. He stepped up to Groholsky and, screwing his face into a senseless grimace like a smile, gave him his hand. Groholsky shook the soft perspiring hand and shuddered all over as though he had crushed a cold frog in his fist.

“Good evening,” he muttered.

“How are you?” the husband brought out in a faint husky, almost inaudible voice, and he sat down opposite Groholsky, straightening his collar at the back of his neck.

Again, an agonising silence followed⁠ ⁠… but that silence was no longer so stupid.⁠ ⁠… The first step, most difficult and colourless, was over.

All that was left now was for one of the two to depart in search of matches or on some such trifling errand. Both longed intensely to get away. They sat still, not looking at one another, and pulled at their beards while they ransacked their troubled brains for some means of escape from their horribly awkward position. Both were perspiring. Both were unbearably miserable and both were devoured by hatred. They longed to begin the tussle but how were they to begin and which was to begin first? If only she would have gone out!

“I saw you yesterday at the Assembly Hall,” muttered Bugrov (that was the husband’s name).

“Yes, I was there⁠ ⁠… the ball⁠ ⁠… did you dance?”

“M’m⁠ ⁠… yes⁠ ⁠… with that⁠ ⁠… with the younger Lyukovtsky.⁠ ⁠… She dances heavily.⁠ ⁠… She dances impossibly. She is a great chatterbox.” (Pause.) “She is never tired of talking.”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… It was slow. I saw you too⁠ ⁠…”

Groholsky accidentally glanced at Bugrov.⁠ ⁠… He caught the shifting eyes of the deceived husband and could not bear it. He got up quickly, quickly seized Bugrov’s hand, shook it, picked up his hat, and walked towards the door, conscious of his own back. He felt as though thousands of eyes were looking at his back. It is a feeling known to the actor who has been hissed and is making his exit from the stage, and to the young dandy who has received a blow on the back of the head and is being led away in charge of a policeman.

As soon as the sound of Groholsky’s steps had died away and the door in the hall creaked, Bugrov leapt up, and after making two or three rounds of the drawing room, strolled up to his wife. The kittenish face puckered up and began blinking its eyes as though expecting a slap. Her husband went up to her, and with a pale, distorted face, with arms, head, and shoulders shaking, stepped on her dress and knocked her knees with his.

“If, you wretched creature,” he began in a hollow, wailing voice, “you let him come here once again, I’ll.⁠ ⁠… Don’t let him dare to set his foot.⁠ ⁠… I’ll kill you. Do you understand? A-a-ah⁠ ⁠… worthless creature, you shudder! Fil-thy woman!”

Bugrov seized her by the elbow, shook her, and flung her like an India-rubber ball towards the window.⁠ ⁠…

“Wretched, vulgar woman! you have no shame!”

She flew towards the window, hardly touching the floor with her feet, and caught at the curtains with her hands.

“Hold your tongue,” shouted her husband, going up to her with flashing eyes and stamping his foot.

She did hold her tongue, she looked at the ceiling, and whimpered while her face wore the expression of a little girl in disgrace expecting to be punished.

“So that’s what you are like! Eh? Carrying on with a fop! Good! And your promise before the altar? What are you? A nice wife and mother. Hold your tongue!”

And he struck her on her pretty supple shoulder. “Hold your tongue, you wretched creature. I’ll give you worse than that! If that scoundrel dares to show himself here ever again, if I see you⁠—listen!⁠—with that blackguard ever again, don’t ask for mercy! I’ll kill you, if I go to Siberia for it! And him too. I shouldn’t think twice about it! You can go, I don’t want to see you!”

Bugrov wiped his eyes and his brow with his sleeve and strode about the drawing room, Liza sobbing more and more loudly, twitching her shoulders and her little turned up nose, became absorbed in examining the lace on the curtain.

“You are crazy,” her husband shouted. “Your silly head is full of nonsense! Nothing but whims! I won’t allow it, Elizaveta, my girl! You had better be careful with me! I don’t like it! If you want to behave like a pig, then⁠ ⁠… then out you go, there is no place in my house for you! Out you pack if.⁠ ⁠… You are a wife, so you must forget these dandies, put them out of your silly head! It’s all foolishness! Don’t let it happen again! You try defending yourself! Love your husband! You have been given to your husband, so you must love him. Yes, indeed! Is one not enough? Go away till.⁠ ⁠… Torturers!”

Bugrov paused; then shouted:

“Go away I tell you, go to the nursery! Why are you blubbering, it is your own fault, and you blubber! What a woman! Last year you were after Petka Totchkov, now you are after this devil. Lord forgive us!⁠ ⁠… Tfoo, it’s time you understood what you are! A wife! A mother! Last year there were unpleasantnesses, and now there will be unpleasantnesses.⁠ ⁠… Tfoo!”

Bugrov heaved a loud