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

Olga Ivanovna’s heart began to throb. She tried to think about her husband, but all her past, with her wedding, with Dymov, and with her “At Homes,” seemed to her petty, trivial, dingy, unnecessary, and far, far away.⁠ ⁠… Yes, really, what of Dymov? Why Dymov? What had she to do with Dymov? Had he any existence in nature, or was he only a dream?

“For him, a simple and ordinary man the happiness he has had already is enough,” she thought, covering her face with her hands. “Let them condemn me, let them curse me, but in spite of them all I will go to my ruin; I will go to my ruin!⁠ ⁠… One must experience everything in life. My God! how terrible and how glorious!”

“Well? Well?” muttered the artist, embracing her, and greedily kissing the hands with which she feebly tried to thrust him from her. “You love me? Yes? Yes? Oh, what a night! marvellous night!”

“Yes, what a night!” she whispered, looking into his eyes, which were bright with tears.

Then she looked round quickly, put her arms round him, and kissed him on the lips.

“We are nearing Kineshmo!” said someone on the other side of the deck.

They heard heavy footsteps; it was a waiter from the refreshment-bar.

“Waiter,” said Olga Ivanovna, laughing and crying with happiness, “bring us some wine.”

The artist, pale with emotion, sat on the seat, looking at Olga Ivanovna with adoring, grateful eyes; then he closed his eyes, and said, smiling languidly:

“I am tired.”

And he leaned his head against the rail.

On the second of September the day was warm and still, but overcast. In the early morning a light mist had hung over the Volga, and after nine o’clock it had begun to spout with rain. And there seemed no hope of the sky clearing. Over their morning tea Ryabovsky told Olga Ivanovna that painting was the most ungrateful and boring art, that he was not an artist, that none but fools thought that he had any talent, and all at once, for no rhyme or reason, he snatched up a knife and with it scraped over his very best sketch. After his tea he sat plunged in gloom at the window and gazed at the Volga. And now the Volga was dingy, all of one even colour without a gleam of light, cold-looking. Everything, everything recalled the approach of dreary, gloomy autumn. And it seemed as though nature had removed now from the Volga the sumptuous green covers from the banks, the brilliant reflections of the sunbeams, the transparent blue distance, and all its smart gala array, and had packed it away in boxes till the coming spring, and the crows were flying above the Volga and crying tauntingly, “Bare, bare!”

Ryabovsky heard their cawing, and thought he had already gone off and lost his talent, that everything in this world was relative, conditional, and stupid, and that he ought not to have taken up with this woman.⁠ ⁠… In short, he was out of humour and depressed.

Olga Ivanovna sat behind the screen on the bed, and, passing her fingers through her lovely flaxen hair, pictured herself first in the drawing room, then in the bedroom, then in her husband’s study; her imagination carried her to the theatre, to the dressmaker, to her distinguished friends. Were they getting something up now? Did they think of her? The season had begun by now, and it would be time to think about her “At Homes.” And Dymov? Dear Dymov! with what gentleness and childlike pathos he kept begging her in his letters to make haste and come home! Every month he sent her seventy-five roubles, and when she wrote him that she had lent the artists a hundred roubles, he sent that hundred too. What a kind, generous-hearted man! The travelling wearied Olga Ivanovna; she was bored; and she longed to get away from the peasants, from the damp smell of the river, and to cast off the feeling of physical uncleanliness of which she was conscious all the time, living in the peasants’ huts and wandering from village to village. If Ryabovsky had not given his word to the artists that he would stay with them till the twentieth of September, they might have gone away that very day. And how nice that would have been!

“My God!” moaned Ryabovsky. “Will the sun ever come out? I can’t go on with a sunny landscape without the sun.⁠ ⁠…”

“But you have a sketch with a cloudy sky,” said Olga Ivanovna, coming from behind the screen. “Do you remember, in the right foreground forest trees, on the left a herd of cows and geese? You might finish it now.”

“Aie!” the artist scowled. “Finish it! Can you imagine I am such a fool that I don’t know what I want to do?”

“How you have changed to me!” sighed Olga Ivanovna.

“Well, a good thing too!”

Olga Ivanovna’s face quivered; she moved away to the stove and began to cry.

“Well, that’s the last straw⁠—crying! Give over! I have a thousand reasons for tears, but I am not crying.”

“A thousand reasons!” cried Olga Ivanovna. “The chief one is that you are weary of me. Yes!” she said, and broke into sobs. “If one is to tell the truth, you are ashamed of our love. You keep trying to prevent the artists from noticing it, though it is impossible to conceal it, and they have known all about it for ever so long.”

“Olga, one thing I beg you,” said the artist in an imploring voice, laying his hand on his heart⁠—“one thing; don’t worry me! I want nothing else from you!”

“But swear that you love me still!”

“This is agony!” the artist hissed through his teeth, and he jumped up. “It will end by my throwing myself in the Volga or going out of my mind! Let me alone!”

“Come, kill me, kill me!” cried Olga Ivanovna. “Kill me!”

She sobbed again, and went behind the screen. There was a swish of rain on the straw thatch of