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

is looking for a job. Believe me, I can do as little for him as you can. I can give money, but that’s not what he wants⁠—I asked a well-known musician to help a poor violinist, and this is what he answered: ‘You apply to me just because you are not a musician yourself.’ In the same way I say to you that you apply for help to me so confidently because you’ve never been in the position of a rich man.”

“Why you bring in the comparison with a well-known musician I don’t understand!” said Yulia Sergeyevna, and she flushed crimson. “What has the well-known musician to do with it!”

Her face was quivering with hatred, and she dropped her eyes to conceal the feeling. And not only her husband, but all the men sitting at the table, knew what the look in her face meant.

“What has the well-known musician got to do with it?” she said slowly. “Why, nothing’s easier than helping someone poor.”

Silence followed. Pyotr handed the woodcock, but they all refused it, and ate nothing but salad. Laptev did not remember what he had said, but it was clear to him that it was not his words that were hateful, but the fact of his meddling in the conversation at all.

After supper he went into his study; intently, with a beating heart, expecting further humiliation, he listened to what was going on in the hall. An argument had sprung up there again. Then Yartsev sat down to the piano and played a sentimental song. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he could play and sing, and even perform conjuring tricks.

“You may please yourselves, my friends, but I’m not going to stay at home,” said Yulia. “We must go somewhere.”

They decided to drive out of town, and sent Kish to the merchant’s club to order a three-horse sledge. They did not ask Laptev to go with them because he did not usually join these expeditions, and because his brother was sitting with him; but he took it to mean that his society bored them, and that he was not wanted in their lighthearted youthful company. And his vexation, his bitter feeling, was so intense that he almost shed tears. He was positively glad that he was treated so ungraciously, that he was scorned, that he was a stupid, dull husband, a moneybag; and it seemed to him, that he would have been even more glad if his wife were to deceive him that night with his best friend, and were afterwards to acknowledge it, looking at him with hatred.⁠ ⁠… He was jealous on her account of their student friends, of actors, of singers, of Yartsev, even of casual acquaintances; and now he had a passionate longing for her really to be unfaithful to him. He longed to find her in another man’s arms, and to be rid of this nightmare forever. Fyodor was drinking tea, gulping it noisily. But he, too, got up to go.

“Our old father must have got cataract,” he said, as he put on his fur coat. “His sight has become very poor.”

Laptev put on his coat, too, and went out. After seeing his brother part of the way home, he took a sledge and drove to Yar’s.

“And this is family happiness!” he said, jeering at himself. “This is love!”

His teeth were chattering, and he did not know if it were jealousy or something else. He walked about near the tables; listened to a comic singer in the hall. He had not a single phrase ready if he should meet his own party; and he felt sure beforehand that if he met his wife, he would only smile pitifully and not cleverly, and that everyone would understand what feeling had induced him to come here. He was bewildered by the electric light, the loud music, the smell of powder, and the fact that the ladies he met looked at him. He stood at the doors trying to see and to hear what was going on in the private rooms, and it seemed to him that he was somehow playing a mean, contemptible part on a level with the comic singers and those ladies. Then he went to Strelna, but he found none of his circle there, either; and only when on the way home he was again driving up to Yar’s, a three-horse sledge noisily overtook him. The driver was drunk and shouting, and he could hear Yartsev laughing: “Ha, ha, ha!”

Laptev returned home between three and four. Yulia Sergeyevna was in bed. Noticing that she was not asleep, he went up to her and said sharply:

“I understand your repulsion, your hatred, but you might spare me before other people; you might conceal your feelings.”

She got up and sat on the bed with her legs dangling. Her eyes looked big and black in the lamplight.

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

He could not utter a single word from excitement and the trembling of his whole body; he stood facing her and was dumb. She trembled, too, and sat with the air of a criminal waiting for explanations.

“How I suffer!” he said at last, and he clutched his head. “I’m in hell, and I’m out of my mind.”

“And do you suppose it’s easy for me?” she asked, with a quiver in her voice. “God alone knows what I go through.”

“You’ve been my wife for six months, but you haven’t a spark of love for me in your heart. There’s no hope, not one ray of light! Why did you marry me?” Laptev went on with despair. “Why? What demon thrust you into my arms? What did you hope for? What did you want?”

She looked at him with terror, as though she were afraid he would kill her.

“Did I attract you? Did you like me?” he went on, gasping for breath. “No. Then what? What? Tell me what?” he cried. “Oh, the cursed money! The cursed money!”

“I swear to God, no!” she cried, and she crossed herself. She