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

about? Yes.⁠ ⁠… In these hard times hanging is too good for Zagvozdkin.⁠ ⁠… He is a fool and a scoundrel.⁠ ⁠… No better than a fool. If I asked him for a loan without security⁠—why, a child could see that he runs no risk whatever. He doesn’t understand, the ass! For ten thousand he would have got a hundred. In a year he would have another hundred thousand. I asked, I talked⁠ ⁠… but he wouldn’t give it me, the blockhead.”

“I hope you did not ask him for a loan in my name.”

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… A queer question.⁠ ⁠…” Mari d’elle is offended. “Anyway he would sooner give me ten thousand than you. You are a woman, and I am a man anyway, a businesslike person. And what a scheme I propose to him! Not a bubble, not some chimera, but a sound thing, substantial! If one could hit on a man who would understand, one might get twenty thousand for the idea alone! Even you would understand if I were to tell you about it. Only you⁠ ⁠… don’t chatter about it⁠ ⁠… not a word⁠ ⁠… but I fancy I have talked to you about it already. Have I talked to you about sausage-skins?”

“M’m⁠ ⁠… by and by.”

“I believe I have.⁠ ⁠… Do you see the point of it? Now the provision shops and the sausage-makers get their sausage-skins locally, and pay a high price for them. Well, but if one were to bring sausage-skins from the Caucasus where they are worth nothing, and where they are thrown away, then⁠ ⁠… where do you suppose the sausage-makers would buy their skins, here in the slaughterhouses or from me? From me, of course! Why, I shall sell them ten times as cheap! Now let us look at it like this: every year in Petersburg and Moscow and in other centres these same skins would be bought to the⁠ ⁠… to the sum of five hundred thousand, let us suppose. That’s the minimum. Well, and if.⁠ ⁠…”

“You can tell me tomorrow⁠ ⁠… later on.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, that’s true. You are sleepy, pardon, I am just going⁠ ⁠… say what you like, but with capital you can do good business everywhere, wherever you go.⁠ ⁠… With capital even out of cigarette ends one may make a million.⁠ ⁠… Take your theatrical business now. Why, for example, did Lentovsky come to grief? It’s very simple. He did not go the right way to work from the very first. He had no capital and he went headlong to the dogs.⁠ ⁠… He ought first to have secured his capital, and then to have gone slowly and cautiously.⁠ ⁠… Nowadays, one can easily make money by a theatre, whether it is a private one or a people’s one.⁠ ⁠… If one produces the right plays, charges a low price for admission, and hits the public fancy, one may put a hundred thousand in one’s pocket the first year.⁠ ⁠… You don’t understand, but I am talking sense.⁠ ⁠… You see you are fond of hoarding capital; you are no better than that fool Zagvozdkin, you heap it up and don’t know what for.⁠ ⁠… You won’t listen, you don’t want to.⁠ ⁠… If you were to put it into circulation, you wouldn’t have to be rushing all over the place.⁠ ⁠… You see for a private theatre, five thousand would be enough for a beginning.⁠ ⁠… Not like Lentovsky, of course, but on a modest scale in a small way. I have got a manager already, I have looked at a suitable building.⁠ ⁠… It’s only the money I haven’t got.⁠ ⁠… If only you understood things you would have parted with your five percents⁠ ⁠… your Preference shares.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, merci.⁠ ⁠… You have fleeced me enough already.⁠ ⁠… Let me alone, I have been punished already.⁠ ⁠…”

“If you are going to argue like a woman, then of course⁠ ⁠…” sighs Nikitin, getting up. “Of course.⁠ ⁠…”

“Let me alone.⁠ ⁠… Come, go away and don’t keep me awake.⁠ ⁠… I am sick of listening to your nonsense.”

“H’m.⁠ ⁠… To be sure⁠ ⁠… of course! Fleeced⁠ ⁠… plundered.⁠ ⁠… What we give we remember, but we don’t remember what we take.”

“I have never taken anything from you.”

“Is that so? But when we weren’t a celebrated singer, at whose expense did we live then? And who, allow me to ask, lifted you out of beggary and secured your happiness? Don’t you remember that?”

“Come, go to bed. Go along and sleep it off.”

“Do you mean to say you think I am drunk?⁠ ⁠… if I am so low in the eyes of such a grand lady⁠ ⁠… I can go away altogether.”

“Do. A good thing too.”

“I will, too. I have humbled myself enough. And I will go.”

“Oh, my God! Oh, do go, then! I shall be delighted!”

“Very well, we shall see.”

Nikitin mutters something to himself, and, stumbling over the chairs, goes out of the bedroom. Then sounds reach her from the entry of whispering, the shuffling of goloshes and a door being shut. Mari d’elle has taken offence in earnest and gone out.

“Thank God, he has gone!” thinks the singer. “Now I can sleep.”

And as she falls asleep she thinks of her mari d’elle, what sort of a man he is, and how this affliction has come upon her. At one time he used to live at Tchernigov, and had a situation there as a bookkeeper. As an ordinary obscure individual and not the mari d’elle, he had been quite endurable: he used to go to his work and take his salary, and all his whims and projects went no further than a new guitar, fashionable trousers, and an amber cigarette-holder. Since he had become “the husband of a celebrity” he was completely transformed. The singer remembered that when first she told him she was going on the stage he had made a fuss, been indignant, complained to her parents, turned her out of the house. She had been obliged to go on the stage without his permission. Afterwards, when he learned from the papers and from various people that she was earning big sums, he had “forgiven her,” abandoned bookkeeping,