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

“I certainly saw you there. Isn’t your name Vassilyev?”

“If it is, what of it? It makes it no better that you should know me.”

“No, but I just asked you.”

Vassilyev closed his eyes and, as though offended, turned his face to the back of the sofa.

“I don’t understand your curiosity,” he muttered. “You’ll be asking me next what it was drove me to commit suicide!”

Before a minute had passed, he turned round towards me again, opened his eyes and said in a tearful voice:

“Excuse me for taking such a tone, but you’ll admit I’m right! To ask a convict how he got into prison, or a suicide why he shot himself is not generous⁠ ⁠… and indelicate. To think of gratifying idle curiosity at the expense of another man’s nerves!”

“There is no need to excite yourself.⁠ ⁠… It never occurred to me to question you about your motives.”

“You would have asked.⁠ ⁠… It’s what people always do. Though it would be no use to ask. If I told you, you would not believe or understand.⁠ ⁠… I must own I don’t understand it myself.⁠ ⁠… There are phrases used in the police reports and newspapers such as: ‘unrequited love,’ and ‘hopeless poverty,’ but the reasons are not known.⁠ ⁠… They are not known to me, nor to you, nor to your newspaper offices, where they have the impudence to write ‘The diary of a suicide.’ God alone understands the state of a man’s soul when he takes his own life; but men know nothing about it.”

“That is all very nice,” I said, “but you oughtn’t to talk.⁠ ⁠…”

But my suicide could not be stopped, he leaned his head on his fist, and went on in the tone of some great professor:

“Man will never understand the psychological subtleties of suicide! How can one speak of reasons? Today the reason makes one snatch up a revolver, while tomorrow the same reason seems not worth a rotten egg. It all depends most likely on the particular condition of the individual at the given moment.⁠ ⁠… Take me for instance. Half an hour ago, I had a passionate desire for death, now when the candle is lighted, and you are sitting by me, I don’t even think of the hour of death. Explain that change if you can! Am I better off, or has my wife risen from the dead? Is it the influence of the light on me, or the presence of an outsider?”

“The light certainly has an influence⁠ ⁠…” I muttered for the sake of saying something. “The influence of light on the organism.⁠ ⁠…”

“The influence of light.⁠ ⁠… We admit it! But you know men do shoot themselves by candlelight! And it would be ignominious indeed for the heroes of your novels if such a trifling thing as a candle were to change the course of the drama so abruptly. All this nonsense can be explained perhaps, but not by us. It’s useless to ask questions or give explanations of what one does not understand.⁠ ⁠…”

“Forgive me,” I said, “but⁠ ⁠… judging by the expression of your face, it seems to me that at this moment you⁠ ⁠… are posing.”

“Yes,” Vassilyev said, startled. “It’s very possible! I am naturally vain and fatuous. Well, explain it, if you believe in your power of reading faces! Half an hour ago I shot myself, and just now I am posing.⁠ ⁠… Explain that if you can.”

These last words Vassilyev pronounced in a faint, failing voice. He was exhausted, and sank into silence. A pause followed. I began scrutinising his face. It was as pale as a dead man’s. It seemed as though life were almost extinct in him, and only the signs of the suffering that the “vain and fatuous” man was feeling betrayed that it was still alive. It was painful to look at that face, but what must it have been for Vassilyev himself who yet had the strength to argue and, if I were not mistaken, to pose?

“You here⁠—are you here?” he asked suddenly, raising himself on his elbow. “My God, just listen!”

I began listening. The rain was pattering angrily on the dark window, never ceasing for a minute. The wind howled plaintively and lugubriously.

“ ‘And I shall be whiter than snow, and my ears will hear gladness and rejoicing.’ ” Madame Mimotih, who had returned, was reading in the drawing room in a languid, weary voice, neither raising nor dropping the monotonous dreary key.

“It is cheerful, isn’t it?” whispered Vassilyev, turning his frightened eyes towards me. “My God, the things a man has to see and hear! If only one could set this chaos to music! As Hamlet says, ‘it would⁠—’ ”

“Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed, The very faculties of eyes and ears.”

“How well I should have understood that music then! How I should have felt it! What time is it?”

“Five minutes to three.”

“Morning is still far off. And in the morning there’s the funeral. A lovely prospect! One follows the coffin through the mud and rain. One walks along, seeing nothing but the cloudy sky and the wretched scenery. The muddy mutes, taverns, woodstacks.⁠ ⁠… One’s trousers drenched to the knees. The never-ending streets. The time dragging out like eternity, the coarse people. And on the heart a stone, a stone!”

After a brief pause he suddenly asked: “Is it long since you saw General Luhatchev?”

“I haven’t seen him since last summer.”

“He likes to be cock of the walk, but he is a nice little old chap. And are you still writing?”

“Yes, a little.”

“Ah.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember how I pranced about like a needle, like an enthusiastic ass at those private theatricals when I was courting Zina? It was stupid, but it was good, it was fun.⁠ ⁠… The very memory of it brings back a whiff of spring.⁠ ⁠… And now! What a cruel change of scene! There is a subject for you! Only don’t you go in for writing ‘the diary of a suicide.’ That’s vulgar and conventional. You make something humorous of it.”

“Again you are⁠ ⁠… posing,” I said. “There’s nothing humorous in your