Translated by Constance Garnett
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Anton Chekhov – The Fit – Contents
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V
Pressing dose to the fence, he stood near to the house and waited for his friends to come out. The sounds of the pianos and fiddles, gay, bold, impudent and sad, mingled into chaos in the air, and this confusion was, as before, as if an unseen orchestra were tuning in the dark over the roof-tops. If he looked up towards the darkness, then all the background was scattered with white, moving points: it was snowing. The flakes, coming into the light, spun lazily in the air like feathers, and still more lazily fell. Flakes of snow crowded whirling about Vassiliev, and hung on his beard, his eyelashes, his eyebrows. The cabmen, the horses, and the passers-by, all were white.
“How dare the snow fall in this street?” thought Vassiliev. “A curse on these houses.”
Because of his headlong rush down the staircase his feet failed him from weariness; he was out of breath as if he had climbed a mountain. His heart beat so loud that he could hear it. A longing came over him to get out of this street as soon as possible and go home; but still stronger was his desire to wait for his friends and to vent upon them his feeling of heaviness.
He had not understood many things in the houses. The souls of the perishing women were to him a mystery as before; but it was dear to him that the business was much worse than one would have thought. If the guilty woman who poisoned herself was called a prostitute, then it was hard to find a suitable name for all these creatures, who danced to the muddling music and said long, disgusting phrases. They were not perishing; they were already done for.
“Vice is here,” he thought; “but there is neither confession of sin nor hope of salvation. They are bought and sold, drowned in wine and torpor, and they are dull and indifferent as sheep and do not understand. My God, my God!”
It was so dear to him that all that which is called human dignity, individuality, the image and likeness of God, was here dragged down to the gutter, as they say of drunkards, and that not only the street and the stupid women were to blame for it.
A crowd of students white with snow, talking and laughing gaily, passed by. One of them, a tall, thin man, peered into Vassiliev’s face and said drunkenly, “He’s one of ours. Logged, old man? Aha! my lad. Never mind. Walk up, never say die, uncle.”
He took Vassiliev by the shoulders and pressed his cold wet moustaches to his cheek, then slipped, staggered, brandished his arms, and cried out:
“Steady there—don’t fall.”
Laughing, he ran to join his comrades.
Through the noise the painter’s voice became audible.
“You dare beat women! I won’t have it. Go to Hell. You’re regular swine.”
The medico appeared at the door of the house. He glanced round and on seeing Vassiliev, said in alarm:
“Is that you? My God, it’s simply impossible to go anywhere with Yegor. I can’t understand a chap like that. He kicked up a row—can’t you hear? Yegor,” he called from the door. “Yegor!”
“I won’t have you hitting women.” The painter’s shrill voice was audible again from upstairs.
Something heavy and bulky tumbled down the staircase. It was the painter coming head over heels. He had evidently been thrown out.
He lifted himself up from the ground, dusted his hat, and with an angry indignant face, shook his fist at the upstairs.
“Scoundrels! Butchers! Bloodsuckers! I won’t have you hitting a weak, drunken woman. Ah, you….”
“Yegor … Yegor!” the medico began to implore, “I give my word I’ll never go out with you again. Upon my honour, I won’t.”
The painter gradually calmed, and the friends went home.
“To these sad shores unknowing”—the medico began—”An unknown power entices….”
“Behold the mill,” the painter sang with him after a pause, “Now fallen into ruin.” How the snow is falling, most Holy Mother. Why did you go away, Grisha? You’re a coward; you’re only an old woman.”
Vassiliev was walking behind his friends. He stared at their backs and thought: “One of two things: either prostitution only seems to us an evil and we exaggerate it, or if prostitution is really such an evil as is commonly thought, these charming friends of mine are just as much slavers, violators, and murderers as the inhabitants of Syria and Cairo whose photographs appear in ‘The Field.’ They’re singing, laughing, arguing soundly now, but haven’t they just been exploiting starvation, ignorance, and stupidity? They have, I saw them at it. Where does their humanity, their science, and their painting come in, then? The science, art, and lofty sentiments of these murderers remind me of the lump of fat in the story. Two robbers killed a beggar in a forest; they began to divide his clothes between themselves and found in his bag a lump of pork fat. ‘In the nick of time,’ said one of them. ‘Let’s have a bite!’ ‘How can you?’ the other cried in terror. ‘Have you forgotten to-day’s Friday?’ So they refrained from eating. After having cut the man’s throat they walked out of the forest confident that they were pious fellows. These two are just the same. When they’ve paid for women they go and imagine they’re painters and scholars….
“Listen, you two,” he said angrily and sharply. “Why do you go to those places? Can’t you understand how horrible they are? Your medicine tells you every one of these women dies prematurely from consumption or something else; your arts tell you that she died morally still earlier. Each of them dies because during her lifetime she accepts on an average, let us say, five hundred men. Each of them is killed by five hundred men, and you’re amongst the five hundred. Now if each of you comes here and to places like this two hundred and fifty times in his lifetime, then it means that between you you have killed one woman. Can’t you understand that? Isn’t it horrible?”
“Ah, isn’t this awful, my God?”
“There, I knew it would end like this,” said the painter frowning. “We oughtn’t to have had anything to do with this fool of a blockhead. I suppose you think your head’s full of great thoughts and great ideas now. Devil knows what they are, but they’re not ideas. You’re staring at me now with hatred and disgust; but if you want my opinion you’d better build twenty more of the houses than look like that. There’s more vice in your look than in the whole street. Let’s dear out, Volodya, damn him! He’s a fool. He’s a blockhead, and that’s all he is.”
“Human beings are always killing each other,” said the medico. “That is immoral, of course. But philosophy won’t help you. Good-bye!”
The friends parted at Trubnoi Square and went their way. Left alone, Vassiliev began to stride along the boulevard. He was frightened of the dark, frightened of the snow, which fell to the earth in little flakes, but seemed to long to cover the whole world; he was frightened of the street-lamps, which glimmered faintly through the clouds of snow. An inexplicable faint-hearted fear possessed his soul. Now and then people passed him; but he gave a start and stepped aside. It seemed to him that from everywhere there came and stared at him women, only women….
“It’s coming on,” he thought, “I’m going to have a fit.”
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Anton Chekhov – The Fit – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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