Translated by Constance Garnett
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Anton Chekhov – A Tedious Story – Contents
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V
There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and wind, which the peasants call “sparrow-nights.” There was one such sparrow-night in my own personal life….
I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge, ill-boding fire in the sky.
I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road, the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that everything is looking at me and listening for me to die.
Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin, my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred, and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them.
What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.
I hide my head under the pillow, shut my eyes and wait, wait…. My spine is cold. It almost contracts within me. And I feel that death will approach me only from behind, very quietly.
“Kivi, kivi.” A squeak sounds in the stillness of the night. I do not know whether it is in my heart or in the street.
God, how awful! I would drink some more water; but now I dread opening my eyes, and fear to raise my head. The terror is unaccountable, animal. I cannot understand why I am afraid. Is it because I want to live, or because a new and unknown pain awaits me?
Upstairs, above the ceiling, a moan, then a laugh … I listen. A little after steps sound on the staircase. Someone hurries down, then up again. In a minute steps sound downstairs again. Someone stops by my door and listens.
“Who’s there?” I call.
The door opens. I open my eyes boldly and see my wife. Her face is pale and her eyes red with weeping.
“You’re not asleep, Nicolai Stiepanovich?” she asks.
“What is it?”
“For God’s sake go down to Liza. Something is wrong with her.”
“Very well … with pleasure,” I murmur, very glad that I am not alone. “Very well … immediately.”
As I follow my wife I hear what she tells me, and from agitation understand not a word. Bright spots from her candle dance over the steps of the stairs; our long shadows tremble; my feet catch in the skirts of my dressing-gown. My breath goes, and it seems to me that someone is chasing me, trying to seize my back. “I shall die here on the staircase, this second,” I think, “this second.” But we have passed the staircase, the dark hall with the Italian window and we go into Liza’s room. She sits in bed in her chemise; her bare legs hang down and she moans.
“Oh, my God … oh, my God!” she murmurs, half shutting her eyes from our candles. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Liza, my child,” I say, “what’s the matter?”
Seeing me, she calls out and falls on my neck.
“Papa darling,” she sobs. “Papa dearest … my sweet. I don’t know what it is…. It hurts.”
She embraces me, kisses me and lisps endearments which I heard her lisp when she was still a baby.
“Be calm, my child. God’s with you,” I say. “You mustn’t cry. Something hurts me too.”
I try to cover her with the bedclothes; my wife gives her to drink; and both of us jostle in confusion round the bed. My shoulders push into hers, and at that moment I remember how we used to bathe our children.
“But help her, help her!” my wife implores. “Do something!” And what can I do? Nothing. There is some weight on the girl’s soul; but I understand nothing, know nothing and can only murmur:
“It’s nothing, nothing…. It will pass…. Sleep, sleep.”
As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and irresolute, then aloud, in two voices. I never put any value on such signs as dogs’ whining or screeching owls; but now my heart contracts painfully, and I hasten to explain the howling.
“Nonsense,” I think. “It’s the influence of one organism on another. My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to the dog. That’s all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and previsions.”
A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still.
There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings in one’s ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed…. The dawn is still far away.
But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” I hear a whisper. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!”
I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window, close against the wall stands a woman in a blade dress. She is brightly lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale, stem and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles.
“It is I….” she says, “I … Katy!”
In the moon all women’s eyes are big and black, people are taller and paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the first moment.
“What’s the matter?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “I suddenly felt so dreary … I could not bear it. So I came here. There’s a light in your window … and I decided to knock…. Forgive me…. Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are you doing now?”
“Nothing. Insomnia.”
Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of confidence.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” she says imploringly, stretching out both her hands to me. “Dear, I beg you … I implore…. If you do not despise my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you.”
“What is it?”
“Take my money.”
“What next? What’s the good of your money to me?”
“You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will take it? Yes? Dear … Yes?”
She looks into my face eagerly and repeats:
“Yes? You will take it?”
“No, my dear, I won’t take it….”, I say. “Thank you.”
She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my refusal would not allow any further talk of money.
“Go home to sleep,” I say. “I’ll see you to-morrow.”
“It means, you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks sadly.
“I don’t say that. But your money is no good to me.”
“Forgive me,” she says lowering her voice by a full octave. “I understand you. To be obliged to a person like me … a retired actress… But good-bye.”
And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say “Good-bye.”
Russian Literature – Children Books – Russian Poetry – Anton Chekhov – A Tedious Story – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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