Fifty-Two Stories

Fedyushka walked beside him wearing his father’s cap. Kashtanka watched their backs, and it seemed to her that she had been happily following them all this time, and that her life had not been interrupted for a single moment.

She remembered the little room with dirty wallpaper, the goose, Fyodor Timofeyich, the tasty dinners, the lessons, the circus, but it all now seemed to her like a long, confused, and painful dream…

1887

THE NAME-DAY PARTY

I

After her husband’s name-day dinner, with its eight courses and endless conversation, his wife, Olga Mikhailovna, went out to the garden. The obligation of constant smiling and talking, the clatter of dishes, the witlessness of the servants, the long breaks between courses, and the corset she had put on to conceal her pregnancy from the guests, had wearied her to the point of exhaustion. She wanted to get far away from the house, to sit in the shade and rest in thoughts of the baby who was to be born to her in about two months. She was used to having these thoughts come to her when she turned from the big avenue to the narrow path on the left; there, in the dense shade of plum and cherry trees, dry branches scratched her shoulders and neck, cobwebs clung to her face, and in her thoughts arose the image of a little person of indefinite sex, with vague features, and it would begin to seem to her that it was not the cobwebs tenderly tickling her face and neck, but that little person; and when, at the end of the path, a flimsy wattle fence appeared, and beyond it fat-bellied beehives with tile lids, when the motionless, stagnant air began to smell of hay and honey, and she could hear the meek buzzing of bees, the little person would take complete possession of Olga Mikhailovna. She would sit down on the bench by a hut of woven willow and begin to think.

This time, too, she came to the bench, sat down, and began to think; but instead of the little person, her imagination pictured the big people whom she had just left. It troubled her deeply that she, the hostess, had abandoned her guests; she also remembered how at dinner her husband Pyotr Dmitrich and her uncle Nikolai Nikolaich had argued over trial by jury, publishing, and women’s education. Her husband, as usual, had argued in order to show off his conservative views before the guests, and above all in order to disagree with her uncle, whom he disliked. Her uncle had contradicted him and picked on his every word, in order to show the guests that he, the uncle, in spite of his fifty-nine years, still preserved a youthful freshness of spirit and freedom of thought. And towards the end of the dinner Olga Mikhailovna herself could not hold back and began a lame defense of women’s education, not because such education needed defending, but simply because she wanted to annoy her husband, who, in her opinion, was not right. The guests were tired of the argument, but they all found it necessary to mix in and talked a great deal, though none of them cared either about trial by jury or about women’s education…

Olga Mikhailovna was sitting on the near side of the wattle fence by the hut. The sun was hidden behind the clouds, the trees and the air were overcast, as before rain, but despite that it was hot and stifling. The hay that had been cut under the trees on the eve of St. Peter’s day¹ had not been gathered and lay sadly, dotted with faded flowers, giving off a heavy, sickly smell. It was quiet. Beyond the wattle fence bees buzzed monotonously…

Unexpectedly, she heard footsteps and voices. Someone was walking down the path to the apiary.

“It’s stifling!” a woman’s voice said. “Do you think it will rain?”

“It will, my sweet, but not before nightfall,” languidly replied a very familiar male voice. “There’ll be a good downpour.”

Olga Mikhailovna decided that if she quickly hid in the hut, they would not notice her and would pass by, and she would not have to talk and force herself to smile. She picked up her skirt, bent over and went into the hut. Instantly she felt hot, stifling air, like steam, on her face, neck, and arms. Had it not been for the stuffiness and the stale smell of rye bread, dill, and willow, which took her breath away, here, under the thatched roof and in the semi-darkness, would have been an excellent place to hide from the guests and think about the little person. Cozy and quiet.

“What a nice little spot this is!” said the woman’s voice. “Let’s sit here a while, Pyotr Dmitrich.”

Olga Mikhailovna began to look through a gap between two willow switches. She saw her husband, Pyotr Dmitrich, and a guest, Lyubochka Scheller, a seventeen-year-old girl who had recently graduated from boarding school. Pyotr Dmitrich, his hat pushed back on his head, languid and lazy from having drunk a lot at dinner, slouched about by the wattle fence, raking the hay into a pile with his foot; Lyubochka, rosy from the heat and as pretty as ever, stood with her hands behind her back and followed the lazy movements of his big, handsome body.