Fifty-Two Stories

Here it is—the train; its windows, shot with bright light like the crosses on the church, were painful to look at. On the rear platform of one of the first-class carriages a lady was standing, and Marya Vassilyevna caught a passing glimpse of her: Mother! What a resemblance! Her mother had the same fluffy hair, exactly the same forehead and tilt of the head. And for the first time in those thirteen years she pictured to herself, vividly, with striking clarity, her mother, father, brother, the apartment in Moscow, the aquarium with its fish, and all to the last detail; she suddenly heard the piano playing, her father’s voice, she felt herself as she was then, young, beautiful, dressed up, in a bright, warm room, amidst her family; a feeling of joy and happiness suddenly came over her; in ecstasy she pressed her palms to her temples and called out tenderly, imploringly:

“Mama!”

And she began to weep, not knowing why. Just then Khanov drove up in his coach and four, and, seeing him, she imagined such happiness as had never been, and she smiled and nodded to him as an equal and intimate, and it seemed to her that the sky, and all the windows, and the trees shone with her happiness, her triumph. Yes, her father and mother had never died, she had never been a teacher, it had all been a long, strange, oppressive dream, and now she was awake.

“Vassilyevna, get in!”

And suddenly it all vanished. The barrier was slowly rising. Marya Vassilyevna, trembling, freezing cold, got into the cart. The coach and four crossed the rails, Semyon followed them. The watchman at the crossing took off his hat.

“And here’s Vyazovye. We’ve arrived.”

1897

ABOUT LOVE¹

FOR LUNCH THE NEXT DAY we were served very tasty little patties, crayfish, and lamb cutlets; and while we were eating, the cook Nikanor came upstairs to ask what the guests would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and small eyes, clean-shaven, and it seemed that his moustache was not shaved, but plucked.

Alekhin told us that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with this cook. Since he was a drunkard and had a violent temper, she did not want to marry him, but agreed to live just so. He was very pious, and his religious convictions did not allow him to live just so; he demanded that she marry him, and would not have it otherwise, and he yelled at her when he was drunk and even beat her. When he was drunk, she hid upstairs and wept, and then Alekhin and the servants did not leave the house, so as to defend her if need be.

The talk turned to love.

“How love is born,” said Alekhin, “why Pelageya did not fall in love with someone else, who suited her better in her inner and outer qualities, but fell in love precisely with Nikanor, this ugly mug—here everybody calls him ‘ugly mug’—insofar as questions of personal happiness are important in love—all this is unknown and can be interpreted any way you like. Up to now only one unquestionable truth has been uttered about love, that ‘this is a great mystery,’² and all the rest that has been written and said about love is not an answer, but a posing of questions that still remain unanswered. An explanation that seems suited to one case is not suited to a dozen others, and the best thing, in my opinion, is to explain each case separately, without trying to generalize. We ought, as doctors say, to individualize each separate case.”

“Absolutely right,” Burkin agreed.

“We decent Russian people entertain a partiality for these questions that remain without answers. Love is usually poeticized, adorned with roses, with nightingales, but we Russians adorn our loves with these fatal questions, and on top of that choose the most uninteresting of them. In Moscow, when I was still a student, I had a life companion, a nice lady, who, each time I held her in my arms, thought about how much money I’d allow her a month and what was the price of beef per pound. So we, when we love, never stop asking ourselves questions: Is this honorable or dishonorable, intelligent or stupid, what will this love lead to, and so on. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I don’t know, but that it’s disrupting, unsatisfying, annoying—that I do know.”

It looked as though he wanted to tell some story. People who live alone always have something in their hearts that they are eager to tell about. In town, bachelors purposely go to the public baths and to restaurants just in order to talk, and they sometimes tell very interesting stories to the bath attendants and waiters, while in the country they usually pour out their souls to their guests. Now in the window gray sky could be seen and trees wet with rain, and in such weather there was nothing left for us to do but tell and listen.