Читать книгу The Best Works of Anton Chekhov - Anton Chekhov - Страница 10

Table of Contents

The Count’s gardens in which we were walking demand special description for their lushness and splendour. From a botanical or an economical point of view, and in many other ways, they are richer and grander than any other gardens I have ever seen. Besides the avenue already mentioned with its green vaults, you found in them everything that capricious indulgence can demand from pleasure gardens. You found here every variety of indigenous and foreign fruit tree, beginning with the wild cherry and plum and finishing with apricots that were the size of a goose’s egg. You came across mulberry trees, barberry bushes, and even olive trees at every step… Here there were half-ruined, moss-grown grottoes, fountains, little ponds destined for goldfish and tame carp, hillocks, pavilions and costly conservatories… And all this rare luxury which had been collected by the hands of grandfathers and fathers, all this wealth of large, full roses, poetical grottoes and endless avenues had been barbarously abandoned, given over to thieves who attacked the trees with their axes, and to the rooks who unceremoniously built their ugly nests on the branches of rare trees! The lawful possessor of all this wealth walked beside me, and the muscles of his lean, satiated face were no more moved by the sight of this neglect, this crying human slovenliness, than if he had not been the owner of these gardens. Once only, by way of making some remark, he said to his bailiff that it would not be a bad thing if the paths were sanded. He noticed the absence of the sand that troubled nobody else, but not the bare trees that had been frozen in the hard winters, or the cows that were walking about in the garden. In reply to his remark, Urbenin said it would require ten men to keep the garden in order, and as his Excellency was not pleased to reside on his estate, the outlay on the garden would be a useless and unproductive luxury. The Count, of course, agreed with this argument.

‘Besides, I must confess I have no time for it!’ Urbenin said with a wave of the hand. ‘All the summer in the fields, and in winter selling the corn in town… There’s no time for gardens here!’

The charm of the principal, the so-called ‘main avenue’, consisted in its old broad-spreading limes, and in the masses of tulips that stretched out in two variegated borders at each side of its length and finished at the end in a yellow stone pavilion, which at one time had contained a refreshment room, billiards, skittles and other games. We wandered, somewhat aimlessly, towards this pavilion. At its door we were confronted by a reptile whose appearance somewhat unsettled the nerves of my companion, who was never very courageous.

‘A snake!’ the Count shrieked, seizing me by the hand and turning pale. ‘Look!’

The Pole stepped back, and then stood stock still with his arms outstretched as if he wanted to bar the way for the apparition. On the upper step of the crumbling stone stair there lay a young snake of our ordinary Russian species. When it saw us it raised its head and moved. The Count shrieked again and hid behind me.

‘Don’t be afraid, your Excellency…’ Urbenin said lazily as he placed his foot on the first step.

‘But if it bites?’

‘It won’t bite. Besides, the danger from the bite of these snakes is much exaggerated. I was once bitten by an old snake, and, as you see, I didn’t die. A man’s sting is worse than a snake’s!’ Urbenin said with a sigh, wishing to point a moral.

Indeed, the bailiff had not had time to mount two or three steps before the snake stretched out to its full length, and with the speed of lightning vanished into a crevice between two stones. When we entered the pavilion we were confronted by another creature. Lying on the torn and faded cloth of the old billiard table was an elderly man of middle height in a blue jacket, striped trousers, and a jockey cap. He was sleeping sweetly and quietly. Around his toothless gaping mouth and on his pointed nose flies were making themselves at home. Thin as a skeleton, with an open mouth, lying there immovable, he looked like a corpse that had only just been brought in from the mortuary to be dissected.

‘Franz!’ said Urbenin, poking him. ‘Franz!’

After being poked five or six times, Franz shut his mouth, sat up, looked round at us, and lay down again. A minute later his mouth was again open and the flies that were walking about his nose were again disturbed by the slight vibration of his snores.

‘He’s asleep, the dirty pig!’ Urbenin sighed.

‘Isn’t that our gardener, Tricher?’ the Count asked.

‘The very same… That’s how he is every day… He sleeps like a dead man all day and plays cards all night. I was told he gambled last night till six in the morning.’

‘What do they play?’

‘Games of hazard… Chiefly stukolka.’

‘Well, such gentlemen work badly. They draw their wages for nothing!’

‘It was not to complain, your Excellency,’ Urbenin hastened to say, ‘that I told you this, or to express my dissatisfaction; it was only… I am only sorry that so capable a man is a slave to his passions. He really is a hardworking man, capable too… He does not receive wages for nothing.’

We glanced again at the gambler Franz and left the pavilion. We then turned towards the garden gate and went into the fields.

There are few novels in which the garden gate does not play an important part. If you have not noticed this, you have only to inquire of my man Polycarp, who in his lifetime has swallowed multitudes of dreadful and not so dreadful novels, and he will doubtless confirm this insignificant but characteristic fact.

My novel has also not escaped the inevitable garden gate. But my gate is different from others in this, that my pen will have to lead through it many unfortunate and scarcely any happy people; and even this in a direction contrary to the one found in other novels. And what is worse, I had once to describe this gate not as a novel-writer but as an examining magistrate. In my novel more criminals than lovers will pass through it.

A quarter of an hour later, supporting ourselves on our walking sticks, we wound our way up the hill to what is known as the ‘Stone Grave’. In the surrounding villages there is a legend that under this heap of stones there reposes the body of a Tartar Khan, who, fearing that after his death the enemy would desecrate his ashes, had ordered that a mound of stones was to be made above his body. This legend, however, is scarcely correct. The layers of stone, their size and relative position, exclude the possibility of man’s hand having had a part in the formation of this mound. It stands solitary in the midst of fields and has the aspect of an overturned dome.

From the top of this mound we could see the whole of the lake’s magnificent extent, and grasp its indescribable beauty. The sun, no longer reflected in it, had set, leaving behind a broad purple stripe that illuminated the surroundings with a pleasing rosy-yellow tint. The Count’s manor and homestead with their houses, church and gardens, lay at our feet, and on the other side of the lake the little village where it was my fate to live looked grey in the distance. As before, the surface of the lake was without a ripple. Old Mikhey’s little boats, separated from one another, were hurrying towards the shore.

To the left of my little village the buildings of the railway station stood out dark beneath the smoke from the engines, and behind us at the foot of the Stone Grave the road was bordered on either side by towering old poplars. This road leads to the Count’s forest that extends to the very horizon.

The Count and I stood on the top of the hill. Urbenin and the Pole being heavy men preferred to wait for us on the road below.

‘Who’s that cove?’ I asked the Count, nodding towards the Pole. ‘Where did you pick him up?’

‘He’s a very nice fellow, Serezha; very nice!’ the Count said in an agitated voice. ‘You’ll soon be the best of friends.’

‘Oh, that’s not likely! Why does he never speak?’

‘He is silent by nature! But he’s very clever!’

‘But what sort of a man is he?’

‘I became acquainted with him in Moscow. He is very nice. You’ll hear all about it afterwards, Serezha; don’t ask now. Let’s go down.’

We descended the hill and went along the road towards the forest. It began to be perceptibly darker. The cry of the cuckoo, and the tired vocal warbles of a possibly youthful nightingale were heard in the forest.

‘Hollo! Hollo! Catch me!’ we heard the high-pitched voice of a child shout as we approached the forest.

A little girl of about five with hair as white as flax, dressed in a sky-blue frock, ran out of the wood. When she saw us she laughed aloud, and with a skip and a jump put her arms round Urbenin’s knee. Urbenin lifted her up and kissed her cheek.

‘My daughter Sasha!’ he said. ‘Let me introduce her!’

Sasha was pursued out of the wood by a schoolboy of about fifteen, Urbenin’s son. When he saw us he pulled off his cap hesitatingly, put it on, and pulled it off again. He was followed quietly by what looked like a patch of red, which attracted our attention. ‘What a beautiful vision!’ the Count exclaimed, catching hold of my hand. ‘Look! How charming! Who is this girl? I did not know that my forests were inhabited by such naiads!’

I looked round at Urbenin in order to ask him who this girl was, and, strange to say, it was only at that moment I noticed that he was terribly drunk. He was as red as a crawfish, he tottered and, seizing my elbow, he whispered into my ear, exhaling the fumes of spirit on me:

‘Sergey Petrovich, I implore you prevent the Count from making any further remarks about this girl! He may from habit say too much; she is a most worthy person!’

This ‘most worthy person’ was represented by a girl of about nineteen, with beautiful fair hair, blue eyes and long curls. She was dressed in a bright red frock, made in a fashion that was neither that of a child nor of a young girl. Her legs, straight as needles, in red stockings, were shod with tiny shoes that were small as a child’s. All the time I was admiring her she moved about her well-rounded shoulders coquettishly, as if they were cold or as if my gaze disturbed her.

‘Such a young face, and what a figure!’ whispered the Count, who from his earliest youth had lost the capacity of respecting women, and never looked at them otherwise than from the point of view of a spoilt animal.

I remember that I felt a surge of warmth in my heart. I was still a poet, and in the company of the woods, of a May night, and the first twinkling of the evening stars, I could only look at a woman as a poet does… I looked at ‘the girl in red’ with the same veneration I was accustomed to look upon the forests, the hills and the blue sky. I still had a certain amount of the sentimentality I had inherited from my German mother.

‘Who is she?’ the Count asked.

‘She is the daughter of our forester Skvortsov, your Excellency!’ Urbenin replied.

‘Is this the Olenka the one-eyed muzhik spoke of?’

‘Yes, he mentioned her name,’ the bailiff answered, looking at me with large, imploring eyes.

The girl in red let us go past her, turning away without taking any notice of us. Her eyes were looking at something at the side, but I, a man who knows women, felt her gaze resting on my face.

‘Which of them is the Count?’ I heard her whisper behind us.

‘That one with the long moustache,’ the schoolboy answered.

And we heard silvery laughter behind us. It was the laughter of disenchantment. She had thought that the Count, the owner of these immense forests and the broad lake, was I, and not that pigmy with the worn face and long moustache.

I heard a deep sigh issue from Urbenin’s powerful breast. That man of iron could scarcely move.

‘Dismiss the bailiff,’ I whispered to the Count. ‘He is ill or - drunk.’

‘Pëtr Egorych, you seem to be unwell,’ the Count said, turning to Urbenin. ‘I do not require you just now, so I will not detain you any longer.’

‘Your Excellency need not trouble about me. Thank you for your attention, but I am not ill.’

I looked back. The girl in red had not moved, but was looking after us.

Poor, fair little head! Did I think on that quiet, peaceful May evening that she would afterwards become the heroine of my troubled romance?

Now, while I write these lines, the autumn rain beats fiercely against my warm windows, and the wind howls above me. I gaze at the dark window and on the dark background of night beyond, trying by the strength of my imagination to conjure up again the charming image of my heroine… I see her with her innocent, childish, naive, kind little face and loving eyes, and I wish to throw down my pen and tear up and burn all that I have already written.

But here, next to my inkstand, is her photograph. Here, the fair little head is represented in all the vain majesty of a beautiful but deeply-fallen woman. Her weary eyes, proudly lecherous, are still. Here she is the serpent, the harm of whose bite Urbenin would scarcely have called exaggerated.

She gave a kiss to the storm, and the storm broke the flower at the very roots. Much was taken, but too dearly was it paid for. The reader will forgive her her sins!