The Complete Short Novels by Anton Chekhov & Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky

Author:Anton Chekhov & Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 140003292X
Publisher: Everyman's Library
Published: 2010-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

VII

Now, as I write these lines, my hand is restrained by a fear nurtured in me since childhood—of appearing sentimental and ridiculous; when I would like to caress and speak tenderly, I'm unable to be sincere. It is precisely owing to this fear and lack of habit that I am quite unable to express with complete clarity what then happened in my soul.

I was not in love with Zinaida Fyodorovna, but the ordinary human feeling I nursed for her was much younger, fresher, and more joyful than Orlov's love.

In the mornings, working with the shoe brush or the broom, I waited with bated breath till I would at last hear her voice and footsteps. To stand and watch her as she had her coffee and then her breakfast, to help her into her fur coat in the front hall and put galoshes on her little feet while she leaned on my shoulder, then to wait till the porter rang from downstairs, to meet her at the door, rosy, chilled, powdered with snow, to hear her broken exclamations about the cold or the cabby—if you only knew how important it was for me! I would have liked to fall in love, to have my own family, would have liked my future wife to have exactly such a face, such a voice. I dreamed over dinner, and when I was sent out on some errand, and at night when I didn't sleep. Orlov squeamishly thrust aside female rags, children, cooking, copper pans, and I picked it all up and carefully cherished it in my reveries, loved it, asked fate for it, and dreamed of a wife, a nursery, a garden path, a little house...

I knew that, if I fell in love with her, I would not dare to count on such a miracle as requital, but this consideration did not trouble me. In my modest, quiet feeling, which resembled ordinary attachment, there was neither jealousy of Orlov nor even envy, since I realized that, for a crippled man like me, personal happiness was possible only in dreams.

When Zinaida Fyodorovna, waiting for her Georges at night, gazed fixedly into a book without turning the pages, or when she gave a start and grew pale because Polya was crossing the room, I suffered with her, and it would occur to me to lance this painful abscess quickly, to make it so that she should quickly learn all that was said here on Thursdays over supper, but—how to do it? More and more often it happened that I saw tears. During the first weeks, she laughed and sang her little song, even when Orlov was not at home, but after another month, there was a dreary silence in our apartment, broken only on Thursdays.

She flattered Orlov, and to obtain an insincere smile or a kiss from him, she went on her knees before him, fawning like a little dog. Going past a mirror, even when her heart was very heavy, she could not help glancing at herself and straightening her hair.

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