Anton Chekhov

“ Masha and Kleopatra, both in white dresses, were sitting on the bank in the spreading shade of a willow, and Stepan was standing by them with his hands behind his back, and was saying:
"Are peasants men? They are not men, but, asking your pardon, wild beasts, impostors. What life has a peasant? Nothing but eating and drinking; all he cares for is victuals to be cheaper and swilling liquor at the tavern like a fool; and there's no conversation, no manners, no formality, nothing but ignorance! He lives in filth, his wife lives in filth, and his children live in filth. ”

“ As ill-luck would have it, the kerosene in my little lamp was
exhausted; it began to smoke, and was on the point of going out,
and the old hooks on the walls looked down sullenly, and their
shadows flickered.
"Have mercy on us," said my sister, sitting up. "Father is in
terrible distress and I am ill; I shall go out of my mind. What
will become of you?" she said, sobbing and stretching out her arms
to me. "I beg you, I implore you, for our dear mother's sake, I beg
you to go back to the office!"
"I can't, Kleopatra!" I said, feeling that a little more and I
should give way. "I cannot!" ”

“ I no longer lived in Great Dvoryansky Street, but in the suburb
with my old nurse Karpovna, a good-natured but gloomy old woman,
who always foreboded some harm, was afraid of all dreams, and even
in the bees and wasps that flew into her room saw omens of evil,
and the fact that I had become a workman, to her thinking, boded
nothing good.
"Your life is ruined," she would say, mournfully shaking her head,
"ruined."
Her adopted son Prokofy, a huge, uncouth, red-headed fellow of
thirty, with bristling moustaches, a butcher by trade, lived in the
little house with her. ”

“ It was a flat, cheerful country,
and in the distance there were the distinct outlines of the station,
of ancient barrows, and far-away homesteads. . . . How nice it was
out there in the open! And how I longed to be filled with the sense
of freedom, if only for that one morning, that I might not think
of what was being done in the town, not think of my needs, not feel
hungry! Nothing has so marred my existence as an acute feeling of
hunger, which made images of buckwheat porridge, rissoles, and baked
fish mingle strangely with my best thoughts. ”

“ I did not grieve for Dubetchnya. I grieved for my love which, too, was threatened with its autumn. What an immense happiness it is to love and be loved, and how awful to feel that one is slipping down from that high pinnacle!
Masha returned from the town towards the evening of the next day. She was displeased with something, but she concealed it, and only said, why was it all the window frames had been put in for the winter it was enough to suffocate one. I took out two frames. We were not hungry, but we sat down to supper.
"Go and wash your hands," said my wife; "you smell of putty." ”

“ He was stout and healthy, ruddy-cheeked and broad-chested, in a print cotton shirt and full trousers like a toy china sledge-driver. He had a curly, round beard--and not a single grey hair--a hooked nose, and clear, dark, guileless eyes.
"What can you do?" he went on. "There is nothing you can do! I am an engineer. I am a man of an assured position, but before they gave me a railway-line I was for years in harness; I have been a practical mechanic. For two years I worked in Belgium as an oiler. You can judge for yourself, my dear fellow, what kind of work can I offer you?" ”

“ My poor sister! One has to stupefy oneself with vodka, with cards, with scandal; one must become a scoundrel, a hypocrite, or go on drawing plans for years and years, so as not to notice all the horrors that lie hidden in these houses. Our town has existed for hundreds of years, and all that time it has not produced one man of service to our country--not one. You have stifled in the germ everything in the least living and bright. It's a town of shopkeepers, publicans, counting-house clerks, canting hypocrites ”

“ This part of the garden was
let to some shopkeepers of the town, and it was protected from
thieves and starlings by a feeble-minded peasant who lived in a
shanty in it.
The garden, growing more and more open, till it became definitely
a meadow, sloped down to the river, which was overgrown with green
weeds and osiers. Near the milldam was the millpond, deep and full
of fish; a little mill with a thatched roof was working away with
a wrathful sound, and frogs croaked furiously. ”

“ Absorbed
in our work we stood or sat motionless like statues; there was a
deathly silence in keeping with the cemetery, so that if a tool
fell, or a flame spluttered in the lamp, the noise of such sounds
rang out abrupt and resonant, and made us look round. After a long
silence we would hear a buzzing like the swarming of bees: it was
the requiem of a baby being chanted slowly in subdued voices in the
porch; or an artist, painting a dove with stars round it on a cupola
would begin softly whistling, and recollecting himself with a start
would at once relapse into silence ”

“ I loved the fields and meadows and kitchen gardens, but the peasant who turned up the soil with his plough and urged on his pitiful horse, wet and tattered, with his craning neck, was to me the expression of coarse, savage, ugly force, and every time I looked at his uncouth movements I involuntarily began thinking of the legendary life of the remote past, before men knew the use of fire. ”

“ We looked round our domain
and decided which should be her room, and which mine, where we would
have our avenue, our kitchen garden, our beehives.
We already had hens, ducks, and geese, which we loved because they
were ours. We had, all ready for sowing, oats, clover, timothy
grass, buckwheat, and vegetable seeds, and we always looked at all
these stores and discussed at length the crop we might get; and
everything Masha said to me seemed extraordinarily clever, and fine. ”

“ When you wouldn't go into the service, but became a house painter, Anyuta Blagovo and I knew from the beginning that you were right, but we were frightened to say so aloud. Tell me what force is it that hinders us from saying what one thinks? Take Anyuta Blagovo now, for instance. She loves you, she adores you, she knows you are right, she loves me too, like a sister, and knows that I am right, and I daresay in her soul envies me, but some force prevents her from coming to see us, she shuns us, she is afraid. ”

“ Karpovna is still alive and, as always, she loves and fears her Prokofy. When she sees me, she always shakes her head mournfully, and says with a sigh: "Your life is ruined."
On working days I am busy from morning till night. On holidays, in fine weather, I take my tiny niece (my sister reckoned on a boy, but the child is a girl) and walk in a leisurely way to the cemetery. There I stand or sit down, and stay a long time gazing at the grave that is so dear to me, and tell the child that her mother lies here.
Sometimes, by the graveside, I find Anyuta Blagovo. ”

“ In the big house opposite someone was playing the piano at Dolzhikov's. It was beginning to get dark, and stars were twinkling in the sky. Here my father, in an old top-hat with wide upturned brim, walked slowly by with my sister on his arm, bowing in response to greetings.
"Look up," he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the same umbrella with which he had beaten me that afternoon. "Look up at the sky! Even the tiniest stars are all worlds! How insignificant is man in comparison with the universe!" ”

“ When Masha heard about this, she would say to the doctor or my
sister indignantly:
"What beasts! It's awful! awful!"
And I heard her more than once express regret that she had ever
taken it into her head to build the school.
"You must understand," the doctor tried to persuade her, "that if
you build this school and do good in general, it's not for the sake
of the peasants, but in the name of culture, in the name of the
future; and the worse the peasants are the more reason for building
the school. Understand that!" ”

“ I, a proletarian, a house painter, went every day to rich people who were alien to me, and whom the whole town regarded as though they were foreigners, and every day I drank costly wines with them and ate unusual dainties --my conscience refused to be reconciled to it! On my way to the house I sullenly avoided meeting people, and looked at them from under my brows as though I really were a dissenter, and when I was going home from the engineer's I was ashamed of my well-fed condition. ”

“ We
must labour, we must sorrow, we must suffer sickness," he went on,
"and he who does not labour and sorrow will not gain the Kingdom
of Heaven. Woe, woe to them that are well fed, woe to the mighty,
woe to the rich, woe to the moneylenders! Not for them is the Kingdom
of Heaven. Lice eat grass, rust eats iron. . ."
"And lying the soul," my sister added laughing. I read the letter
through once more. At that moment there walked into the kitchen a
soldier who had been bringing us twice a week parcels of tea, French
bread and game, which smelt of scent, from some unknown giver. ”

“ I remember with what emotion I went on to the Azhogins', how my heart throbbed and fluttered as I mounted the stairs, and stood waiting a long while on the landing at the top, not daring to enter that temple of the muses! In the big room there were lighted candles everywhere, on a little table, on the piano, and on the stage, everywhere in threes; and the first performance was fixed for the thirteenth, and now the first rehearsal was on a Monday, an unlucky day. All part of the war against superstition! All the devotees of the scenic art were gathered together ”

“ At first I had intended to fit up an abode for us two, Masha and me, in the lodge at the side opposite Madame Tcheprakov's lodge, but it appeared that the doves and the ducks had been living there for a long time, and it was impossible to clean it without destroying a great number of nests. There was nothing for it but to live in the comfortless rooms of the big house with the sunblinds. The peasants called the house the palace; there were more than twenty rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano and a child's arm-chair lying in the attic. ”

“ What is wanted, first of all, is a loud, energetic
propaganda. Why is it that art--music, for instance--is so
living, so popular, and in reality so powerful? Because the musician
or the singer affects thousands at once. Precious, precious art!"
she went on, looking dreamily at the sky. "Art gives us wings and
carries us far, far away! Anyone who is sick of filth, of petty,
mercenary interests, anyone who is revolted, wounded, and indignant,
can find peace and satisfaction only in the beautiful."
When we drove into Kurilovka the weather was bright and joyous. ”

“ He was wearing a military tunic over a silk shirt and high boots of patent leather.
"I have come to see you," he began, shaking my hand heartily like a student. "I am hearing about you every day, and I have been meaning to come and have a heart-to-heart talk, as they say. The boredom in the town is awful, there is not a living soul, no one to say a word to. It's hot, Holy Mother," he went on, taking off his tunic and sitting in his silk shirt. "My dear fellow, let me talk to you."
I was dull myself, and had for a long time been craving for the society of someone not a house painter. ”

“ So
as not to be tiresome I drank claret too.
"Talented, richly endowed natures," said Miss Dolzhikov, "know how
to live, and go their own way; mediocre people, like myself for
instance, know nothing and can do nothing of themselves; there is
nothing left for them but to discern some deep social movement, and
to float where they are carried by it."
"How can one discern what doesn't exist?" asked the doctor.
"We think so because we don't see it."
"Is that so? The social movements are the invention of the new
literature. There are none among us." ”

“ Somewhere they were threshing; there was a smell of rye straw. A
mountain ash was bright red behind the hurdle fences, and all the
trees wherever one looked were ruddy or golden. They were ringing
the bells, they were carrying the ikons to the school, and we could
hear them sing: "Holy Mother, our Defender," and how limpid the air
was, and how high the doves were flying.
The service was being held in the classroom. Then the peasants of
Kurilovka brought Masha the ikon, and the peasants of Dubetchnya
offered her a big loaf and a gilt salt cellar. And Masha broke into
sobs. ”

“ I don't want to live in the village, and no one has the right to force me. They say--my wife. They say you are bound to live in your cottage with your wife. But why so? I am not her hired man."
"Tell me, Stepan, did you marry for love?" asked Masha.
"Love among us in the village!" answered Stepan, and he gave a laugh. "Properly speaking, Madam, if you care to know, this is my second marriage. I am not a Kurilovka man, I am from Zalegoshtcho, but afterwards I was taken into Kurilovka when I married. You see my father did not want to divide the land among us. ”

“ We talked of the fanaticism, the coarseness of feeling, the insignificance of these respectable families, these amateurs of dramatic art whom we had so alarmed, and I kept asking in what way these stupid, cruel, lazy, and dishonest people were superior to the drunken and superstitious peasants of Kurilovka, or in what way they were better than animals, who in the same way are thrown into a panic when some incident disturbs the monotony of their life limited by their instincts. What would have happened to my sister now if she had been left to live at home? ”

“ We talked, and when we got upon manual labour I expressed this idea: that what is wanted is that the strong should not enslave the weak, that the minority should not be a parasite on the majority, nor a vampire for ever sucking its vital sap; that is, all, without exception, strong and weak, rich and poor, should take part equally in the struggle for existence, each one on his own account, and that there was no better means for equalizing things in that way than manual labour, in the form of universal service, compulsory for all. ”

“ She embraced and kissed Masha, and, not knowing how to express her rapture, said to her of me: "He is good! He is very good!"
Before she went away she changed into her ordinary dress, and drew me into the garden to talk to me alone.
"Father is very much hurt," she said, "that you have written nothing to him. You ought to have asked for his blessing. But in reality he is very much pleased. He says that this marriage will raise you in the eyes of all society, and that under the influence of Mariya Viktorovna you will begin to take a more serious view of life. ”