Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [125]
“To the crow somewhere … God …” she was saying in a loud, singsong voice, probably dictating. “God sent a piece of cheese … To the crow … somewhere … Who’s there?” she called out suddenly, hearing my footsteps.
“It is I.”
“Oh, excuse me, I cannot come out just now. I am giving Dasha her lesson.”
“Is Yekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?”
“No, she left this morning with my sister. They are going to stay with an aunt in Penza province, and in the winter they will probably go abroad.” She added after a moment’s pause: “God sent … the cr-ow … so-me-where … a pie-ce of chee-se … Have you written it down?”
I went out in the reception room without a thought in my head, gazing at the pond and the village in the distance, while her voice followed me: “A pie-ce of chee-se … God sent the crow somewhere a piece of cheese …”
And I went back by the way I had come on the day when I first visited the house, only this time in reverse. I went from the courtyard into the garden and along the side of the house until I reached the avenue of lime trees.… There I was overtaken by a small boy who gave me a note which read: “I told my sister everything, and she says I must never see you again. I’m weak, and dare not anger her by disobeying her. God grant you happiness. Forgive me. If only you knew how many bitter tears Mama and I have shed!”
I went down the dark avenue of firs past the rotting fence.… In the fields where the rye was once ripening and the quail were screaming, now hobbled horses and cows were grazing. Here and there on the low hills the winter crops were already showing green. A sobering mood took hold of me, the things I had said at the Volchaninovs’ filled me with shame, and I was as bored with life as I ever was before. When I reached home, I packed my things, and I left that evening for St. Petersburg.
I never saw the Volchaninovs again. Not long ago, when on my way to the Crimea, I met Belokurov on the train. He was wearing the familiar peasant jacket and embroidered shirt, and when I asked after his health, he replied: “Thank you for your good wishes.” We fell into conversation. He had sold his old estate and bought another, smaller one in Lyubov Ivanovna’s name. There was little he could tell me about the Volchaninovs. He told me Leda was still living at Shelkovka, teaching children at her school. Little by little she had succeeded in gathering around her a circle of friends who agreed with her and who were able to form a strong party, and at the last zemstvo election they had “gotten rid” of Balagin, the man who had kept the whole district under his thumb in the old days. As for Zhenia, all he knew was that she had left home, and he did not know where she was.
I am beginning to forget the house with the mezzanine, but sometimes when I am painting or reading, for no reason at all, quite suddenly, I find myself remembering the green lamp at the window and the sound of my footsteps echoing through the fields of the night as I walked home on the day I was in love, rubbing my hands to keep them warm. And sometimes too—but this happens more rarely—when I am weighed down with melancholy and loneliness, I am the prey of other confused thoughts, and it seems to me that I, too, am being remembered, and she is waiting for me, and we shall meet again.…
Missy, where are you?
1896
1 The zemstvo was the elective district council in pre-revolutionary Russia.
2 The Varangian chieftain who settled in Novgorov in 862 and is regarded as the founder of Russia.
In the Horsecart
AT half past eight in the morning they drove out of town.
The highway was dry, a splendid April sun was shedding a fierce warmth on the earth,