Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [131]
They started talking about love.
“How love is born,” Alyokhin was saying, “why Pelageya has not fallen in love with someone closer to her both inwardly and outwardly, why she fell in love with ‘Dog-face’ Nicanor—for we all call him ‘Dog-face’—and to what extent personal happiness counts in love—all these things are unknown and you can argue about them as much as you please. So far there has been only one incontestably true statement made on the subject of love, and that is the statement that love is the most wonderful thing in the world: everything else which has been written or spoken on the subject of love is incomplete and inconclusive, nothing more than a list of unanswered questions. The explanation which seems to fit one case fails to fit a dozen others, and in my opinion the very best thing is to offer explanations in particular cases rather than generalizations. As the doctors say, each case should receive individual treatment.”
“Perfectly true,” Burkin assented.
“We educated Russians have a partiality for unanswered questions. We usually poeticize love, prettifying it with roses and nightingales, and so we Russians prettify our love affairs with these fatal questions, and usually we choose the least interesting questions. In Moscow when I was a student I had a girl, a charming creature, who was always thinking about the monthly allowance I would give her and the price of a pound of beef whenever I embraced her. So, too, when we are in love, we never weary of asking ourselves questions about whether it is honorable or dishonorable, sensible or stupid, and where this love affair will lead us, and things like that. I don’t know whether this is a good thing or not, but I do know these questions get in the way, and are irritating and unsatisfying.”
He had the appearance of a man who wants to tell a story. People who lead lonely lives always have something on their minds they are eager to talk about. Bachelors living in town visit bathhouses and restaurants for no other reason except to talk, and sometimes they tell exceedingly interesting stories to the waiters and bathhouse attendants; and in the country they will usually pour out their hearts to their guests. Through a window we could see a gray sky and trees drenched in rain. It was the kind of weather which makes it impossible to go anywhere, when the only thing to do is to tell stories and to listen to them. So Alyokhin began his story:
I have been living and farming at Sofino for a long time, ever since I finished at the university. By education I belong to the class of idlers, and by avocation to the study. When I came here I found the estate heavily mortgaged, and since my father had got into debt partly because he had spent so much money on my education, I decided to remain and work until the debt was paid off. That was what I decided to do, but I must confess that I did not settle down to work without some repugnance. The land here does not yield very much, and unless you are going to farm at a loss you have to employ serfs and hired hands, which is about the same thing, or else you have to work like the peasants—I mean, you and your whole family working in the fields. There is no middle way. But in those days I wasn’t concerned with such subtleties. I did not leave a single clod of earth unturned, I gathered together all the peasants and the peasant women from the neighboring villages, and work went on at a furious pace. I myself plowed, sowed, and reaped, and was bored by it all, and frowned with disgust, like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen garden. My body ached, and I would fall asleep while walking. At first I thought it would be easy to reconcile my life as a toiler with my educated habits. To do this, I thought, it was only necessary to lead an outwardly orderly life. So I settled down here, upstairs in the best rooms,