Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [35]
Yulia Vassilyevna’s left eye reddened and filled with tears. Her chin trembled. She began to cough nervously, blew her nose, and said nothing.
“Then around New Year’s Day you broke a cup and saucer. Subtract two rubles. The cup cost more than that—it was a heirloom, but we won’t bother about that. We’re the ones who pay. Another matter. Due to your carelessness Kolya climbed a tree and tore his coat. Subtract ten. Also, due to your carelessness the chambermaid ran off with Varya’s boots. You ought to have kept your eyes open. You get a good salary. So we dock off five more.… On the tenth of January you took ten rubles from me.”
“I didn’t,” Yulia Vassilyevna whispered.
“But I made a note of it.”
“Well, yes—perhaps …”
“From forty-one we take twenty-seven. That leaves fourteen.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and her thin, pretty little nose was shining with perspiration. Poor little child!
“I only took money once,” she said in a trembling voice. “I took three rubles from your wife … never anything more.”
“Did you now? You see, I never made a note of it. Take three from fourteen. That leaves eleven. Here’s your money, my dear. Three, three, three … one and one. Take it, my dear.”
I gave her the eleven rubles. With trembling fingers she took them and slipped them into her pocket.
“Merci,” she whispered.
I jumped up, and began pacing up and down the room. I was in a furious temper.
“Why did you say ‘merci’?” I asked.
“For the money.”
“Dammit, don’t you realize I’ve been cheating you? I steal your money, and all you can say is ‘merci’!”
“In my other places they gave me nothing.”
“They gave you nothing! Well, no wonder! I was playing a trick on you—a dirty trick.… I’ll give you your eighty rubles, they are all here in an envelope made out for you. Is it possible for anyone to be such a nitwit? Why didn’t you protest? Why did you keep your mouth shut? Is it possible that there is anyone in this world who is so spineless? Why are you such a ninny?”
She gave me a bitter little smile. On her face I read the words: “Yes, it is possible.”
I apologized for having played this cruel trick on her, and to her great surprise gave her the eighty rubles. And then she said “merci” again several times, always timidly, and went out. I gazed after her, thinking how very easy it is in this world to be strong.
February 1883
The Highest Heights
The Height of Credulity
A FEW days ago K., a man of considerable local importance, rich and well connected, shot himself in the town of T. The bullet entered his mouth and lodged in his brain.
In the poor man’s side pocket a letter was found, with the following contents:
“I read in the Almanac today there will be a bad harvest this year. For me a bad harvest can only mean bankruptcy. Having no desire to fall victim to dishonor, I have decided to put an end to my life in advance. It is my desire, accordingly, that no one should be held responsible for my death.”
The Height of Absent-mindedness
We have received from authentic sources the following distressing item from a local clinic:
“The well-known surgeon M., while amputating both legs of a railway switchman, absent-mindedly cut off one of his own legs, together with one of the legs of his assistant. Both are now receiving medical care.”
The Height of Citizenship
“I, the son of a former honorary citizen, being a reader of The Citizen,1 wearing the clothes of a citizen, contracted a civil marriage with my Anyuta.…”2
The Height of Conformity
We are informed that a certain T., one of the contributors to Kievlyanin,3 having read the greater portion of the Moscow newspapers, suffered an attack of self-doubt and searched his own home for illegal literature. Finding none, he nevertheless gave himself up to the police.
April 1883
1 The Citizen was a conservative St. Petersburg newspaper, owned by Prince Meshchersky and edited for a while by Dostoyevsky. Chekhov loathed The Citizen and pilloried