Forty Stories - Anton Chekhov [37]
The general looked as though he were about to break out in tears, and waved him away.
“You’re making fun of me, my dear sir!” the general said, before shutting the door in his face.
“So I am making fun of him, am I?” Chervyakov thought. “It’s not a laughing matter! He’s a general, and knows nothing. Well, I won’t bother to apologize any more to that brazen old fool! Devil take him! I’ll write him a letter, and never set eyes on him again. God in heaven, I’ll never trouble him again.”
So Chervyakov thought as he made his way home. But he did not write a letter to the general. He thought and thought, but he could never put the words in the right order. On the following day he again visited the general to offer his excuses.
“Yesterday I ventured to trouble Your Excellency,” he murmured, as soon as the general turned a questioning glance in his direction. “I assure Your Excellency I never intended to make fun of you. I’ve come to apologize for sneezing, for splashing a little … Making fun of Your Excellency was the last thing on my mind. I wouldn’t dare to—I really wouldn’t. If we made fun of people, I ask you, what would happen to respect for the individual?”
“Get out of here!” the general roared, livid and shaking with rage.
“What were you saying, sir?” Chervyakov whispered.
“Get out!” the general repeated, and he stamped his foot.
In the living body of Chervyakov something snapped. He neither heard nor saw anything as he backed towards the door, went out into the street, and shuffled slowly away. Mechanically he put one foot before the other, reached his home, and without taking off his frock coat he lay down on the divan and died.
July 1883
1 Chervyak means “worm.”
At the Post Office
A FEW days ago we attended the funeral of the beautiful young wife of our postmaster, Sladkopertsov. According to traditions handed down from our forefathers, the burial was followed by the “commemoration,” which took place at the post office.
While the pancakes were being offered round, the old widower was weeping bitterly.
“Those pancakes are just as pink as my poor darling,” he said. “So beautiful she was. Indeed she was …”
“Well, that’s true enough,” we all chanted in unison. “She really was beautiful—no doubt about it.”
“True, true. Everyone was amazed when they saw her. Oh, but, gentlemen, I did not love her for her beauty or her gentle disposition alone. It’s natural for women to have these qualities, and many times one finds them in this world below. I loved her for another quality entirely. The truth is I loved my poor darling—may God grant her to enter the Kingdom of Heaven—because in spite of her playfulness and joie de vivre she was always faithful to her husband. She was faithful to me though she was only twenty, and I shall soon be past sixty. She was faithful to her old man!”
The deacon, who was sharing our meal, expressed his disbelief by means of an eloquent, bellowlike cough.
“Why, don’t you believe me?” The widower turned in his direction.
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” the deacon said in some confusion. “But you know … young wives nowadays … what is it called?… rendezvous … sauce provençale …”
“Then you don’t believe me! Well, I’ll prove it! I kept her faithful to me by means of certain strategical efforts on my part—you might call them fortifications. Because of what I did, and because I am a very cunning man, it was absolutely impossible for my wife to be unfaithful to me. I employed craft to protect my marriage bed. I know some magic words. I have only to say these words, and—basta!—I can sleep in peace as far as unfaithfulness goes.”
“What were the words?”
“Very simple. I spread a terrible rumor round the town. I am sure you know the rumor. I told everyone: ‘My wife Alyona is sleeping with Ivan Alexeyevich Zalikhvatsky,