Chekhov's Short Stories: Baby (Part I)

Orenka,[1] the daughter of Plemiyannikov, a retired civil servant of the eighth rank, sat on the porch of the courtyard and thought about her thoughts. It's hot, and the flies nailed people nastyly and didn't fly away. The thought that it will soon be dark makes people's hearts so happy. Jet-black rain clouds pushed up from the east, and moist air blew in from that side every now and then.

Kukin stood in the middle of the courtyard and looked at the sky. He was the manager of the troupe, ran the "Tivuri" playground, and he himself lived in a wing of the courtyard.

"It's going to rain again!" he said disheartenedly, "it's going to rain again! It's raining every day, it's raining every day, as if it's deliberately embarrassing me! It's going to make me hang! It's going to make me bankrupt! I'm going to lose a lot of money every day!"

He clapped his hands and continued at Olenka:

"Oh, Olga Semyonovna, that's how we live. A person who works hard, tries his best, is exhausted, can't sleep at night, and is always thinking about how to do a good job. But what is the result? First, the audience is just some ignorant people, savages. I've got the best operetta and the fine fairyland drama for them, and I've got first-class singers, but do they want to watch it? You should they understand it? They just have to watch the funny grass stage plays! Just give them the vulgar plays! And secondly, look at the weather, it's raining almost every night. It started on May 10th, and continued for a whole month of May and a whole month of June. I don't come to the show, but I don't have to pay the rent? Don't I have to pay the actors' wages as before?"

The next evening, when the clouds were again in all directions, Kukin laughed hysterically and said:

"What does it matter? If it rains, it will rain! It will fill the garden with water and drown me alive! I will be unlucky in this life, and I will still be unlucky in the next world! Let those actors twist me to the court! What is the court? Just send me to Siberia to do hard labor! Send me to the guillotine! Hahaha!"

By the third day, it was still the same......

Olenka listened silently and intently to Kukin, sometimes tears rolling out of her eyes. When his misfortune touched her heart, she fell in love with him. He was short and thin, his face was yellow, his hair was combed to the sides, and he spoke in a thin tenor voice, which he pouted as soon as he spoke. There was always a look of discouragement on his face, but he still stirred up a real deep affection in her heart. She is old enough to love someone, and she can't do it otherwise. Earlier, she loved her father, but now he is sick and sits in a circle chair in a dark room, having trouble breathing.

She also loved her aunt, who used to come back from Bryansk every other year. Going even further, when she was in junior high school, she loved her French teacher. She was a quiet, good-hearted, considerate girl, with gentle eyes and a very strong body. If a man sees her chubby red face, sees her soft and white neck with a black mole, and sees the innocent and kind smile that blooms on her face when she hears something pleasant, he will secretly think: "By the way, this girl is very good...... and he will also smile slightly, and the female guest, in the middle of the conversation, often can't help but can't help but take her hand, and can't help but say with love:

"Baby!"

The house is located in the Tsgangon district on the edge of the city, not far from the playground "Tivoli", where she has lived since the day she was born, and where her father has written in his will that the house will be hers. As soon as evening and night came, she heard the band in the playground and the crackling of firecrackers, and she thought that it was Cunquin fighting against his fate, and attacking his great enemy, the indifferent spectators, and her heart tightened sweetly, and she did not feel a little sleepy. When he came home at dawn, she knocked softly on the window of her bedroom, revealing only her face and one shoulder to him through the curtain, and smiled softly......

So he proposed to her, and they were married. When he drew near to her, and saw her neck and plump shoulders, he raised his hands and patted them gently, and said:

"Baby!"

He was happy, but because it rained day and night on the wedding day, the discouraged expression never left his face.

They were well married. She was in charge of his box office, took care of the housekeeping of the playground, kept accounts, and paid his salary. Her crimson face, cute and innocent, like a glowing smile, flashed around in the small window of the box office, sometimes in the food department, sometimes in the backstage. She has often said to her acquaintances that the great, important, and indispensable thing in the world is the theater, and only in the theater can one enjoy true happiness, become cultured, and humanitarian.

"But do the audience understand this?" she said, "and they just have to watch the funny grass stage play! Last night we played an adaptation of Faust, and almost the whole box was empty, but if Wanichka and I told them to put on a vulgar play, then rest assured, the theater would be packed." Tomorrow Wanichka and I will tell them to put on a 'Orfius Oss in Hell'. Please come and have a look. ”

Whenever Cunkin talked about the theater and the actors, she said it all. Like him, she looks down on the audience because they are ignorant and indifferent to art. She took charge of the rehearsals, corrected the actors' movements, and monitored the musicians' conduct. When she was told that the city's newspapers were unhappy with the theater, she burst into tears and ran to the newspaper's editorial office to clear up.

The actors liked her and called her "Wannichka and Me", or "Baby". She took pity on them and lent them a little money. If they deceived her occasionally, she would secretly shed a few tears, but would not go to her husband.

They also had a good time in the winter. Throughout the winter, they rented theaters in the city, leaving only a few slots for the Little Russian troupe, magicians, or local amateurs. Olenka was fat and radiant because she was satisfied. Kujin went down yellow, lost weight, complained that the losses were too big, but in fact, business was good that winter. Every night when he coughed, she gave him raspberry and linden flower juice, wiped his body with perfume, and wrapped him in a soft shawl.

"You're really my sweetheart!" she said with great sincerity, brushing his hair, "You really hurt me!"

On Lent[2], he left for Moscow to invite the troupe. As soon as he was gone, she couldn't sleep, and she always sat in front of the window and looked at the stars. At this time, she compares herself to a hen: the rooster is not in the hole, and the hen always can't sleep all night, and her heart is uncertain. Kukin delayed in Moscow, wrote back and said that he would not return until Easter, and in addition, he also confessed several things about "Tivoli" in his letters. But on the Monday before Good Friday[3], late at night, there was an unlucky knock at the door, and I don't know who was pounding on the door, as if it were a big bucket - bang, bang!

"Open the door, please drive!" someone said in a deep bass voice outside the door, "there's a telegram from your house!"

Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time, for some reason, she was simply stunned. She opened the telegram with trembling hands and saw the following message:

Ivan Petrovich died suddenly today, and Tuesday should be like a river funeral.

That's exactly what it was written on the telegram - like "river" funeral, and the word "ji" that doesn't make sense at all. On the telegram was the next paragraph of the Director's Office of the Opera Company.

"My dear!" said Olenka, "Vanichka, my love, my dear, why did I meet you in the first place, why did I know you, fall in love with you, to whom, did you leave poor Olenka, poor and unfortunate man?......

On Tuesday they buried Kukin in Moscow's Vagankovo cemetery. When Olenka came home on Wednesday, she had just entered the door when she fell into bed and cried so loudly that she could hear it in the yard next door and on the street.

"Baby!" said the neighbor, drawing a cross on his chest, "dear Olga Semyonovna, poor, so sad!"

Three months later, one day, Olenka walked home from Mass, sad and deeply saddened. It so happened that one of her neighbors, Vasily Andreyich Pustovalov, also walked home from the church and walked side by side with her. He was the manager of the timber yard of the businessman Babakaev. He wore a straw hat and a white skeletal with a gold bracelet on his shoulders, and looked more like a landowner than a merchant.

"All things are ordained, Olga Semenovna," he said solemnly, with a sympathetic tone in his voice, "and if our loved ones die, it must be the will of God, and in that case we should endure our grief and go with it." ”

He sent Olenka to the door, said goodbye to her, and walked on. After that, all day long, her ears kept ringing with his solemn voice, and when she closed her eyes, it was as if she saw his black beard. She liked him a lot. And she made a good impression on him, too, for soon an old lady whom she did not know well came to her house for coffee, and as soon as she sat down at the table, she spoke of Pustovalov as a good and reliable man, and that any girl of marriageable age would be happy to marry him. Three days later, Pustovalov himself came to visit. He had not sat for long, only ten minutes, and had not spoken much, but Olenka had fallen in love with him, and so deeply, that she had not slept all night, and was feverish, as if she had a fever, and the next morning she sent for the old lady. The marriage was quickly settled, and the wedding took place.

Pustovalov and Olenka lived well after their marriage. Normally, he would sit in the lumber yard until lunchtime, and then go out to do business, so Olenka would sit in his office for him, settle accounts, sell goods, and leave until dusk.

"Now the price of timber is getting higher every year, and the price of timber is rising by twenty per cent a year," she said to her customers and acquaintances, "and let the Lord have mercy on us, for we used to sell local timber, but now Vasichka has to go to the Mogilev province every year to make timber." That's a lot of shipping!" she continued, covering her face with her hands in a look of fear, "That's a lot of shipping!"

She felt as if she had been buying and selling timber for a long, long time, and felt that the most important and important thing in life was wood. What "beams", "logs", "thin boards", "wainscoting", "box boards", "slats", "wooden blocks", "wool boards" and so on, to her ears, those words always contain a little kind and touching meaning. ...... When she had gone to bed at night, she dreamed of piles of planks and planks, and an endless string of wagons carrying timber from far outside the city. She also dreamed that a large number of logs twelve feet high and five inches thick were erected and walked along the timber yard, so that the logs, beams, and wool boards touched each other, and made a sound of dry wood, and fell down at one time, and then erected again, overlapping each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and Pustovalov said to her gently:

"Orenka, what's wrong with you, my dear? ”

She thinks as her husband thinks. If he felt the room was hot, or if business was light now, she would have thought so. Her husband doesn't like any entertainment and always stays home when it comes to holidays. And she did the same.

"You stay at home or in your office," said the acquaintances, "you ought to go to the plays, darling, or else you might as well go and see acrobatics." ”

"Vasička and I don't have time to go to the theater," she replied solemnly, "we are working people, and we don't have time to see all that nonsense." What's the benefit of watching a play?"

On Saturdays, Pustovalov and she always went to the all-night prayers, and when it came to the holidays, they went to the morning prayers. When they came out of the church and walked home side by side, they always had a touched face. There was a nice smell all around them, and her silk dress rustled nicely. At home, they drink tea, eat brioche bread and all kinds of jams, and then they eat pies. Every day at noon, in their yard and on the street outside the gate, there is always the smell of red beet soup, fried mutton, or roast duck and so on. In the office, the samovar is always boiling, and they serve customers tea and bagels. Once a week, the couple went to the shower and walked home side by side, both of them with red faces.

"It's nothing, we're doing well, thank God," Olenka often said to her acquaintances, "and I just want God to let everyone live like Vasichka and me." ”

Russian salmon ¥85.9 Buy