IN the year in which my story begins I had a job at a little station on one of our southwestern railways. Whether I had a gay or a dull life at the station you can judge from the fact that for fifteen miles round there was not one human habitation, not one woman, not one decent tavern1; and in those days I was young, strong, hot-headed, giddy, and foolish. The only distraction2 I could possibly find was in the windows of the passenger trains, and in the vile3 vodka which the Jews drugged with thorn-apple. Sometimes there would be a glimpse of a woman’s head at a carriage window, and one would stand like a statue without breathing and stare at it until the train turned into an almost invisible speck4; or one would drink all one could of the loathsome5 vodka till one was stupefied and did not feel the passing of the long hours and days. Upon me, a native of the north, the steppe produced the effect of a deserted6 Tatar cemetery7. In the summer the steppe with its solemn calm, the monotonous8 chur of the grasshoppers9, the transparent10 moonlight from which one could not hide, reduced me to listless melancholy11; and in the winter the irreproachable12 whiteness of the steppe, its cold distance, long nights, and howling wolves oppressed me like a heavy nightmare. There were several people living at the station: my wife and I, a deaf and scrofulous telegraph clerk, and three watchmen. My assistant, a young man who was in consumption, used to go for treatment to the town, where he stayed for months at a time, leaving his duties to me together with the right of pocketing his salary. I had no children, no cake would have tempted13 visitors to come and see me, and I could only visit other officials on the line, and that no oftener than once a month.
I remember my wife and I saw the New Year in. We sat at table, chewed lazily, and heard the deaf telegraph clerk monotonously14 tapping on his apparatus15 in the next room. I had already drunk five glasses of drugged vodka, and, propping16 my heavy head on my fist, thought of my overpowering boredom17 from which there was no escape, while my wife sat beside me and did not take her eyes off me. She looked at me as no one can look but a woman who has nothing in this world but a handsome husband. She loved me madly, slavishly, and not merely my good looks, or my soul, but my sins, my ill-humor and boredom, and even my cruelty when, in drunken fury, not knowing how to vent18 my ill-humor, I tormented19 her with reproaches.
In spite of the boredom which was consuming me, we were preparing to see the New Year in with exceptional festiveness20, and were awaiting midnight with some impatience21. The fact is, we had in reserve two bottles of champagne22, the real thing, with the label of Veuve Clicquot; this treasure I had won the previous autumn in a bet with the station-master of D. when I was drinking with him at a christening. It sometimes happens during a lesson in mathematics, when the very air is still with boredom, a butterfly flutters into the class-room; the boys toss their heads and begin watching its flight with interest, as though they saw before them not a butterfly but something new and strange; in the same way ordinary champagne, chancing to come into our dreary23 station, roused us. We sat in silence looking alternately at the clock and at the bottles.
When the hands pointed24 to five minutes to twelve I slowly began uncorking a bottle. I don’t know whether I was affected26 by the vodka, or whether the bottle was wet, but all I remember is that when the cork25 flew up to the ceiling with a bang, my bottle slipped out of my hands and fell on the floor. Not more than a glass of the wine was spilt, as I managed to catch the bottle and put my thumb over the foaming27 neck.
“Well, may the New Year bring you happiness!” I said, filling two glasses. “Drink!”
My wife took her glass and fixed28 her frightened eyes on me. Her face was pale and wore a look of horror.
“Did you drop the bottle?” she asked.
“Yes. But what of that?”
“It’s unlucky,” she said, putting down her glass and turning paler still. “It’s a bad omen29. It means that some misfortune will happen to us this year.”
“What a silly thing you are,” I sighed. “You are a clever woman, and yet you talk as much nonsense as an old nurse. Drink.”
“God grant it is nonsense, but... something is sure to happen! You’ll see.”
She did not even sip30 her glass, she moved away and sank into thought. I uttered a few stale commonplaces about superstition31, drank half a bottle, paced up and down, and then went out of the room.
Outside there was the still frosty night in all its cold, inhospitable beauty. The moon and two white fluffy32 clouds beside it hung just over the station, motionless as though glued to the spot, and looked as though waiting for something. A faint transparent light came from them and touched the white earth softly, as though afraid of wounding her modesty33, and lighted up everything—the snowdrifts, the embankment.... It was still.
I walked along the railway embankment.
“Silly woman,” I thought, looking at the sky spangled with brilliant stars. “Even if one admits that omens34 sometimes tell the truth, what evil can happen to us? The misfortunes we have endured already, and which are facing us now, are so great that it is difficult to imagine anything worse. What further harm can you do a fish which has been caught and fried and served up with sauce?”
A poplar covered with hoar frost looked in the bluish darkness like a giant wrapt in a shroud35. It looked at me sullenly36 and dejectedly, as though like me it realized its loneliness. I stood a long while looking at it.
“My youth is thrown away for nothing, like a useless cigarette end,” I went on musing37. “My parents died when I was a little child; I was expelled from the high school, I was born of a noble family, but I have received neither education nor breeding, and I have no more knowledge than the humblest mechanic. I have no refuge, no relations, no friends, no work I like. I am not fitted for anything, and in the prime of my powers I am good for nothing but to be stuffed into this little station; I have known nothing but trouble and failure all my life. What can happen worse?”
Red lights came into sight in the distance. A train was moving towards me. The slumbering38 steppe listened to the sound of it. My thoughts were so bitter that it seemed to me that I was thinking aloud and that the moan of the telegraph wire and the rumble39 of the train were expressing my thoughts.
“What can happen worse? The loss of my wife?” I wondered. “Even that is not terrible. It’s no good hiding it from my conscience: I don’t love my wife. I married her when I was only a wretched boy; now I am young and vigorous, and she has gone off and grown older and sillier, stuffed from her head to her heels with conventional ideas. What charm is there in her maudlin40 love, in her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up with her, but I don’t love her. What can happen? My youth is being wasted, as the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my eyes only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never had and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are going to ruin.... Everything is being thrown away like dirt, and all my wealth here in the steppe is not worth a farthing.”
The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the glow of its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights of the station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After walking a mile and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable41 affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their misery42 for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth in what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and conceited43, and there was something boyishly defiant44 in my question: “What could happen worse?”
“And what is there to happen?” I asked myself. “I think I have endured everything. I’ve been ill, I’ve lost money, I get reprimanded by my superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad wolf has run into the station yard. What more is there? I have been insulted, humiliated,... and I have insulted others in my time. I have not been a criminal, it is true, but I don’t think I am capable of crime—I am not afraid of being hauled up for it.”
The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a little distance, looking as though they were whispering about something which the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing45 across the steppe, bringing the faint rumble of the retreating train.
My wife met me at the doorway46. Her eyes were laughing gaily47 and her whole face was beaming with good-humor.
“There is news for you!” she whispered. “Make haste, go to your room and put on your new coat; we have a visitor.”
“What visitor?”
“Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train.”
“What Natalya Petrovna?”
“The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don’t know her. She is a very nice, good woman.”
Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered rapidly:
“Of course it is queer her having come, but don’t be cross, Nikolay, and don’t be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know; Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it is difficult to live with him. She says she will only stay three days with us, only till she gets a letter from her brother.”
My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her despotic uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of young wives in particular; about its being our duty to give shelter to all, even great sinners, and so on. Unable to make head or tail of it, I put on my new coat and went to make acquaintance with my “aunt.”
A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My table, the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the tiniest grain of dust seemed to have grown younger and more cheerful in the presence of this new, young, beautiful, and dissolute creature, who had a most subtle perfume about her. And that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue48 I could see from her smile, from her scent49, from the peculiar50 way in which she glanced and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in which she talked with my wife—a respectable woman. There was no need to tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was old and despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it all in at the first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man in all Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a woman of a certain temperament51.
“I did not know I had such a big nephew!” said my aunt, holding out her hand to me and smiling.
“And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt,” I answered.
Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the second bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp52, and when my wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did not scruple53 to drain a full glass. I was drunk both with the wine and with the presence of a woman. Do you remember the song?
“Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion,
Eyes burning bright and beautiful,
How I love you,
How I fear you!”
I don’t remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how love begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in the words of the same silly song:
“It was an evil hour
When first I met you.”
Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful, frantic54 whirlwind which sent me flying round like a feather. It lasted a long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has flung me, as you see, into this dark street.
Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
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1
tavern
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| n.小旅馆，客栈；小酒店 | |
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distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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vile
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| adj.卑鄙的，可耻的，邪恶的；坏透的 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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loathsome
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| adj.讨厌的，令人厌恶的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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8
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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9
grasshoppers
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| n.蚱蜢( grasshopper的名词复数 )；蝗虫；蚂蚱；（孩子）矮小的 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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12
irreproachable
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| adj.不可指责的，无过失的 | |
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13
tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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15
apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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16
propping
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| 支撑 | |
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boredom
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| n.厌烦，厌倦，乏味，无聊 | |
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18
vent
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| n.通风口，排放口；开衩；vt.表达，发泄 | |
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19
tormented
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| 饱受折磨的 | |
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festiveness
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| n.倔强，难以驾御 | |
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impatience
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| n.不耐烦，急躁 | |
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22
champagne
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| n.香槟酒；微黄色 | |
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dreary
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| adj.令人沮丧的，沉闷的，单调乏味的 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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cork
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| n.软木，软木塞 | |
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affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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foaming
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| adj.布满泡沫的；发泡 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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30
sip
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| v.小口地喝，抿，呷；n.一小口的量 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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modesty
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| n.谦逊，虚心，端庄，稳重，羞怯，朴素 | |
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omens
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| n.前兆，预兆( omen的名词复数 ) | |
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shroud
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| n.裹尸布，寿衣；罩，幕；vt.覆盖，隐藏 | |
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sullenly
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| 不高兴地，绷着脸，忧郁地 | |
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musing
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| n. 沉思，冥想 adj. 沉思的, 冥想的 动词muse的现在分词形式 | |
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slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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rumble
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| n.隆隆声；吵嚷；v.隆隆响；低沉地说 | |
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maudlin
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| adj.感情脆弱的，爱哭的 | |
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miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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43
conceited
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| adj.自负的，骄傲自满的 | |
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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racing
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| n.竞赛，赛马；adj.竞赛用的，赛马用的 | |
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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48
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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49
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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50
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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51
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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52
gulp
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| vt.吞咽，大口地吸（气）；vi.哽住；n.吞咽 | |
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53
scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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54
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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