Forty Stories (5 page)

Sometimes it amused him to wonder how long his works would last. One day, talking with the writer Ivan Bunin, he said he thought that people might go on reading him for seven years.

“Why seven?” asked Bunin.

“Well, seven and a half,” Chekhov replied. “That’s not so bad. I’ve got six years to live. Mind you, don’t tell the Odessa reporters about that.”

He was dead a few months later, making quips and jokes to the end.

Chekhov made a gross mistake in calculating the extent of his fame. His real fame is only just beginning, and it is likely that he will be read hundreds of years from now, for he was one of those who, in the words of Boris Pasternak, “are like apples plucked green from the trees, ripening of themselves, mellowing gradually and always increasing in meaning and sweetness.”

It is perhaps Chekhov’s very greatness as a writer which makes him so impossibly difficult to translate. He writes, of course, in the idiom of the nineteenth century with a certain deliberate diffuseness, and with a feeling for the balanced phrase and for rising and falling periods. Dostoyevsky writes in a harsh journalese; he is nearly always the hammer raining down blows on
the souls of men and on recalcitrant paragraphs. Chekhov remains the musician, charming his audience, sometimes introducing melodies for no better reason than that it pleases him to listen to the music. He is Mozart to Dostoyevsky’s Beethoven, and like Mozart, he is the master of many moods and many instruments.

So one translates him as best one can, knowing that there are no precise equivalents, and that nothing is to be gained by making him speak in the modern manner. His precision is not our precision, and we do him a disservice if we put him into crisp English, for his language is essentially romantic. He will speak of “the sweet May-time,” and think nothing of it. He rejoices in the pathetic fallacy, and goes to considerable trouble to make his landscapes reflect the moods of his characters. And since this is as much a part of him as his gaiety and his impudence, we must accept him as he is. To modernize him is to destroy him completely.

The difficulties of translating Chekhov are endless. It is not only that he speaks in the manner of his time; he is continually describing a way of life which has vanished from the earth. The Russians no longer speak as Chekhov spoke. Time after time he describes events which are unthinkable in modern Russia. His peasants fall into colloquialisms which must have been completely intelligible to Russians living at the end of the last century, though they are almost beyond understanding today, with the result that modern texts of Chekhov published in Russia are often provided with explanatory footnotes. More than once I have been baffled by a phrase, and consulted a Russian, only to discover that he was equally baffled. To translate Chekhov adequately, one should have a vast knowledge of church ritual, the social customs of the nineteenth century, the dialects of Moscow and half a dozen other towns in Russia. Ideally, he should be translated by a group of churchmen, sociologists, and experts on dialect, but they would quarrel interminably and the translation would never be done.

Though we can no longer recapture precisely what Chekhov
meant by “the sweet May-time,” for too many cruel Aprils have intervened, there is no mystery about his way of looking at the world, or the value he placed on human freedom. The texture of the language changes, but the human heart remains oddly unchangeable, though various. Chekhov celebrated the human variety, and while his peasants and princes have vanished, they are closer to us than we know.

That is why of all Russian writers Chekhov, the archconservative, is the most subversive. He is dynamite for children, for he proclaimed the utmost freedom and gave to the human heart the place of sovereign eminence. His stories are hosannas in praise of freedom, of the wanderings of the human heart in search of its own peace. And so, with the insidious power of genius, he prepares us for the revolutions of the future.

ROBERT PAYNE

These translations have been made from the twelve-volume edition of Chekhov’s
Collected Works
, edited by V. V. Yermilov and published by the Biblioteka Ogonyok (Moscow, 1950).

BETWEEN the Black Sea and the Solovetsky Islands, at such and such degrees of latitude and longitude, the landowner Trifon Semyonovich had been living on his own black earth for a long time. His surname was as long as a barge pole, and derived from a very resounding Latin word designating one of the innumerable human virtues. He owned an estate comprising about 8,000 acres of black earth. This estate, being in his full possession, had been mortgaged and offered for sale. The “For Sale” notices were put up before he acquired his bald spot, but the estate has never been sold, thanks to the gullibility of the bank manager and the skill of Trifon Semyonovich, and so the worst has not befallen him. One day, of course, the bank will fail, because Trifon Semyonovich and all those others whose names are legion take bank loans without paying the interest. Indeed, whenever Semyonovich did pay a little interest on his loan, he always made a great ceremony of it, as a man does when he offers a penny for the repose of the souls of the dead or for the building of a cathedral. If this world were not this world, and if things were called by their proper names, then Trifon Semyonovich would be called by another name than Trifon Semyonovich: he would be given a name usually reserved for horses and cows. Frankly, Trifon Semyonovich is nothing more than a beast. I am sure he would agree with me. If he ever hears of this (for he sometimes reads
The Dragonfly
), he will probably not burst a blood vessel, for he
is a man of considerable intelligence and is likely to be in complete agreement with my thesis, and he might also send me a dozen of his Antonovka apples in the autumn as an act of gratitude for my not revealing his surname, for on this instance I have confined myself to the use of his Christian name and patronymic. I shall not describe all his virtues: it would be very tedious. To describe Trifon Semyonovich in his entirety would demand a volume as thick and heavy as
The Wandering Jew
of Eugène Sue. I shall not mention his cheating at cards, or his politics, which have enabled him to avoid paying his debts and the interest on his mortgage, nor shall I mention the tricks he plays on the old priest and the deacon, or how he rides through the village streets in a costume contemporary with Cain and Abel. I shall confine myself to a single incident characteristic of his attitude towards his fellow creatures, in praise of whom, after three quarters of a century of continuing experience of their affairs, he once composed the following quick-firing couplet:

One perfectly beautiful morning at the end of summer Trifon Semyonovich found himself walking down a long and narrow pathway in his magnificent orchard. Whatever it is that inspires their excellencies the poets was here generously strewn around in great profusion, seeming to say: “Pluck me! Pluck me! Enjoy yourselves, for the autumn will soon come!” But Trifon Semyonovich was not enjoying himself that morning, partly because he was far from being a poet, but also because his soul had suffered a particularly uncomfortable night, as always happened whenever the soul’s owner lost heavily at cards. Behind Trifon Semyonovich marched his faithful servant Karpushka, who was about sixty years old and who kept looking suspiciously from
side to side. The virtues of this Karpushka almost surpassed those of Trifon Semyonovich. He had a wonderful talent for shining boots, a still greater talent for hanging unwanted dogs; he stole everything he could lay his hands on, and as a spy he was incomparable. The clerks in the village call him “a bloody dragoon.” Hardly a day passes but some peasants or landowning neighbors of Trifon Semyonovich lodge a complaint about the atrocious behavior of Karpushka, but nothing is ever done, for the good reason that Karpushka is irreplaceable. When Trifon Semyonovich goes for a walk, the trusty Karpushka always accompanies him: this way it is safer and more pleasant. Karpushka possesses an inexhaustible treasure of anecdotes of varying vintages, tall stories, quaint sayings, and fairy tales, and he never stops telling them. The flow of his conversation is never dammed, at least until the time comes when he hears something of interest to himself. On this particular morning he was walking behind his master, telling a long story about two schoolboys wearing white caps who had made their way into the orchard with weapons in their hands, and they had implored him, Karpushka, to let them go hunting, and even tried to bribe him with fifty kopecks, but he, knowing his true master, had rejected their proffered bribes with ignominy and contempt, and set the two dogs Chestnut and Gray on them. And having finished this story, he began to paint in bold colors a picture of the revolting behavior of the local medical orderly, but the picture was never finished, for at that moment there came to his ears a suspicious rustling in a nearby clump of apple and pear trees. So he stopped talking, pricked up his ears, and listened intently. And having convinced himself that he recognized the sound and that it had a suspicious origin, he tugged at his master’s coat and then hurried off quick as a shot in the direction of the rustling sound. Trifon Semyonovich, anticipating some pleasant excitement, went hurrying after Karpushka with an old man’s slow mincing steps.

On the edge of the orchard, under an old spreading apple
tree, stood a peasant girl slowly chewing on an apple, while not far from her a broad-shouldered peasant boy crawled on his hands and knees, picking up windfalls. He tossed the unripe apples into the bushes, but the ripe ones were tenderly presented to his Dulcinea in his broad and dirty hands. Dulcinea showed not the slightest alarm over the condition of her stomach, but kept on chewing the apples with a fierce appetite, while the boy continued to collect them, crawling over the ground, taking no thought for himself, concentrating his entire attention on his Dulcinea, and no one else.

“Take one off a tree,” the girl whispered, deliberately provoking him.

“I wouldn’t dare.”

“What are you frightened of? The bloody dragoon? Most likely he’s tippling in the pothouse.…”

The boy jumped up, sprang into the air, plucked a single apple from the tree, and handed it to the girl. But like Adam and Eve in ancient days, the boy and girl suffered disastrously with their apple. No sooner had she bitten off a small piece of it, and given this piece to the boy, no sooner had they both tasted the sharp acid flavor of the apple than their faces became contorted and they turned pale … not because the apple was sour, but because they had observed the stern features of Trifon Semyonovich and Karpushka’s little snout lit with a smile of pure malignance.

“Good day to you, my dears,” Trifon Semyonovich said, advancing on them. “So you’re enjoying the little apples, eh? I hope I am not disturbing you.”

The boy took off his cap and his head hung low. The girl looked down at her apron.

“Well, Gregory, how are you these days?” Trifon Semyonovich went on, addressing himself to the boy. “How are things going, me lad?”

“I only took one,” the boy muttered. “I picked it off the ground.”

Trifon Semyonovich turned his attention to the girl.

“How are you, my little darling?”

She found herself paying even more passionate attention to her apron.

“Well now, we haven’t celebrated your wedding yet, have we?”

“No, sir, we haven’t.… I swear to God we only took one apple, and that one wasn’t …”

He turned to the boy.

“Good, good. Fine fellow. Learned how to read yet?”

“No, sir. We only took one apple, sir, and we found it on the ground.…”

“You don’t know how to read, but you do know how to steal, eh? Well, that’s fine! You’re not burdened down with the weight of learning. When did you start stealing?”

“I wasn’t stealing, sir.”

“Then what about your pretty little sweetheart?” Karpushka interrupted his master, and turned to the boy. “Why is she looking so down-in-the-mouth? Is it because you are not showing her enough love?”

“Shut up, Karpushka!” Trifon Semyonovich exclaimed. “Gregory, I want you to tell me a story.”

Gregory coughed and gave an odd smile.

“I don’t know any stories, sir. I don’t need your apples either. When I want apples, I’ll go and buy them!”

“It’s a great joy to me that you’re rich, my boy. But still—I want you to tell me a story. I’ll listen, and Karpushka will listen. Your little sweetheart will listen, too. Don’t be shy. Be brave. ‘Brave is the heart of a thief.’ Isn’t that true, my dear fellow?”

Trifon Semyonovich let his malicious eyes rest on the boy, who had fallen into the trap. On the boy’s forehead sweat was dripping down.

“Sir, sir—” Karpushka interrupted in his unpleasantly thin tenor voice. “Why don’t you let him sing a song instead? He’s too much of a silly fool to tell us a story!”