The schoolmistress, and other storiesChekhov, Anton Pavlovich
General
The schoolmistress, and other stories
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 -- Translations into English; Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
“Yes, suicide is an undesirable phenomenon.”
He slept in a warm room, in a soft bed covered with a quilt under
which there were fine clean sheets, but for some reason did not feel
comfortable: perhaps because the doctor and Von Taunitz were, for a long
time, talking in the adjoining room, and overhead he heard, through the
ceiling and in the stove, the wind roaring just as in the Zemstvo hut,
and as plaintively howling: “Oo-oo-oo-oo!”
Von Taunitz’s wife had died two years before, and he was still unable
to resign himself to his loss and, whatever he was talking about, always
mentioned his wife; and there was no trace of a prosecutor left about
him now.
“Is it possible that I may some day come to such a condition?” thought
Lyzhin, as he fell asleep, still hearing through the wall his host’s
subdued, as it were bereaved, voice.
The examining magistrate did not sleep soundly. He felt hot and
uncomfortable, and it seemed to him in his sleep that he was not at
Von Taunitz’s, and not in a soft clean bed, but still in the hay at the
Zemstvo hut, hearing the subdued voices of the witnesses; he fancied
that Lesnitsky was close by, not fifteen paces away. In his dreams he
remembered how the insurance agent, black-haired and pale, wearing
dusty high boots, had come into the bookkeeper’s office. “This is our
insurance agent....”
Then he dreamed that Lesnitsky and Loshadin the constable were walking
through the open country in the snow, side by side, supporting each
other; the snow was whirling about their heads, the wind was blowing on
their backs, but they walked on, singing: “We go on, and on, and
on....”
The old man was like a magician in an opera, and both of them were
singing as though they were on the stage:
“We go on, and on, and on!... You are in the warmth, in the light
and snugness, but we are walking in the frost and the storm, through the
deep snow.... We know nothing of ease, we know nothing of joy....
We bear all the burden of this life, yours and ours.... Oo-oo-oo! We
go on, and on, and on....”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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