The Wife, and Other StoriesChekhov, Anton Pavlovich
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The Wife, and Other Stories
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 -- Translations into English; Russia -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories
“He is passing,” he repeated in a shrill voice, and again he gave a sob.
“He is dying because he sacrificed himself. What a loss for science!”
he said bitterly. “Compare him with all of us. He was a great man, an
extraordinary man! What gifts! What hopes we all had of him!” Korostelev
went on, wringing his hands: “Merciful God, he was a man of science; we
shall never look on his like again. Osip Dymov, what have you done--aie,
aie, my God!”
Korostelev covered his face with both hands in despair, and shook his
head.
“And his moral force,” he went on, seeming to grow more and more
exasperated against some one. “Not a man, but a pure, good, loving soul,
and clean as crystal. He served science and died for science. And he
worked like an ox night and day--no one spared him--and with his
youth and his learning he had to take a private practice and work at
translations at night to pay for these... vile rags!”
Korostelev looked with hatred at Olga Ivanovna, snatched at the sheet
with both hands and angrily tore it, as though it were to blame.
“He did not spare himself, and others did not spare him. Oh, what’s the
use of talking!”
“Yes, he was a rare man,” said a bass voice in the drawing-room.
Olga Ivanovna remembered her whole life with him from the beginning
to the end, with all its details, and suddenly she understood that he
really was an extraordinary, rare, and, compared with every one else she
knew, a great man. And remembering how her father, now dead, and all the
other doctors had behaved to him, she realized that they really had seen
in him a future celebrity. The walls, the ceiling, the lamp, and the
carpet on the floor, seemed to be winking at her sarcastically, as
though they would say, “You were blind! you were blind!” With a wail
she flung herself out of the bedroom, dashed by some unknown man in the
drawing-room, and ran into her husband’s study. He was lying motionless
on the sofa, covered to the waist with a quilt. His face was fearfully
thin and sunken, and was of a greyish-yellow colour such as is never
seen in the living; only from the forehead, from the black eyebrows and
from the familiar smile, could he be recognized as Dymov. Olga Ivanovna
hurriedly felt his chest, his forehead, and his hands. The chest was
still warm, but the forehead and hands were unpleasantly cold, and the
half-open eyes looked, not at Olga Ivanovna, but at the quilt.
“Dymov!” she called aloud, “Dymov!” She wanted to explain to him that
it had been a mistake, that all was not lost, that life might still be
beautiful and happy, that he was an extraordinary, rare, great man, and
that she would all her life worship him and bow down in homage and holy
awe before him....
“Dymov!” she called him, patting him on the shoulder, unable to believe
that he would never wake again. “Dymov! Dymov!”
In the drawing-room Korostelev was saying to the housemaid:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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