Three months later he returns with part of the brigade to the area. He anticipates going back into the dark room in the house and something happening.
The “inner voice,” which so often deceives lovers, whispered to him for some reason that he would be sure to see her… and he was tortured by the questions, Whether she had forgotten the kiss? If the worst came to the worst, he thought, even if he did not meet her, it would be a pleasure to him merely to go through the dark room and recall the past….
He anticipates another invitation from the family. But it doesn’t come and he goes for a walk:
And everything on the near side of the river was just as it had been in May: the path, the bushes, the willows overhanging the water… but there was no sound of the brave nightingale, and no scent of poplar and fresh grass.
Which way will the story go? When did Chekhov decide with Ryabovich that believing in one’s imagination was folly?
Now that he expected nothing, the incident of the kiss, his impatience, his vague hopes and disappointment, presented themselves in a clear light. It no longer seemed to him strange that he had not seen the General’s messenger, and that he would never see the girl who had accidentally kissed him instead of some one else; on the contrary, it would have been strange if he had seen her….
The water was running, he knew not where or why, just as it did in May. In May it had flowed into the great river, from the great river into the sea; then it had risen in vapor, turned into rain, and perhaps the very same water was running now before Ryabovich’s eyes again…. What for? Why?
And the whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovich an unintelligible, aimless jest…. And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily meagre, poverty-stricken, and colorless….
When he went back to his hut he did not find one of his comrades. The orderly informed him that they had all gone to “General von Rabbek’s, who had sent a messenger on horseback to invite them….”
For an instant there was a flash of joy in Ryabovich’s heart, but he quenched it at once, got into bed, and in his wrath with his fate, as though to spite it, did not go to the General’s.
I never did like that ending.
*
Chekhov had a goodbye meal with Shcheglov, Bilibin, and Leykin on December 15 before leaving on the 8:30 P.M. train for Moscow.8
From Moscow, within the next few days, he wrote to Shcheglov:
Dear Captain! I sit here at my table and work, I see before my eyes hearth and home, but my thoughts are still in Peter.
First of all, thank you for becoming acquainted with me. Beyond that thanks for the geniality and for the books. All’s good and sweet with you: books and nerves and conversation and even the tragic laugh, which I now at home parody, but not successfully.
I send you two photo-cards: one to keep for yourself, the other give to the boyar Aleksei.
I await a photo and letter from you.
As this letter in all probability after my death will be published in a collection of my letters, I ask you to stick in some puns and sayings.9
Shcheglov refrained and left the humor as is to Chekhov.
*
“Boys” (“Mal’chiki,” December 21) may have been written while he was still in Petersburg. Or maybe he wrote it immediately after his seventeen days away and he was back at his familiar desk; on his return on December 16 he would have been greeted by his anxious and happy family. “Boys” is after all a winter holiday story about a schoolboy who within days of his return wants to leave again:
“Volodya’s come!” someone shouted in the yard.
“Master Volodya’s here!” bawled Natalya the cook, running into the dining-room. “Oh, my goodness!”
The whole Korolyov family, who had been expecting their Volodya from hour to hour, rushed to the windows. At the front door stood a wide sledge, with three white horses in a cloud of steam. The sledge was empty, for Volodya was already in the hall, untying his hood with red and chilly fingers. His school overcoat, his cap, his snowboots, and the hair on his temples were all white with frost, and his whole figure from head to foot diffused such a pleasant, fresh smell of the snow that the very sight of him made one want to shiver and say “brrr!”10
Volodya’s big surprise is that he has brought home with him for the holidays a classmate, his friend Lentilov. Everyone is delighted, except, it seems, the boys (Chekhov does not specify their age):
“Well, Christmas will soon be here,” the father said in a pleasant sing-song voice, rolling a cigarette of dark reddish tobacco. “It doesn’t seem long since the summer, when mamma was crying at your going… and here you are back again…. Time flies, my boy. Before you have time to cry out, old age is upon you. Mr. Lentilov, take some more, please help yourself! We don’t stand on ceremony!”
Volodya’s three younger sisters “noticed that Volodya, who had always been so merry and talkative, also said very little, did not smile at all, and hardly seemed to be glad to be home.”
He and his “morose” friend have ambitions: to maraud their way to California.
On his former holidays Volodya, too, had taken part in the preparations for the Christmas tree, or had been running in the yard to look at the snow mountain that the watchman and the shepherd were building. But this time Volodya and Lentilov took no notice whatever of the colored paper, and did not once go into the stable. They sat in the window and began whispering to one another; then they opened an atlas and looked carefully at a map.
“First to Perm…” Lentilov said, in an undertone, “from there to Tiumen, then Tomsk… then… then… Kamchatka. There the Samoyedes take one over Bering’s Straits in boats…. And then we are in America…. There are lots of furry animals there….”
“And California?” asked Volodya.
“California is lower down…. We’ve only to get to America and California is not far off…. And one can get a living by hunting and plunder.”
Volodya’s sisters are in awe and curious:
At night, when the boys had gone to bed, the girls crept to their bedroom door, and listened to what they were saying. Ah, what they discovered! The boys were planning to run away to America to dig for gold: they had everything ready for the journey, a pistol, two knives, biscuits, a burning glass to serve instead of matches, a compass, and four rubles in cash. They learned that the boys would have to walk some thousands of miles, and would have to fight tigers and savages on the road: then they would get gold and ivory, slay their enemies, become pirates, drink gin, and finally marry beautiful maidens, and make a plantation.
The boys interrupted each other in their excitement. Throughout the conversation, Lentilov called himself “Montehomo, the Hawk’s Claw,” and Volodya was “my pale-face brother!”
Despite tearful misgivings by Volodya, who after all sort of likes being home and feels sorry for how his mother will feel, the boys set out on Christmas Eve day. When their disappearance is noticed, the family is frantic; a search party goes out. The boys spend the night in the train station, and the police find them on Christmas Day and bring them home.
As it was published in 1887, however, Chekhov concluded the story without the boys actually leaving the house.11 Volodya is so wrought up that his sisters, overhearing his tears, begin bawling themselves and thus awaken the mother, to whom they spill the beans.12
Chekhov was glad to be home for Christmas, but he was growing up, longing to see the world, just as the boys are. Chekhov never made it to California or even America. But he did occasionally make plans to do so.
*
“Kashtanka” (“Kashtanka,” December 25) is about a little red dog (kashtan means “chestnut”) who, separated from her owner, is taken in by a “mysterious stranger” who has his own menagerie: a cat, a goose, and a pig. The stranger eventually trains Kashtanka, having dubbed her “Auntie,” to participate in his circus act. At the circus, her former owner’s son recognizes her, and she eagerly rejoins the boy and his father.