ANTON PAVLOVICH CHEKHOV (1860-1904): Russian physician and preeminent author of short stories and plays. The present volume contains five of his most highly regarded stories, set in a variety of Tsarist Russian milieux and representative of the basic themes of his oeuvre: the sociological and psychological obstacles in the way of human affection and satisfactory development of the personality.
Table of Contents
Title Page
DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS
Copyright Page
The Black Monk
CHAPTER I - Nerves
CHAPTER II - A Pale Face!
CHAPTER III - She Loves
CHAPTER IV - Tears of Tania
CHAPTER V - Red Spots
CHAPTER VI - The Black Guest
CHAPTER VII - Don’t Be Afraid!
CHAPTER VIII - Torture
CHAPTER IX - Blood of Kovrin
The House with the Mezzanine
(A Painter’s Story)
II
III
IV
The Peasants
CHAPTER I - Blows
CHAPTER II - Marya
CHAPTER III - Songs
CHAPTER IV - Dreams!
CHAPTER V - Fire!
CHAPTER VI - The Hut
CHAPTER VII - Who Else?
CHAPTER VIII - Died
CHAPTER IX - Give Alms!
Gooseberries
The Lady with the Toy Dog
II
III
IV
DOVER THRIFT EDITIONS
EDITOR: STANLEY APPELBAUM
This Dover edition, first published in 1990, is an unabridged republication of five stories. “The Black Monk” and “The Peasants” are reprinted from The Works of Anton Chekhov: One Volume Edition, Black’s Readers Service Company, N.Y., n.d. (ca. 1929; translators not credited). “The House with the Mezzanine,” “Gooseberries” and “The Lady with the Toy Dog” are reprinted from My Life and Other Stories, C. W. Daniel, Ltd., London, 1920 (translated by S. S. Koteliansky and Gilbert Cannan). A number of typographical errors have been corrected tacitly. Footnotes glossing Russian terms remaining in the translated texts have been prepared specially for this Dover edition.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904.
[Short stories. English. Selections]
Five great short stories / Anton Chekhov.
p. cm.—(Dover thrift editions)
Translated from the Russian.
Contents: The black monk—The house with the mezzanine—The peasants—Gooseberries—The lady with the toy dog.
9780486153537
1. Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904—Translations, English. I. Title. II. Series.
PG3456.A13 1990
891.73’3—dc20
90-3580
CIP
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
26463714
www.doverpublications.com
The Black Monk
CHAPTER I Nerves
ANDREY VASIL’ICH KOVRIN, Master of Arts, was overworked and nervous. He was not being treated, but one day while sitting with a doctor at wine he happened casually to speak about his health. The physician advised him to pass the spring and summer in the country. Opportunely he received then a long letter from Tania Pesotski, inviting him to visit Borisovka. He decided that he really required a change.
It was April. He went to his family estate of Kovrinka for three weeks; then, the roads being clear, he started on wheels to see his former guardian and tutor, Pesotski, the great horticulturist. From Kovrinka to Borisovka, where the Pesotskis lived, it was only seventy versts,1 and it was a pleasure to take the drive.
Egor Semenych Pesotski’s house was huge, with columns and lions, but the plaster was cracking. The old park, severe and gloomy, laid out in the English style, extended for nearly a verst from the house to the river, and finished in abruptly precipitous clayey banks, on which there grew old pines with bare roots that looked like shaggy paws; down below the water glittered unsociably, and snipe flitted along its surface with plaintive cries. When there you always had the feeling that you must sit down and write a ballad. However, near the house, in the courtyard and in the fruit orchard, which together with the nurseries covered about thirty acres, it was gay and cheerful even in bad weather. Such wonderful roses, lilies and camellias, such tulips of all imaginable hues, beginning with brilliant white and finishing with tints as black as soot, such a wealth of flowers as Pesotski possessed Kovrin had never seen in any other place. It was only the beginning of spring, and the real luxuriance of the flower-beds was still hidden in the hot-houses; but even those which blossomed in the borders along the walks and here and there on the flower-beds were sufficient to make you feel, when you passed through the garden, that you were in the kingdom of delicate tints, especially in the early morning, when a dewdrop glistened brightly on each petal.
The decorative part of the garden, which Pesotski called contemptuously a mere trifle, had greatly impressed Kovrin in his childhood. What wonderful whimsicalities were to be found there, what far-fetched monstrosities and mockeries of nature! There were espaliers of fruit trees, pear trees that had the form of pyramidal poplars, oaks and limes shaped like balls, an umbrella made of an apple tree, arches, monograms, candelabra and even 1862 formed by a plum tree; this date denoted the year when Pesotski first began to occupy himself with horticulture. There you also found pretty, graceful trees with straight strong stems like palms, and only when you examined them closely you saw that they were gooseberries and currants. But what chiefly made the garden pay and produced an animated appearance was the constant movement in it. From early morning till evening people with wheelbarrows, shovels and watering-pots swarmed like ants round the trees, bushes, avenues and flower-beds.
Kovrin arrived at the Pesotskis’ in the evening, at past nine o’clock. He found Tania and her father in a very anxious mood. The clear starlit sky and the falling thermometer foretold a morning frost; the head gardener, Ivan Karlych, had gone to town, and there was nobody who could be relied on. During supper nothing but morning frost was talked of, and they settled that Tania was not to go to bed, but walk through the gardens and see if all was in order after midnight, and that her father would get up at three or probably earlier.
Kovrin sat up with Tania, and after midnight he went with her into the orchard. It was very cold. In the yard there was a strong smell of burning. In the large orchard, which was called the commercial orchard and brought Egor Semenych a clear yearly profit of several thousand roubles, a thick, black, biting smoke spread along the earth, and by enveloping the trees saved those thousands from the frost. The trees were planted here in regular rows like the squares of a chess-board, and they looked like ranks of soldiers. This strictly pedantical regularity together with the exact size and similarity of the stems and crowns of the trees made the picture monotonous and dull. Kovrin and Tania passed along the rows, where bonfires of manure, straw and all sorts of refuse were smouldering, and occasionally they met workmen, who were wandering about in the smoke like shadows. Only plums, cherries and some sorts of apple trees were in full blossom, but the whole orchard was smothered in smoke, and it was only when they reached the nurseries that Kovrin could draw a long breath.