LITMIR.BIZ

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said Obtyosov when, after uncorking the bottles, she dropped the corkscrew. “Don’t make such a noise; you’ll wake your husband.”

      “Well, what if I do wake him?”

      “He is sleeping so sweetly… he must be dreaming of you…. To your health!”

      “Besides,” boomed the doctor, hiccupping after the seltzer-water, “husbands are such a dull business that it would be very nice of them to be always asleep. How good a drop of red wine would be in this water!”

      “What an idea!” laughed the chemist’s wife.

      “That would be splendid. What a pity they don’t sell spirits in chemist’s shops! Though you ought to sell wine as a medicine. Have you any vinum gallicum rubrum?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, then, give us some! Bring it here, damn it!”

      “How much do you want?”

      “Quantum satis…. Give us an ounce each in the water, and afterwards we’ll see…. Obtyosov, what do you say? First with water and afterwards per se… .”

      The doctor and Obtyosov sat down to the counter, took off their caps, and began drinking the wine.

      “The wine, one must admit, is wretched stuff! Vinum nastissimum! Though in the presence of… er… it tastes like nectar. You are enchanting, madam! In imagination I kiss your hand.”

      “I would give a great deal to do so not in imagination,” said Obtyosov. “On my honour, I’d give my life.”

      “That’s enough,” said Madame Tchernomordik, flushing and assuming a serious expression.

      “What a flirt you are, though!” the doctor laughed softly, looking slyly at her from under his brows. “Your eyes seem to be firing shot: piff-paff! I congratulate you: you’ve conquered! We are vanquished!”

      The chemist’s wife looked at their ruddy faces, listened to their chatter, and soon she, too, grew quite lively. Oh, she felt so gay! She entered into the conversation, she laughed, flirted, and even, after repeated requests from the customers, drank two ounces of wine.

      “You officers ought to come in oftener from the camp,” she said; “it’s awful how dreary it is here. I’m simply dying of it.”

      “I should think so!” said the doctor indignantly. “Such a peach, a miracle of nature, thrown away in the wilds! How well Griboyedov said, ‘Into the wilds, to Saratov’! It’s time for us to be off, though. Delighted to have made your acquaintance… very. How much do we owe you?”

      The chemist’s wife raised her eyes to the ceiling and her lips moved for some time.

      “Twelve roubles forty-eight kopecks,” she said.

      Obtyosov took out of his pocket a fat pocketbook, and after fumbling for some time among the notes, paid.

      “Your husband’s sleeping sweetly… he must be dreaming,” he muttered, pressing her hand at parting.

      “I don’t like to hear silly remarks… .”

      “What silly remarks? On the contrary, it’s not silly at all… even Shakespeare said: ‘Happy is he who in his youth is young.’”

      “Let go of my hand.”

      At last after much talk and after kissing the lady’s hand at parting, the customers went out of the shop irresolutely, as though they were wondering whether they had not forgotten something.

      She ran quickly into the bedroom and sat down in the same place. She saw the doctor and the officer, on coming out of the shop, walk lazily away a distance of twenty paces; then they stopped and began whispering together. What about? Her heart throbbed, there was a pulsing in her temples, and why she did not know…. Her heart beat violently as though those two whispering outside were deciding her fate.

      Five minutes later the doctor parted from Obtyosov and walked on, while Obtyosov came back. He walked past the shop once and a second time…. He would stop near the door and then take a few steps again. At last the bell tinkled discreetly.

      “What? Who is there?” the chemist’s wife heard her husband’s voice suddenly. “There’s a ring at the bell, and you don’t hear it,” he said severely. “Is that the way to do things?”

      He got up, put on his dressing-gown, and staggering, half asleep, flopped in his slippers to the shop.

      “What… is it?” he asked Obtyosov.

      “Give me… give me four pennyworth of peppermint lozenges.”

      Sniffing continually, yawning, dropping asleep as he moved, and knocking his knees against the counter, the chemist went to the shelf and reached down the jar.

      Two minutes later the chemist’s wife saw Obtyosov go out of the shop, and, after he had gone some steps, she saw him throw the packet of peppermints on the dusty road. The doctor came from behind a corner to meet him…. They met and, gesticulating, vanished in the morning mist.

      “How unhappy I am!” said the chemist’s wife, looking angrily at her husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. “Oh, how unhappy I am!” she repeated, suddenly melting into bitter tears. “And nobody knows, nobody knows… .”

      “I forgot fourpence on the counter,” muttered the chemist, pulling the quilt over him. “Put it away in the till, please… .”

      And at once he fell asleep again.

      NOT WANTED

       Table of Contents

      Translation By Constance Garnett

      BETWEEN six and seven o’clock on a July evening, a crowd of summer visitors — mostly fathers of families — burdened with parcels, portfolios, and ladies’ hat-boxes, was trailing along from the little station of Helkovo, in the direction of the summer villas. They all looked exhausted, hungry, and ill-humoured, as though the sun were not shining and the grass were not green for them.

      Trudging along among the others was Pavel Matveyitch Zaikin, a member of the Circuit Court, a tall, stooping man, in a cheap cotton dust-coat and with a cockade on his faded cap. He was perspiring, red in the face, and gloomy….

      “Do you come out to your holiday home every day?” said a summer visitor, in ginger-coloured trousers, addressing him.

      “No, not every day,” Zaikin answered sullenly. “My wife and son are staying here all the while, and I come down two or three times a week. I haven’t time to come every day; besides, it is expensive.”

      “You’re right there; it is expensive,” sighed he of the ginger trousers. “In town you can’t walk to the station, you have to take a cab; and then, the ticket costs forty-two kopecks; you buy a paper for the journey; one is tempted to drink a glass of vodka. It’s all petty expenditure not worth considering, but, mind you, in the course of the summer it will run up to some two hundred roubles. Of course, to be in the lap of Nature is worth any money — I don’t dispute it… idyllic and all the rest of it; but of course, with the salary an official gets, as you know yourself, every farthing has to be considered. If you waste a halfpenny you lie awake all night…. Yes… I receive, my dear sir — I haven’t the honour of knowing your name — I receive a salary of very nearly two thousand roubles a year. I am a civil councillor, I smoke second-rate tobacco, and I haven’t a rouble to spare to buy Vichy water, prescribed me by the doctor for gall-stones.”

      “It’s altogether abominable,” said Zaikin after a brief silence. “I maintain, sir, that summer holidays are the invention of the devil and of woman. The devil was actuated

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