A letter from Sasha arrived from Saratov. In his gay dancing handwriting he told them that his journey on the Volga had been a complete success, but that he had been taken rather ill in Saratov, had lost his voice, and had been for the last fortnight in the hospital. She knew what that meant, and she was overwhelmed with a foreboding that was like a conviction. And it vexed her that this foreboding and the thought of Sasha did not distress her so much as before. She had a passionate desire for life, longed to be in Petersburg, and her friendship with Sasha seemed now sweet but something far, far away! She did not sleep all night, and in the morning sat at the window, listening. And she did in fact hear voices below; Granny, greatly agitated, was asking questions rapidly. Then someone began crying. … When Nadya went downstairs Granny was standing in the corner, praying before the icon and her face was tearful. A telegram lay on the table.
For some time Nadya walked up and down the room, listening to Granny’s weeping; then she picked up the telegram and read it.
It announced that the previous morning Alexandr Timofeitch, or more simply, Sasha, had died at Saratov of consumption.
Granny and Nina Ivanovna went to the church to order a memorial service, while Nadya went on walking about the rooms and thinking. She recognized clearly that her life had been turned upside down as Sasha wished; that here she was, alien, isolated, useless and that everything here was useless to her; that all the past had been torn away from her and vanished as though it had been burnt up and the ashes scattered to the winds. She went into Sasha’s room and stood there for a while.
“Goodbye, dear Sasha,” she thought, and before her mind rose the vista of a new, wide, spacious life, and that life, still obscure and full of mysteries, beckoned her and attracted her.
She went upstairs to her own room to pack, and next morning said goodbye to her family, and full of life and high spirits left the town—as she supposed forever.
Endnotes
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On many railway lines, in order to avoid accidents, it is against the regulations to carry hay on the trains, and so live stock are without fodder on the journey. ↩
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The train destined especially for the transport of troops is called the troop train; when they are no troops it takes goods, and goes more rapidly than ordinary goods train. ↩
-
A character in Gogol’s Dead Souls. (Translator’s note.) ↩
-
Sobol in Russian means “sable-marten.” (Translator’s note.) ↩
-
The Petchenyegs were a tribe of wild Mongolian nomads who made frequent inroads upon the Russians in the tenth and eleventh centuries. (Translator’s note.) ↩
Colophon
Short Fiction
was compiled from short stories and novellas published between 1880 and 1903 by
Anton Chekhov.
They were translated from Russian between 1916 and 1922 by
Constance Garnett.
This ebook was produced for
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and is based on transcriptions produced between 2004 and 2006 by
James Rusk, Chuck Greif, and David Widger
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and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.
The cover page is adapted from
Portrait of Anton Pavlovich Chekhov,
a painting completed in 1898 by
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