'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 grayish-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:
'Why keep asking? Go to the church beadle and enquire where they live. They'll wash the body and lay it out, and do everything that is necessary.'
NOTES
titular counselor: a low grade in the civil service, with a low salary
Sidorov or Tarasov: ordinary surnames; the English equivalent would be 'Smith or Jones'
Zola: Emile Zola (1840-1902) French novelist of the naturalist school
erysipelas: a serious skin infection
second day of Trinity week: the sixteenth day after Easter, counting Easter itself
Mazini: Antonio Masini (1844-1926), Italian tenor and opera star, toured Russia in 1877-1878
groan: a paraphrase of lines from an 1858 poem by N. A. Nekrasov (1821-1878)
Polyenov: V. D. Polenov (1844-1927)
pier glass: large mirror
nature morte: still-life
Kurort: health spa
Barnay: Ludwig B. Barnay (1842-1924), German actor who toured Russia in 1890
the Osip in Gogol and the silly pun on his name: the pun in Nikolay V. Gogol's (1809-1852) novel
* * *
After the Theatre
by Anton Chekhov
NADYA ZELENIN had just come back with her mamma from the theatre where she had seen a performance of 'Yevgeny Onyegin.' As soon as she reached her own room she threw off her dress, let down her hair, and in her petticoat and white dressing-jacket hastily sat down to the table to write a letter like Tatyana's.
'I love you,' she wrote, 'but you do not love me, do not love me!'
She wrote it and laughed.
She was only sixteen and did not yet love anyone. She knew that an officer called Gorny and a student called Gruzdev loved her, but now after the opera she wanted to be doubtful of their love. To be unloved and unhappy -- how interesting that was. There is something beautiful, touching, and poetical about it when one loves and the other is indifferent. Onyegin was interesting because he was not in love at all, and Tatyana was fascinating because she was so much in love; but if they had been equally in love with each other and had been happy, they would perhaps have seemed dull.
'Leave off declaring that you love me,' Nadya went on writing, thinking of Gorny. 'I cannot believe it. You are very clever, cultivated, serious, you have immense talent, and perhaps a brilliant future awaits you, while I am an uninteresting girl of no importance, and you know very well that I should be only a hindrance in your life. It is true that you were attracted by me and thought you had found your ideal in me, but that was a mistake, and now you are asking yourself in despair: 'Why did I meet that girl?' And only your goodness of heart prevents you from owning it to yourself. . . .'
Nadya felt sorry for herself, she began to cry, and went on:
'It is hard for me to leave my mother and my brother, or I should take a nun's veil and go whither chance may lead me. And you would be left free and would love another. Oh, if I were dead! '
She could not make out what she had written through her tears; little rainbows were quivering on the table, on the floor, on the ceiling, as though she were looking through a prism. She could not write, she sank back in her easy-chair and fell to thinking of Gorny.
My God! how interesting, how fascinating men were! Nadya recalled the fine expression, ingratiating, guilty, and soft, which came into the officer's face when one argued about music with him, and the effort he made to prevent his voice from betraying his passion. In a society where cold haughtiness and indifference are regarded as signs of good breeding and gentlemanly bearing, one must conceal one's passions. And he did try to conceal them, but he did not succeed, and everyone knew very well that he had a passionate love of music. The endless discussions about music and the bold criticisms of people who knew nothing about it kept him always on the strain; he was frightened, timid, and silent. He played the piano magnificently, like a professional pianist, and if he had not been in the army he would certainly have been a famous musician.
The tears on her eyes dried. Nadya remembered that Gorny had declared his love at a Symphony concert, and again downstairs by the hatstand where there was a tremendous draught blowing in all directions.
