was anything you like, but not love.
And only now when his head was grey he had fallen properly, really in love -- for the first time in his life.
Anna Sergeyevna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender friends; it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband; and it was as though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both.
In moments of depression in the past he had comforted himself with any arguments that came into his mind, but now he no longer cared for arguments; he felt profound compassion, he wanted to be sincere and tender. . . .
'Don't cry, my darling,' he said. 'You've had your cry; that's enough. . . . Let us talk now, let us think of some plan.'
Then they spent a long while taking counsel together, talked of how to avoid the necessity for secrecy, for deception, for living in different towns and not seeing each other for long at a time. How could they be free from this intolerable bondage?
'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. 'How?'
And it seemed as though in a little while the solution would be found, and then a new and splendid life would begin; and it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.
NOTES
Verney's pavilion: an ice-cream and sweets shop
phonetic spelling: literally, 'omitted the 'hard sign,' ' a characteristic of a progressive intellectual (this anticipated the reform of the Russian alphabet)
Belyov or Zhidra: Belev and Zhizdra are examples of provincial and backward towns
groyne: pier
lorgnette: a pair of eyeglasses with a short handle
second bell: in Russian theaters three bells were rung, and the curtain went up on the third bell
The Geisha: an 1896 operetta by the Englishman Sidney Jones (1861-1946)
interval: intermission
three degrees above freezing-point: about 39 degrees F.
* * *
AT CHRISTMAS TIME
by Anton Chekhov
I
'WHAT shall I write?' said Yegor, and he dipped his pen in the ink.
Vasilisa had not seen her daughter for four years. Her daughter Yefimya had gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then seemed to vanish out of their lives; there had been no sight nor sound of her. And whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the same thing -- what was happening to Yefimya, whether she were alive out yonder. She ought to have sent a letter, but the old father could not write, and there was no one to write.
But now Christmas had come, and Vasilisa could not bear it any longer, and went to the tavern to Yegor, the brother of the innkeeper's wife, who had sat in the tavern doing nothing ever since he came back from the army; people said that he could write letters very well if he were properly paid. Vasilisa talked to the cook at the tavern, then to the mistress of the house, then to Yegor himself. They agreed upon fifteen kopecks.
And now -- it happened on the second day of the holidays, in the tavern kitchen -- Yegor was sitting at the table, holding the pen in his hand. Vasilisa was standing before him, pondering with an expression of anxiety and woe on her face. Pyotr, her husband, a very thin old man with a brownish bald patch, had come with her; he stood looking straight before him like a blind man. On the stove a piece of pork was being braised in a saucepan; it was spurting and hissing, and seemed to be actually saying: 'Flu-flu-flu.' It was stifling.
'What am I to write?' Yegor asked again.
'What?' asked Vasilisa, looking at him angrily and suspiciously. 'Don't worry me! You are not writing for nothing; no fear, you'll be paid for it. Come, write: 'To our dear son-in-law, Andrey Hrisanfitch, and to our only beloved daughter, Yefimya Petrovna, with our love we send a low bow and our parental blessing abiding for ever.' '
'Written; fire away.'
' 'And we wish them a happy Christmas; we are alive and well, and I wish you the same, please the Lord . . . the Heavenly King.' '
Vasilisa pondered and exchanged glances with the old man.
' 'And I wish you the same, please the Lord the Heavenly King,' ' she repeated, beginning to cry.
She could say nothing more. And yet before, when she lay awake thinking at night, it had seemed to her that she could not get all she had to say into a dozen letters. Since the time when her daughter had gone away with her husband much water had flowed into the sea, the old people had lived feeling bereaved, and sighed heavily at night as though they had buried their daughter. And how many events had occurred in the village since then, how many marriages and deaths! How long the winters had been! How long the nights!
'It's hot,' said Yegor, unbuttoning his waistcoat. 'It must be seventy degrees. What more?' he asked.
The old people were silent.
'What does your son-in-law do in Petersburg?' asked Yegor.
