One of Many

An hour before the departure of his train, a suburban father of a family, holding in his hands a glass lampshade globe, a toy bicycle, and a child’s little coffin, comes in to see a friend of his and sinks onto the sofa in utter exhaustion.

"My dear fellow, my dear man..." he mutters, gasping and rolling his eyes senselessly. "I have a favor to ask of you. For Christ’s sake, I beg you... lend me your revolver till tomorrow. Be a friend."

"What do you need a revolver for?"

"I need it... Oh, my God! Give me some water. Quickly, water!... I need it... At night I’ll have to drive through a dark wood, so I... just in case... Lend it to me, do me the kindness!..."

The friend looks at the pale, worn-out face of the father of the family, at his sweating brow, his wild eyes, and shrugs his shoulders.

"Oh, come now, you’re lying, Ivan Ivanych!" he says. "What dark wood is there out there, the devil take it? You’ve probably taken it into your head to do something! I can see by your face you’re up to no good! But what’s the matter with you? Why have you got a coffin there? Listen, you’re unwell!"

"Water... Oh my God... Wait, let me catch my breath... I’m worn out like a dog. My whole body and my head feel as if every vein had been pulled out of me and roasted on a spit... I can’t bear it any longer... Be a friend, don’t ask anything, don’t go into details... give me the revolver! I beg you!"

"Now, that’s enough! Ivan Ivanych, what’s this faintheartedness? A father of a family, a State Councillor! Shame on you!"

"It’s easy for you... to shame others, when you live here in town and know nothing of these accursed summer cottages... Give me more water... And if you’d lived in my place, you’d be singing a different tune... I’m a martyr! I’m a beast of burden, a slave, a scoundrel, who still keeps waiting for something and doesn’t send himself into the next world! I’m a rag, a blockhead, an idiot! What do I live for? What for?"

The father of the family jumps up and, wringing his hands in despair, begins to pace about the study.

"Well, you tell me, what do I live for?" he shouts, springing up to his friend and seizing him by the button. "What is this endless string of moral and physical sufferings for! I can understand being a martyr to an idea, yes! But to be a martyr to the devil knows what, to ladies’ petticoats and children’s coffins, no – your humble servant! No, no, no! I’ve had enough! Enough!"

"Don’t shout, the neighbors will hear!"

"Let the neighbors hear too, it’s all the same to me! If you won’t give me the revolver, someone else will, but I won’t stay among the living! It’s decided!"

"Wait, you’ve torn off my button... Speak calmly. I still don’t understand what’s so bad about your life?"

"What? You ask me what? Very well, I’ll tell you! Very well! I’ll speak my mind to you, and perhaps my soul will feel a little less vile! Let’s sit down... I’ll be brief, because I have to get to the station soon, and I still need to run over to Tyutryumov’s to fetch two tins of sprats and a pound of marmalade for Marya Osipovna, may the devils in the next world pull her tongue out for her! Now, listen... Let’s take today, for instance. Let’s take it. As you know, from ten o’clock to four I have to sit blowing my brains out at the office. Heat, stuffiness, flies, and the most impossible chaos, my dear fellow, you can imagine. The secretary’s taken leave, Khrapov’s gone off to get married, the office fry are all gone mad over summer cottages, flirtations, and amateur theatricals. Everyone’s half-asleep, worn out, bleary-eyed, so that you can’t get any sense out of anyone, nothing can be done either by persuasion or by shouting... The secretary’s post is filled by a fellow who’s deaf in his left ear and in love, who can scarcely tell an incoming paper from an outgoing one; the blockhead understands nothing, and I have to do everything for him myself. Without the secretary and Khrapov nobody knows where anything is kept, where anything should be sent, and the petitioners, all in a daze, are rushing about, hurrying, getting angry, threatening – such a shambles, with the very elements against you, that you could cry for the police! Confusion and smoke rising to the rafters... And the work is infernal: the same thing over and over, a certificate, a memorandum, a certificate, a memorandum – monotonous as the swell of the sea. Simply, you understand, your eyes are ready to pop out of your skull, and on top of it all, to my misfortune, my superior is divorcing his wife and suffering from sciatica; so he moans and grumbles till there’s no living with him. Unbearable!"

The father of the family jumps up and immediately sits down again.

"All that’s nothing, just listen to what comes next!" he says. "You come out of the office broken, worn to a rag; you’d think it was time to go have dinner and collapse into bed, but no, remember you’re a summer cottager, that is, a slave, trash, a dishrag, and kindly, like a mother’s son, go running about the city this instant carrying out errands. A charming custom has taken root at our cottages: if a cottager is going into town, then, not to mention his own wife, every last piece of cottage riffraff and vermin has the power and the right to saddle him with a mass of errands. My wife demands that I call on the dressmaker and give her a scolding because the bodice came out too wide and too narrow in the shoulders at once; Sonechka needs her shoes changed, my sister-in-law needs crimson silk to match a swatch, twenty kopecks’ worth, and three arshins of braid... Wait, let me read it to you right now."

The father of the family pulls a crumpled note from his waistcoat pocket and reads it out with fury:

"’A lampshade globe; one pound of ham sausage; cloves and cinnamon for 5 kopecks; castor oil for Misha; ten pounds of granulated sugar; fetch from home the copper basin and the sugar mortar; carbolic acid, Persian powder for 20 kopecks; twenty bottles of beer and one bottle of vinegar essence; a corset for mademoiselle Chansot, number 82, at Gvozdev’s, and fetch from home Misha’s autumn coat and his galoshes.’ That’s the order from my wife and family. Now the errands from dear friends and neighbors, devil take them! Tomorrow’s Volodya’s name-day at the Vlasins’, I have to bring him a bicycle; the Kurkins’ baby’s died, and I must buy them a little coffin; at Marya Mikhailovna’s they’re boiling jam, and on that account I have to lug her half a pood of sugar every day; the lieutenant-colonel’s wife, Vikhrina, is in an interesting condition; I’m not to blame for it, neither in dream nor in deed, but somehow I’m obliged to call on the midwife and tell her to come by at such and such a time... And as for such errands as letters, sausage, telegrams, tooth powder – there’s nothing even to say. I’ve got five notes in my pockets! It’s impossible to refuse the errands: it isn’t proper, it isn’t kind! The devil take it! To saddle a man with a pood of sugar and a midwife – that’s proper, but to refuse – that’s quelle horreur, the very last word in impropriety! Let me refuse some Kurkin or other, and my dear wife rears right up: what will Princess Marya Alexevna say?! Oh! Ah! You’d never hear the end of the fainting fits after that, to the devil with it! And so, my dear fellow, in the gap between the office and the train you run about the city like a dog with your tongue hanging out, run and run and curse the day you were born. From the shop to the chemist’s, from the chemist’s to the dressmaker’s, from the dressmaker’s to the sausage shop, and from there back to the chemist’s again. Here you stumble, there you lose your money, in a third place you forget to pay and they chase after you making a scene, in a fourth you step on a lady’s train... pah! From such exercise you get so worked into a fury and so wrung out that afterward your bones ache all night and your legs cramp under you. Well then, the errands are done, everything’s bought, now how, if you please, am I to pack all this music together? How, for instance, would you fit together a heavy copper mortar and pestle with a lampshade globe, or carbolic acid with tea? Well, there’s a puzzle for you. How will you combine into one the beer bottles and this bicycle? That, my friend, is Egyptian labor, a problem fit for the mind, a riddle! However you pack it, however you tie it up, in the end you’re sure to smash something and spill something, and at the station and in the carriage you’ll stand there with both arms spread wide, straddle-legged, propping up some bundle with your chin, all wrapped in paper bags, boxes, and other rubbish. And the moment the train starts, the public begins flinging your luggage in every direction: you’ve taken up other people’s seats with your things. They shout, they call the conductor, they threaten to put you off, and what am I supposed to do? Not throw my things out the window, surely! Check it as luggage! Easy to say, but for that you need a crate, you need to pack all this trash into it, and where am I to get a crate every single day, and how am I to pack the globe together with the mortar? So the whole way there’s howling and gnashing of teeth in the carriage, until you finally arrive. And just wait and see what the lady passengers will have to say to me today about this little coffin! Ugh! Give me some water, brother. Now listen to what comes next. It’s the custom to hand out errands, but as for handing over money for expenses – there, take that and chew on it! I’ve spent a mountain of money, and I’ll get back half. I’ll send this little coffin to the Kurkins with the maid, and they’re in mourning now, so it’s hardly the moment for them to think about money. So I won’t get it back at all. And as for reminding them of the debt, and to ladies at that – I can’t, not if you cut my throat. Rubles, well, one way or another, however reluctantly, do get paid back, but kopecks – you can write them off as lost. Well then, I arrive home at my cottage. Now you’d think it was time for a good drink after your righteous labors, a bite to eat, and off to bed – isn’t that so? – but it wasn’t to be. My dear wife has long been lying in wait. You’ve barely finished your soup when she pounces on God’s poor slave, and would he be so kind as to make an appearance at some amateur theatrical or dance circle. Don’t you dare protest. You’re a husband, and the word ’husband,’ translated into the ladies’ tongue, means a rag, an idiot, and a dumb beast that can be ridden and made to haul any load you like, without fear of the Society for the Protection of Animals interfering. You go and sit goggling at ’Scandal in a Respectable Family’ or ’Motya,’ applauding on your wife’s orders, and feel that you’re about to drop dead on the spot. And at the dance circle, you watch the dancing and hunt up partners for your wife, and if there aren’t enough gentlemen to go round, then kindly dance the quadrille yourself. You dance with some crooked Ivanovna or other, smiling like a fool, while thinking to yourself: ’How long, O Lord, how long?’ You get home at midnight from the theater or the ball, and you’re no longer a man but a corpse, fit to be thrown out. But at last you’ve reached your goal: you’ve undressed and lain down in bed. Close your eyes and sleep... Splendid... Everything’s so good: it’s warm, the children aren’t shrieking behind the wall, your wife isn’t there beside you, and your conscience is clear – nothing better could be asked. You fall asleep, and suddenly... suddenly you hear: dzzz... Mosquitoes! Mosquitoes, curse them three times over, damn them, mosquitoes!’"

The father of the family jumps up and shakes his fists.

"Mosquitoes! It’s a plague of Egypt, an inquisition! Dzzz... It whines so pitifully, so mournfully, as if it were begging your pardon, but then the scoundrel bites you so that you scratch for a whole hour afterward. You smoke, you swat them, you hide your head under the covers – nothing helps! In the end you give up and surrender yourself to be torn to pieces: eat me then, damn you! No sooner have you gotten used to the mosquitoes than your wife starts rehearsing romances in the drawing room with her tenors. They sleep by day and rehearse for amateur concerts by night. Oh my God! Tenors – that’s such torment that no mosquitoes can compare."

The father of the family makes a weeping face and sings:

"’Say not that youth was ruined... Once more before you I stand enchanted.’ Oh, the villains! They’ve wrung out my very soul! To drown them out a little, I resort to this trick: I tap my finger against my temple, near my ear. I keep at it till about four o’clock, until they disperse... And no sooner have they dispersed than a new torment arrives: her ladyship my wife descends and asserts her lawful rights over my person. She’s been getting sentimental out there with the moon and her tenors, and now I have to pay for it. Believe me, I’ve grown so terrified that when she comes in to me at night, I’m thrown into a sweat and seized with dread. Oh, give me some more water, brother... Well then, having gotten no sleep, you get up at six o’clock and it’s off to the station at the double, for the train. You run, afraid of being late, and there’s mud, fog, cold, brrr! And you arrive in town, and the barrel-organ starts up all over again from the beginning. So it goes, brother... Life, I tell you, is infernal, and I wouldn’t wish such a life on my worst enemy! You understand, I’ve fallen ill! Short of breath, heartburn, forever afraid of something, my stomach won’t digest... in a word, it isn’t a life, it’s nothing but grief! And no one pities me, no one sympathizes, it’s as if that’s simply how it ought to be. They even laugh. A summer-cottage husband, a summer-cottage father of a family – well then, that’s exactly what he deserves, let him perish. But understand, I’m an animal too, I want to live! This isn’t a vaudeville, it’s a tragedy! Listen, if you won’t give me the revolver, then at least have some sympathy!’"

"I do sympathize."

"I can see how much you sympathize... Farewell... I’m off for the sprats, and then to the station."

"Where is it you have your cottage?" asks the friend.

"On Dead Creek..."

"Yes, I know the place... Listen, you don’t happen to know a lady summering there, Olga Pavlovna Finberg?"

"I know her... I’m even acquainted with her..."

"You don’t say!" the friend marvels, and his face takes on a joyful, astonished expression. "And I never knew! In that case... my dear fellow, my dear man, couldn’t you do me one small favor? Be a friend, my dear Ivan Ivanych! Come, give me your word of honor that you’ll do it!"

"What is it?"

"Not exactly a service, more a favor between friends. I beg you, my dear fellow. First, give my regards to Olga Pavlovna, and second, take her a little something. She asked me to buy her a hand-cranked sewing machine, and there’s no one to deliver it to her. Take it to her, my dear man!"

The suburban father of a family stares dully at his friend for a moment, as though understanding nothing, then turns purple and begins to shout, stamping his feet:

"Here, eat a man alive! Finish him off! Tear him to pieces! Give me the machine! Climb up and ride me yourselves while you’re at it! Water! Give me water! What do I live for? What for?"