Über die Liebe

The last of the three linked stories of 1898 known as Chekhov's "Little Trilogy," after "The Man in a Case" and "Gooseberries." The schoolmaster Burkin and the veterinary surgeon Ivan Ivanych are still staying with Alyokhin at Sofino, where "Gooseberries" ended; this time it is their host who tells the story. It is short and undivided, so it is given as one episode, nearly complete; the English keeps close to Chekhov's words and follows, with revisions, the public-domain translation by Constance Garnett.

At lunch next day there were very nice pies, crayfish and mutton cutlets; and while they were eating, Nikanor, the cook, came up to ask what the visitors would like for dinner. He was a man of medium height, with a puffy face and little eyes; he was close-shaven, and it looked as though his moustaches had not been shaved, but had been pulled out by the roots.

Alyokhin told them that the beautiful Pelageya was in love with this cook. As he drank and was of a violent character, she did not want to marry him, but was willing to live with him without. He was very devout, and his religious convictions would not allow him to "live in sin"; he insisted on her marrying him, and would consent to nothing else, and when he was drunk he used to abuse her and even beat her. Whenever he got drunk she used to hide upstairs and sob, and on such occasions Alyokhin and the servants stayed in the house to be ready to defend her in case of necessity.

Nikanor's violence towards Pelageya is mentioned in the original only in passing, as here.

They began talking about love.

"How love is born," said Alyokhin, "why Pelageya does not love somebody more like herself in her spiritual and external qualities, and why she fell in love with Nikanor, that ugly snout — we all call him 'The Snout' — how far questions of personal happiness are of consequence in love — all that is unknown; one can take what view one likes of it. So far only one incontestable truth has been uttered about love: 'This is a great mystery.' Everything else that has been written or said about love is not a conclusion, but only a statement of questions which have remained unanswered. The explanation which would seem to fit one case does not apply in a dozen others, and the very best thing, to my mind, would be to explain every case individually without attempting to generalise. We ought, as the doctors say, to individualise each case.

"We Russians of the educated class have a partiality for these questions that remain unanswered. Love is usually poeticised, decorated with roses, nightingales; we Russians decorate our loves with these momentous questions, and select the most uninteresting of them, too. In Moscow, when I was a student, I had a friend who shared my life, a charming lady, and every time I took her in my arms she was thinking what I would allow her a month for housekeeping and what was the price of beef a pound. In the same way, when we are in love we are never tired of asking ourselves questions: whether it is honourable or dishonourable, sensible or stupid, what this love is leading up to, and so on. Whether it is a good thing or not I don't know, but that it is in the way, unsatisfactory and irritating, I do know."

It looked as though he wanted to tell some story. People who lead a solitary existence always have something in their hearts which they are eager to talk about. In town, bachelors visit the baths and the restaurants on purpose to talk, and sometimes tell the most interesting things to bath attendants and waiters; in the country, as a rule, they unbosom themselves to their guests. Now from the window they could see a grey sky, trees drenched in the rain; in such weather they could go nowhere, and there was nothing for them to do but to tell stories and to listen.

"I have lived at Sofino and been farming for a long time," Alyokhin began, "ever since I left the university. By education I am a gentleman, by temperament an idler, but when I came here there was a big debt owing on the estate, and as my father had got into debt partly because he had spent so much on my education, I resolved not to go away, but to work till I paid off the debt. I made up my mind to this and set to work, not, I must confess, without some repugnance. The land here does not yield much, and if one is not to farm at a loss one must employ serf labour or hired labourers, which is almost the same thing, or put it on a peasant footing — that is, work the fields oneself and with one's family. There is no middle path. But in those days I did not go into such subtleties. I did not leave a clod of earth unturned; I gathered together all the peasants, men and women, from the neighbouring villages; the work went on at a tremendous pace. I myself ploughed and sowed and reaped, and was bored doing it, and frowned with disgust, like a village cat driven by hunger to eat cucumbers in the kitchen-garden. My body ached, and I slept as I walked.

"At first it seemed to me that I could easily reconcile this life of toil with my cultured habits; to do so, I thought, all that is necessary is to maintain a certain external order in life. I established myself upstairs here in the best rooms, and ordered them to bring me there coffee and liqueur after lunch and dinner, and when I went to bed I read the Messenger of Europe. But one day our priest, Father Ivan, came and drank up all my liqueur at one sitting; and the Messenger of Europe went to the priest's daughters; as in the summer, especially at the haymaking, I did not succeed in getting to my bed at all, and slept in the sledge in the barn, or somewhere in the forester's lodge, what chance was there of reading? Little by little I moved downstairs, began dining in the servants' kitchen, and of my former luxury nothing is left but the servants who were in my father's service, and whom it would be painful to turn away.