Champagne a Wayfarer's Story Page #2

"Champagne: A Wayfarer's Story" is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of human connection, solitude, and the fleeting nature of joy. The narrative follows a traveler who reflects on his life and the transient encounters that shape his experiences, particularly during a chance meeting with a group of people enjoying champagne. Through Chekhov's characteristic blend of humor and poignancy, the story delves into the complexities of social interactions and the search for meaning in the midst of life's impermanence.

								

her maudlin love, in her hollow chest, in her lusterless eyes? I put up
with her, but I don't love her. What can happen? My youth is being
wasted, as the saying is, for a pinch of snuff. Women flit before my
eyes only in the carriage windows, like falling stars. Love I never had
and have not. My manhood, my courage, my power of feeling are going to
ruin.... Everything is being thrown away like dirt, and all my wealth
here in the steppe is not worth a farthing."

The train rushed past me with a roar and indifferently cast the glow of
its red lights upon me. I saw it stop by the green lights of the
station, stop for a minute and rumble off again. After walking a mile
and a half I went back. Melancholy thoughts haunted me still. Painful as
it was to me, yet I remember I tried as it were to make my thoughts
still gloomier and more melancholy. You know people who are vain and not
very clever have moments when the consciousness that they are miserable
affords them positive satisfaction, and they even coquet with their
misery for their own entertainment. There was a great deal of truth in
what I thought, but there was also a great deal that was absurd and
conceited, and there was something boyishly defiant in my question:
"What could happen worse?"

"And what is there to happen?" I asked myself. "I think I have endured
everything. I've been ill, I've lost money, I get reprimanded by my
superiors every day, and I go hungry, and a mad wolf has run into the
station yard. What more is there? I have been insulted, humiliated,...
and I have insulted others in my time. I have not been a criminal, it is
true, but I don't think I am capable of crime--I am not afraid of being
hauled up for it."

The two little clouds had moved away from the moon and stood at a little
distance, looking as though they were whispering about something which
the moon must not know. A light breeze was racing across the steppe,
bringing the faint rumble of the retreating train.

My wife met me at the doorway. Her eyes were laughing gaily and her
whole face was beaming with good-humor.

"There is news for you!" she whispered. "Make haste, go to your room and
put on your new coat; we have a visitor."

"What visitor?"

"Aunt Natalya Petrovna has just come by the train."

"What Natalya Petrovna?"

"The wife of my uncle Semyon Fyodoritch. You don't know her. She is a
very nice, good woman."

Probably I frowned, for my wife looked grave and whispered rapidly:

"Of course it is queer her having come, but don't be cross, Nikolay, and
don't be hard on her. She is unhappy, you know; Uncle Semyon Fyodoritch
really is ill-natured and tyrannical, it is difficult to live with him.
She says she will only stay three days with us, only till she gets a
letter from her brother."

My wife whispered a great deal more nonsense to me about her despotic
uncle; about the weakness of mankind in general and of young wives in
particular; about its being our duty to give shelter to all, even great
sinners, and so on. Unable to make head or tail of it, I put on my new
coat and went to make acquaintance with my "aunt."

A little woman with large black eyes was sitting at the table. My table,
the gray walls, my roughly-made sofa, everything to the tiniest grain of
dust seemed to have grown younger and more cheerful in the presence of
this new, young, beautiful, and dissolute creature, who had a most
subtle perfume about her. And that our visitor was a lady of easy virtue
I could see from her smile, from her scent, from the peculiar way in
which she glanced and made play with her eyelashes, from the tone in
which she talked with my wife--a respectable woman. There was no need to
tell me she had run away from her husband, that her husband was old and
despotic, that she was good-natured and lively; I took it all in at the
first glance. Indeed, it is doubtful whether there is a man in all
Europe who cannot spot at the first glance a woman of a certain
temperament.

"I did not know I had such a big nephew!" said my aunt, holding out her
hand to me and smiling.

"And I did not know I had such a pretty aunt," I answered.

Supper began over again. The cork flew with a bang out of the second
bottle, and my aunt swallowed half a glassful at a gulp, and when my
wife went out of the room for a moment my aunt did not scruple to drain
a full glass. I was drunk both with the wine and with the presence of a
woman. Do you remember the song?

"Eyes black as pitch, eyes full of passion, Eyes burning bright and
beautiful, How I love you, How I fear you!"

I don't remember what happened next. Anyone who wants to know how love
begins may read novels and long stories; I will put it shortly and in
the words of the same silly song:

"It was an evil hour When first I met you."

Everything went head over heels to the devil. I remember a fearful,
frantic whirlwind which sent me flying round like a feather. It lasted a
long while, and swept from the face of the earth my wife and my aunt
herself and my strength. From the little station in the steppe it has
flung me, as you see, into this dark street.

Now tell me what further evil can happen to me?
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