Gooseberries Page #3

"Gooseberries" is a poignant short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of longing, disillusionment, and the quest for happiness. The narrative follows a character named Ivan Ivanovitch, who shares his philosophical reflections during a visit to his friend, the optimistic landowner, Nikolai. Through their conversation, Ivan reveals his deep-seated skepticism about the pursuit of self-satisfaction and the nature of contentment as he recounts his brother's dream of owning a country estate. Chekhov’s subtle wit and profound insights into human nature highlight the complexities of aspiration and the often-unattainable ideals of happiness, culminating in a bittersweet contemplation of life's simple pleasures and realities.

								

near the grave. He dressed, and led me out to show me the estate.

"'Well, how are you getting on here?' I asked.

"'Oh, all right, thank God; I am getting on very well.'

"He was no more a poor timid clerk, but a real landowner, a gentleman.
He was already accustomed to it, had grown used to it, and liked it. He
ate a great deal, went to the bath-house, was growing stout, was already
at law with the village commune and both factories, and was very much
offended when the peasants did not call him 'Your Honour.' And he
concerned himself with the salvation of his soul in a substantial,
gentlemanly manner, and performed deeds of charity, not simply, but with
an air of consequence. And what deeds of charity! He treated the
peasants for every sort of disease with soda and castor oil, and on his
name-day had a thanksgiving service in the middle of the village, and
then treated the peasants to a gallon of vodka--he thought that was the
thing to do. Oh, those horrible gallons of vodka! One day the fat
landowner hauls the peasants up before the district captain for
trespass, and next day, in honour of a holiday, treats them to a gallon
of vodka, and they drink and shout 'Hurrah!' and when they are drunk bow
down to his feet. A change of life for the better, and being well-fed
and idle develop in a Russian the most insolent self-conceit. Nikolay
Ivanovitch, who at one time in the government office was afraid to have
any views of his own, now could say nothing that was not gospel truth,
and uttered such truths in the tone of a prime minister. 'Education is
essential, but for the peasants it is premature.' 'Corporal punishment
is harmful as a rule, but in some cases it is necessary and there is
nothing to take its place.'

"'I know the peasants and understand how to treat them,' he would say.
'The peasants like me. I need only to hold up my little finger and the
peasants will do anything I like.'

"And all this, observe, was uttered with a wise, benevolent smile. He
repeated twenty times over 'We noblemen,' 'I as a noble'; obviously he
did not remember that our grandfather was a peasant, and our father a
soldier. Even our surname Tchimsha-Himalaisky, in reality so
incongruous, seemed to him now melodious, distinguished, and very
agreeable.

"But the point just now is not he, but myself. I want to tell you about
the change that took place in me during the brief hours I spent at his
country place. In the evening, when we were drinking tea, the cook put
on the table a plateful of gooseberries. They were not bought, but his
own gooseberries, gathered for the first time since the bushes were
planted. Nikolay Ivanovitch laughed and looked for a minute in silence
at the gooseberries, with tears in his eyes; he could not speak for
excitement. Then he put one gooseberry in his mouth, looked at me with
the triumph of a child who has at last received his favourite toy, and
said:

"'How delicious!'

"And he ate them greedily, continually repeating, 'Ah, how delicious! Do
taste them!'

"They were sour and unripe, but, as Pushkin says:

"'Dearer to us the falsehood that exalts Than hosts of baser truths.'

"I saw a happy man whose cherished dream was so obviously fulfilled, who
had attained his object in life, who had gained what he wanted, who was
satisfied with his fate and himself. There is always, for some reason,
an element of sadness mingled with my thoughts of human happiness, and,
on this occasion, at the sight of a happy man I was overcome by an
oppressive feeling that was close upon despair. It was particularly
oppressive at night. A bed was made up for me in the room next to my
brother's bedroom, and I could hear that he was awake, and that he kept
getting up and going to the plate of gooseberries and taking one. I
reflected how many satisfied, happy people there really are! What a
suffocating force it is! You look at life: the insolence and idleness of
the strong, the ignorance and brutishness of the weak, incredible
poverty all about us, overcrowding, degeneration, drunkenness,
hypocrisy, lying.... Yet all is calm and stillness in the houses and in
the streets; of the fifty thousand living in a town, there is not one
who would cry out, who would give vent to his indignation aloud. We see
the people going to market for provisions, eating by day, sleeping by
night, talking their silly nonsense, getting married, growing old,
serenely escorting their dead to the cemetery; but we do not see and we
do not hear those who suffer, and what is terrible in life goes on
somewhere behind the scenes.... Everything is quiet and peaceful, and
nothing protests but mute statistics: so many people gone out of their
minds, so many gallons of vodka drunk, so many children dead from
malnutrition.... And this order of things is evidently necessary;
evidently the happy man only feels at ease because the unhappy bear
their burdens in silence, and without that silence happiness would be
impossible. It's a case of general hypnotism. There ought to be behind
the door of every happy, contented man some one standing with a hammer
continually reminding him with a tap that there are unhappy people; that
however happy he may be, life will show him her laws sooner or later,
trouble will come for him--disease, poverty, losses, and no one will see
or hear, just as now he neither sees nor hears others. But there is no
man with a hammer; the happy man lives at his ease, and trivial daily
cares faintly agitate him like the wind in the aspen-tree--and all goes
well.

"That night I realized that I, too, was happy and contented," Ivan
Ivanovitch went on, getting up. "I, too, at dinner and at the hunt liked
to lay down the law on life and religion, and the way to manage the
peasantry. I, too, used to say that science was light, that culture was
essential, but for the simple people reading and writing was enough for
the time. Freedom is a blessing, I used to say; we can no more do
without it than without air, but we must wait a little. Yes, I used to
talk like that, and now I ask, 'For what reason are we to wait?'" asked
Ivan Ivanovitch, looking angrily at Burkin. "Why wait, I ask you? What
grounds have we for waiting? I shall be told, it can't be done all at
once; every idea takes shape in life gradually, in its due time. But who
is it says that? Where is the proof that it's right? You will fall back
upon the natural order of things, the uniformity of phenomena; but is
there order and uniformity in the fact that I, a living, thinking man,
stand over a chasm and wait for it to close of itself, or to fill up
with mud at the very time when perhaps I might leap over it or build a
bridge across it? And again, wait for the sake of what? Wait till
there's no strength to live? And meanwhile one must live, and one wants
to live!

"I went away from my brother's early in the morning, and ever since then
it has been unbearable for me to be in town. I am oppressed by its peace
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