The Beauties

"The Beauties I" is a collection of short stories by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, showcasing his keen observations of human nature and society. Through a series of vignettes and character studies, Chekhov explores themes of beauty, love, and the complexities of relationships. His lyrical prose and profound insights capture the subtleties of everyday life, revealing both the charming and tragic aspects of the human experience. The stories reflect Chekhov's signature blend of humor and pathos, inviting readers to reflect on the intricacies of the human condition.

								
I REMEMBER, when I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth class, I
was driving with my grandfather from the village of Bolshoe Kryepkoe in
the Don region to Rostov-on-the-Don. It was a sultry, languidly dreary
day of August. Our eyes were glued together, and our mouths were parched
from the heat and the dry burning wind which drove clouds of dust to
meet us; one did not want to look or speak or think, and when our drowsy
driver, a Little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip at the horses and
lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or utter a sound, but only,
rousing myself from half-slumber, gazed mildly and dejectedly into the
distance to see whether there was a village visible through the dust. We
stopped to feed the horses in a big Armenian village at a rich
Armenian's whom my grandfather knew. Never in my life have I seen a
greater caricature than that Armenian. Imagine a little shaven head with
thick overhanging eyebrows, a beak of a nose, long gray mustaches, and a
wide mouth with a long cherry-wood chibouk sticking out of it. This
little head was clumsily attached to a lean hunch-back carcass attired
in a fantastic garb, a short red jacket, and full bright blue trousers.
This figure walked straddling its legs and shuffling with its slippers,
spoke without taking the chibouk out of its mouth, and behaved with
truly Armenian dignity, not smiling, but staring with wide-open eyes and
trying to take as little notice as possible of its guests.

There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenian's rooms, but it was just
as unpleasant, stifling, and dreary as in the steppe and on the road. I
remember, dusty and exhausted by the heat, I sat in the corner on a
green box. The unpainted wooden walls, the furniture, and the floors
colored with yellow ocher smelt of dry wood baked by the sun. Wherever I
looked there were flies and flies and flies.... Grandfather and the
Armenian were talking about grazing, about manure, and about oats.... I
knew that they would be a good hour getting the samovar; that
grandfather would be not less than an hour drinking his tea, and then
would lie down to sleep for two or three hours; that I should waste a
quarter of the day waiting, after which there would be again the heat,
the dust, the jolting cart. I heard the muttering of the two voices, and
it began to seem to me that I had been seeing the Armenian, the cupboard
with the crockery, the flies, the windows with the burning sun beating
on them, for ages and ages, and should only cease to see them in the
far-off future, and I was seized with hatred for the steppe, the sun,
the flies....

A Little Russian peasant woman in a kerchief brought in a tray of tea-
things, then the samovar. The Armenian went slowly out into the passage
and shouted: "Mashya, come and pour out tea! Where are you, Mashya?"

Hurried footsteps were heard, and there came into the room a girl of
sixteen in a simple cotton dress and a white kerchief. As she washed the
crockery and poured out the tea, she was standing with her back to me,
and all I could see was that she was of a slender figure, barefooted,
and that her little bare heels were covered by long trousers.

The Armenian invited me to have tea. Sitting down to the table, I
glanced at the girl, who was handing me a glass of tea, and felt all at
once as though a wind were blowing over my soul and blowing away all the
impressions of the day with their dust and dreariness. I saw the
bewitching features of the most beautiful face I have ever met in real
life or in my dreams. Before me stood a beauty, and I recognized that at
the first glance as I should have recognized lightning.

I am ready to swear that Masha--or, as her father called her, Mashya--was
a real beauty, but I don't know how to prove it. It sometimes happens
that clouds are huddled together in disorder on the horizon, and the sun
hiding behind them colors them and the sky with tints of every possible
shade--crimson, orange, gold, lilac, muddy pink; one cloud is like a
monk, another like a fish, a third like a Turk in a turban. The glow of
sunset enveloping a third of the sky gleams on the cross on the church,
flashes on the windows of the manor house, is reflected in the river and
the puddles, quivers on the trees; far, far away against the background
of the sunset, a flock of wild ducks is flying homewards.... And the boy
herding the cows, and the surveyor driving in his chaise over the dam,
and the gentleman out for a walk, all gaze at the sunset, and every one
of them thinks it terribly beautiful, but no one knows or can say in
what its beauty lies.

I was not the only one to think the Armenian girl beautiful. My
grandfather, an old man of seventy, gruff and indifferent to women and
the beauties of nature, looked caressingly at Masha for a full minute,
and asked:

"Is that your daughter, Avert Nazaritch?"

"Yes, she is my daughter," answered the Armenian.

"A fine young lady," said my grandfather approvingly.

An artist would have called the Armenian girl's beauty classical and
severe, it was just that beauty, the contemplation of which--God knows
why!--inspires in one the conviction that one is seeing correct features;
that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, bosom, and every movement of the
young body all go together in one complete harmonious accord in which
nature has not blundered over the smallest line. You fancy for some
reason that the ideally beautiful woman must have such a nose as
Masha's, straight and slightly aquiline, just such great dark eyes, such
long lashes, such a languid glance; you fancy that her black curly hair
and eyebrows go with the soft white tint of her brow and cheeks as the
green reeds go with the quiet stream. Masha's white neck and her
youthful bosom were not fully developed, but you fancy the sculptor
would need a great creative genius to mold them. You gaze, and little by
little the desire comes over you to say to Masha something
extraordinarily pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she
herself was.

At first I felt hurt and abashed that Masha took no notice of me, but
was all the time looking down; it seemed to me as though a peculiar
atmosphere, proud and happy, separated her from me and jealously
screened her from my eyes.

"That's because I am covered with dust," I thought, "am sunburnt, and am
still a boy."

But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely to the
consciousness of beauty. I thought no more now of the dreary steppe, of
the dust, no longer heard the buzzing of the flies, no longer tasted the
tea, and felt nothing except that a beautiful girl was standing only the
other side of the table.

I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstacy, nor
enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful though pleasant
sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream. For some
reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the Armenian,
even for the girl herself, and I had a feeling as though we all four had

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