The Chorus Girl Page #22

"The Chorus Girl" is a poignant short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores themes of love, ambition, and the complexities of human relationships. The narrative follows a young chorus girl who hopes for a better life and dreams of love, but finds herself confronting the harsh realities of her circumstances. Chekhov's insightful character portrayals and subtle social commentary reveal the emotional struggles and unfulfilled desires of the protagonist, ultimately offering a nuanced reflection on the fleeting nature of happiness and the often disillusioning pursuit of dreams.

								

has told me all about it; she has been singing your praises. I quite
understand and approve," he went on, taking my arm. "To be a good
workman is ever so much more honest and more sensible than wasting
government paper and wearing a cockade on your head. I myself worked in
Belgium with these very hands and then spent two years as a mechanic. .
. ."

He was wearing a short reefer jacket and indoor slippers; he walked like
a man with the gout, rolling slightly from side to side and rubbing his
hands. Humming something he softly purred and hugged himself with
satisfaction at being at home again at last, and able to have his
beloved shower bath.

"There is no disputing," he said to me at supper, "there is no
disputing; you are all nice and charming people, but for some reason, as
soon as you take to manual labour, or go in for saving the peasants, in
the long run it all comes to no more than being a dissenter. Aren't you
a dissenter? Here you don't take vodka. What's the meaning of that if it
is not being a dissenter?"

To satisfy him I drank some vodka and I drank some wine, too. We tasted
the cheese, the sausage, the pâtés, the pickles, and the savouries of
all sorts that the engineer had brought with him, and the wine that had
come in his absence from abroad. The wine was first-rate. For some
reason the engineer got wine and cigars from abroad without paying duty;
the caviare and the dried sturgeon someone sent him for nothing; he did
not pay rent for his flat as the owner of the house provided the
kerosene for the line; and altogether he and his daughter produced on me
the impression that all the best in the world was at their service, and
provided for them for nothing.

I went on going to see them, but not with the same eagerness. The
engineer made me feel constrained, and in his presence I did not feel
free. I could not face his clear, guileless eyes, his reflections
wearied and sickened me; I was sickened, too, by the memory that so
lately I had been in the employment of this red-faced, well-fed man, and
that he had been brutally rude to me. It is true that he put his arm
round my waist, slapped me on the shoulder in a friendly way, approved
my manner of life, but I felt that, as before, he despised my
insignificance, and only put up with me to please his daughter, and I
couldn't now laugh and talk as I liked, and I behaved unsociably and
kept expecting that in another minute he would address me as Panteley as
he did his footman Pavel. How my pride as a provincial and a working man
was revolted. I, a proletarian, a house painter, went every day to rich
people who were alien to me, and whom the whole town regarded as though
they were foreigners, and every day I drank costly wines with them and
ate unusual dainties-my conscience refused to be reconciled to it! On my
way to the house I sullenly avoided meeting people, and looked at them
from under my brows as though I really were a dissenter, and when I was
going home from the engineer's I was ashamed of my well-fed condition.

Above all I was afraid of being carried away. Whether I was walking
along the street, or working, or talking to the other fellows, I was all
the time thinking of one thing only, of going in the evening to see
Mariya Viktorovna and was picturing her voice, her laugh, her movements.
When I was getting ready to go to her I always spent a long time before
my nurse's warped looking-glass, as I fastened my tie; my serge trousers
were detestable in my eyes, and I suffered torments, and at the same
time despised myself for being so trivial. When she called to me out of
the other room that she was not dressed and asked me to wait, I listened
to her dressing; it agitated me, I felt as though the ground were giving
way under my feet. And when I saw a woman's figure in the street, even
at a distance, I invariably compared it. It seemed to me that all our
girls and women were vulgar, that they were absurdly dressed, and did
not know how to hold themselves; and these comparisons aroused a feeling
of pride in me: Mariya Viktorovna was the best of them all! And I
dreamed of her and myself at night.

One evening at supper with the engineer we ate a whole lobster As I was
going home afterwards I remembered that the engineer twice called me "My
dear fellow" at supper, and I reflected that they treated me very kindly
in that house, as they might an unfortunate big dog who had been kicked
out by its owners, that they were amusing themselves with me, and that
when they were tired of me they would turn me out like a dog. I felt
ashamed and wounded, wounded to the point of tears as though I had been
insulted, and looking up at the sky I took a vow to put an end to all
this.

The next day I did not go to the Dolzhikov's. Late in the evening, when
it was quite dark and raining, I walked along Great Dvoryansky Street,
looking up at the windows. Everyone was asleep at the Azhogins', and the
only light was in one of the furthest windows. It was Madame Azhogin in
her own room, sewing by the light of three candles, imagining that she
was combating superstition. Our house was in darkness, but at the
Dolzhikovs', on the contrary, the windows were lighted up, but one could
distinguish nothing through the flowers and the curtains. I kept walking
up and down the street; the cold March rain drenched me through. I heard
my father come home from the club; he stood knocking at the gate. A
minute later a light appeared at the window, and I saw my sister, who
was hastening down with a lamp, while with the other hand she was
twisting her thick hair together as she went. Then my father walked
about the drawing-room, talking and rubbing his hands, while my sister
sat in a low chair, thinking and not listening to what he said.

But then they went away; the light went out. . . . I glanced round at
the engineer's, and there, too, all was darkness now. In the dark and
the rain I felt hopelessly alone, abandoned to the whims of destiny; I
felt that all my doings, my desires, and everything I had thought and
said till then were trivial in comparison with my loneliness, in
comparison with my present suffering, and the suffering that lay before
me in the future. Alas, the thoughts and doings of living creatures are
not nearly so significant as their sufferings! And without clearly
realizing what I was doing, I pulled at the bell of the Dolzhikovs'
gate, broke it, and ran along the street like some naughty boy, with a
feeling of terror in my heart, expecting every moment that they would
come out and recognize me. When I stopped at the end of the street to
take breath I could hear nothing but the sound of the rain, and
somewhere in the distance a watchman striking on a sheet of iron.

For a whole week I did not go to the Dolzhikovs'. My serge trousers were
sold. There was nothing doing in the painting trade. I knew the pangs of
hunger again, and earned from twopence to fourpence a day, where I
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