The Grasshopper Page #7

"The Grasshopper" by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov is a poignant short story that explores themes of love, betrayal, and existential reflection. The narrative revolves around a woman named Masha, who grapples with her feelings of ennui and dissatisfaction in her marriage. As she interacts with a charming and carefree man, she begins to confront the complexities of her desires and the nature of her own happiness. Chekhov's nuanced character development and keen psychological insight create a rich tapestry of emotions, inviting readers to ponder the choices and regrets that shape human relationships.

								

of the outsider, the rival, the deceitful woman who was standing now
behind the picture, and probably giggling malignantly.

"I have brought you a sketch," she said timidly in a thin voice, and her
lips quivered. "Nature morte."

"Ah--ah!... A sketch?"

The artist took the sketch in his hands, and as he examined it walked,
as it were mechanically, into the other room.

Olga Ivanovna followed him humbly.

"Nature morte... first-rate sort," he muttered, falling into rhyme.
"Kurort... sport... port..."

From the studio came the sound of hurried footsteps and the rustle of a
skirt.

So she had gone. Olga Ivanovna wanted to scream aloud, to hit the artist
on the head with something heavy, but she could see nothing through her
tears, was crushed by her shame, and felt herself, not Olga Ivanovna,
not an artist, but a little insect.

"I am tired..." said the artist languidly, looking at the sketch and
tossing his head as though struggling with drowsiness. "It's very nice,
of course, but here a sketch today, a sketch last year, another sketch
in a month... I wonder you are not bored with them. If I were you I
should give up painting and work seriously at music or something. You're
not an artist, you know, but a musician. But you can't think how tired I
am! I'll tell them to bring us some tea, shall I?"

He went out of the room, and Olga Ivanovna heard him give some order to
his footman. To avoid farewells and explanations, and above all to avoid
bursting into sobs, she ran as fast as she could, before Ryabovsky came
back, to the entry, put on her goloshes, and went out into the street;
then she breathed easily, and felt she was free for ever from Ryabovsky
and from painting and from the burden of shame which had so crushed her
in the studio. It was all over!

She drove to her dressmaker's; then to see Barnay, who had only arrived
the day before; from Barnay to a music-shop, and all the time she was
thinking how she would write Ryabovsky a cold, cruel letter full of
personal dignity, and how in the spring or the summer she would go with
Dymov to the Crimea, free herself finally from the past there, and begin
a new life.

On getting home late in the evening she sat down in the drawing-room,
without taking off her things, to begin the letter. Ryabovsky had told
her she was not an artist, and to pay him out she wrote to him now that
he painted the same thing every year, and said exactly the same thing
every day; that he was at a standstill, and that nothing more would come
of him than had come already. She wanted to write, too, that he owed a
great deal to her good influence, and that if he was going wrong it was
only because her influence was paralysed by various dubious persons like
the one who had been hiding behind the picture that day.

"Little mother!" Dymov called from the study, without opening the door.

"What is it?"

"Don't come in to me, but only come to the door--that's right.... The day
before yesterday I must have caught diphtheria at the hospital, and
now... I am ill. Make haste and send for Korostelev."

Olga Ivanovna always called her husband by his surname, as she did all
the men of her acquaintance; she disliked his Christian name, Osip,
because it reminded her of the Osip in Gogol and the silly pun on his
name. But now she cried:

"Osip, it cannot be!"

"Send for him; I feel ill," Dymov said behind the door, and she could
hear him go back to the sofa and lie down. "Send!" she heard his voice
faintly.

"Good Heavens!" thought Olga Ivanovna, turning chill with horror. "Why,
it's dangerous!"

For no reason she took the candle and went into the bedroom, and there,
reflecting what she must do, glanced casually at herself in the pier
glass. With her pale, frightened face, in a jacket with sleeves high on
the shoulders, with yellow ruches on her bosom, and with stripes running
in unusual directions on her skirt, she seemed to herself horrible and
disgusting. She suddenly felt poignantly sorry for Dymov, for his
boundless love for her, for his young life, and even for the desolate
little bed in which he had not slept for so long; and she remembered his
habitual, gentle, submissive smile. She wept bitterly, and wrote an
imploring letter to Korostelev. It was two o'clock in the night.

VIII

When towards eight o'clock in the morning Olga Ivanovna, her head heavy
from want of sleep and her hair unbrushed, came out of her bedroom,
looking unattractive and with a guilty expression on her face, a
gentleman with a black beard, apparently the doctor, passed by her into
the entry. There was a smell of drugs. Korostelev was standing near the
study door, twisting his left moustache with his right hand.

"Excuse me, I can't let you go in," he said surlily to Olga Ivanovna;
"it's catching. Besides, it's no use, really; he is delirious, anyway."

"Has he really got diphtheria?" Olga Ivanovna asked in a whisper.

"People who wantonly risk infection ought to be hauled up and punished
for it," muttered Korostelev, not answering Olga Ivanovna's question.
"Do you know why he caught it? On Tuesday he was sucking up the mucus
through a pipette from a boy with diphtheria. And what for? It was
stupid.... Just from folly...."

"Is it dangerous, very?" asked Olga Ivanovna.

"Yes; they say it is the malignant form. We ought to send for Shrek
really."

A little red-haired man with a long nose and a Jewish accent arrived;
then a tall, stooping, shaggy individual, who looked like a head deacon;
then a stout young man with a red face and spectacles. These were
doctors who came to watch by turns beside their colleague. Korostelev
did not go home when his turn was over, but remained and wandered about
the rooms like an uneasy spirit. The maid kept getting tea for the
various doctors, and was constantly running to the chemist, and there
was no one to do the rooms. There was a dismal stillness in the flat.

Olga Ivanovna sat in her bedroom and thought that God was punishing her
for having deceived her husband. That silent, unrepining, uncomprehended
creature, robbed by his mildness of all personality and will, weak from
excessive kindness, had been suffering in obscurity somewhere on his
sofa, and had not complained. And if he were to complain even in
delirium, the doctors watching by his bedside would learn that
diphtheria was not the only cause of his sufferings. They would ask
Korostelev. He knew all about it, and it was not for nothing that he
looked at his friend's wife with eyes that seemed to say that she was
the real chief criminal and diphtheria was only her accomplice. She did
not think now of the moonlight evening on the Volga, nor the words of
love, nor their poetical life in the peasant's hut. She thought only
that from an idle whim, from self-indulgence, she had sullied herself
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