The Teacher of Literature Page #6

"The Teacher of Literature I" is a collection of short stories and essays by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, showcasing his keen insights into human nature and society. The work reflects Chekhov's signature style, characterized by subtle humor, deep empathy, and a focus on the complexities of everyday life. The stories often explore themes of education, personal struggles, and the social dynamics of Russian life in the late 19th century, inviting readers to consider the broader implications of literature and the human experience. Chekhov's nuanced characters and vivid settings create a rich tapestry that highlights both the beauty and the challenges of existence.

								

took her by the arms and led her away.

"'Nobody can understand!' she muttered afterwards, lying on the old
nurse's bed in a back room. 'Nobody, nobody! My God, nobody can
understand!'

"But every one understood very well that she was four years older than
her sister Masha, and still unmarried, and that she was crying, not from
envy, but from the melancholy consciousness that her time was passing,
and perhaps had passed. When they danced the quadrille, she was back in
the drawing-room with a tear-stained and heavily powdered face, and I
saw Captain Polyansky holding a plate of ice before her while she ate it
with a spoon.

"It is past five o'clock in the morning. I took up my diary to describe
my complete and perfect happiness, and thought I would write a good six
pages, and read it tomorrow to Masha; but, strange to say, everything is
muddled in my head and as misty as a dream, and I can remember vividly
nothing but that episode with Varya, and I want to write, 'Poor Varya!'
I could go on sitting here and writing 'Poor Varya!' By the way, the
trees have begun rustling; it will rain. The crows are cawing, and my
Masha, who has just gone to sleep, has for some reason a sorrowful
face."

For a long while afterwards Nikitin did not write his diary. At the
beginning of August he had the school examinations, and after the
fifteenth the classes began. As a rule he set off for school before nine
in the morning, and before ten o'clock he was looking at his watch and
pining for his Masha and his new house. In the lower forms he would set
some boy to dictate, and while the boys were writing, would sit in the
window with his eyes shut, dreaming; whether he dreamed of the future or
recalled the past, everything seemed to him equally delightful, like a
fairy tale. In the senior classes they were reading aloud Gogol or
Pushkin's prose works, and that made him sleepy; people, trees, fields,
horses, rose before his imagination, and he would say with a sigh, as
though fascinated by the author:

"How lovely!"

At the midday recess Masha used to send him lunch in a snow-white
napkin, and he would eat it slowly, with pauses, to prolong the
enjoyment of it; and Ippolit Ippolititch, whose lunch as a rule
consisted of nothing but bread, looked at him with respect and envy, and
gave expression to some familiar fact, such as:

"Men cannot live without food."

After school Nikitin went straight to give his private lessons, and when
at last by six o'clock he got home, he felt excited and anxious, as
though he had been away for a year. He would run upstairs breathless,
find Masha, throw his arms round her, and kiss her and swear that he
loved her, that he could not live without her, declare that he had
missed her fearfully, and ask her in trepidation how she was and why she
looked so depressed. Then they would dine together. After dinner he
would lie on the sofa in his study and smoke, while she sat beside him
and talked in a low voice.

His happiest days now were Sundays and holidays, when he was at home
from morning till evening. On those days he took part in the naïve but
extraordinarily pleasant life which reminded him of a pastoral idyl. He
was never weary of watching how his sensible and practical Masha was
arranging her nest, and anxious to show that he was of some use in the
house, he would do something useless-- for instance, bring the chaise out
of the stable and look at it from every side. Masha had installed a
regular dairy with three cows, and in her cellar she had many jugs of
milk and pots of sour cream, and she kept it all for butter. Sometimes,
by way of a joke, Nikitin would ask her for a glass of milk, and she
would be quite upset because it was against her rules; but he would
laugh and throw his arms round her, saying:

"There, there; I was joking, my darling! I was joking!"

Or he would laugh at her strictness when, finding in the cupboard some
stale bit of cheese or sausage as hard as a stone, she would say
seriously:

"They will eat that in the kitchen."

He would observe that such a scrap was only fit for a mousetrap, and she
would reply warmly that men knew nothing about housekeeping, and that it
was just the same to the servants if you were to send down a
hundredweight of savouries to the kitchen. He would agree, and embrace
her enthusiastically. Everything that was just in what she said seemed
to him extraordinary and amazing; and what did not fit in with his
convictions seemed to him naïve and touching.

Sometimes he was in a philosophical mood, and he would begin to discuss
some abstract subject while she listened and looked at his face with
curiosity.

"I am immensely happy with you, my joy," he used to say, playing with
her fingers or plaiting and unplaiting her hair. "But I don't look upon
this happiness of mine as something that has come to me by chance, as
though it had dropped from heaven. This happiness is a perfectly
natural, consistent, logical consequence. I believe that man is the
creator of his own happiness, and now I am enjoying just what I have
myself created. Yes, I speak without false modesty: I have created this
happiness myself and I have a right to it. You know my past. My unhappy
childhood, without father or mother; my depressing youth, poverty--all
this was a struggle, all this was the path by which I made my way to
happiness. . . ."

In October the school sustained a heavy loss: Ippolit Ippolititch was
taken ill with erysipelas on the head and died. For two days before his
death he was unconscious and delirious, but even in his delirium he said
nothing that was not perfectly well known to every one.

"The Volga flows into the Caspian Sea. . . . Horses eat oats and hay. .
. ."

There were no lessons at the high school on the day of his funeral. His
colleagues and pupils were the coffin-bearers, and the school choir sang
all the way to the grave the anthem "Holy God." Three priests, two
deacons, all his pupils and the staff of the boys' high school, and the
bishop's choir in their best kaftans, took part in the procession. And
passers-by who met the solemn procession, crossed themselves and said:

"God grant us all such a death."

Returning home from the cemetery much moved, Nikitin got out his diary
from the table and wrote:

"We have just consigned to the tomb Ippolit Ippolititch Ryzhitsky. Peace
to your ashes, modest worker! Masha, Varya, and all the women at the
funeral, wept from genuine feeling, perhaps because they knew this
uninteresting, humble man had never been loved by a woman. I wanted to
say a warm word at my colleague's grave, but I was warned that this
might displease the director, as he did not like our poor friend. I
believe that this is the first day since my marriage that my heart has
been heavy."

There was no other event of note in the scholastic year.
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