Three Years Page #2

"Three Years" is a short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that explores the complexities of love, marriage, and personal growth over time. The narrative follows the life of a young couple, focusing on their evolving relationship as they navigate their feelings, societal expectations, and the passage of time. Through nuanced character development and Chekhov's signature blend of humor and poignancy, the story illuminates the subtle changes that occur in intimacy and connection, ultimately reflecting on the nature of happiness and fulfillment in life.

								

approved of hygiene, and said that he had long ago wanted to found a
night-refuge in Moscow--in fact, he had already calculated the cost of
it. According to his plan the workmen who came in the evening to the
night-refuge were to receive a supper of hot cabbage soup with bread, a
warm, dry bed with a rug, and a place for drying their clothes and their
boots.

Yulia Sergeyevna was usually silent in his presence, and in a strange
way, perhaps by the instinct of a lover, he divined her thoughts and
intentions. And now, from the fact that after the evening service she
had not gone to her room to change her dress and drink tea, he deduced
that she was going to pay some visit elsewhere.

"But I'm in no hurry with the night-refuge," he went on, speaking with
vexation and irritability, and addressing the doctor, who looked at him,
as it were, blankly and in perplexity, evidently unable to understand
what induced him to raise the question of medicine and hygiene. "And
most likely it will be a long time, too, before I make use of our
estimate. I fear our night-shelter will fall into the hands of our pious
humbugs and philanthropic ladies, who always ruin any undertaking."

Yulia Sergeyevna got up and held out her hand to Laptev.

"Excuse me," she said, "it's time for me to go. Please give my love to
your sister."

"Ru-ru-ru-ru," hummed the doctor. "Ru-ru-ru-ru."

Yulia Sergeyevna went out, and after staying a little longer, Laptev
said good-bye to the doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied
and feels unhappy, how trivial seem to him the shapes of the lime-trees,
the shadows, the clouds, all the beauties of nature, so complacent, so
indifferent! By now the moon was high up in the sky, and the clouds were
scudding quickly below. "But how naïve and provincial the moon is, how
threadbare and paltry the clouds!" thought Laptev. He felt ashamed of
the way he had talked just now about medicine, and the night-refuge. He
felt with horror that next day he would not have will enough to resist
trying to see her and talk to her again, and would again be convinced
that he was nothing to her. And the day after--it would be the same.
With what object? And how and when would it all end?

At home he went in to see his sister. Nina Fyodorovna still looked
strong and gave the impression of being a well-built, vigorous woman,
but her striking pallor made her look like a corpse, especially when, as
now, she was lying on her back with her eyes closed; her eldest daughter
Sasha, a girl of ten years old, was sitting beside her reading aloud
from her reading-book.

"Alyosha has come," the invalid said softly to herself.

There had long been established between Sasha and her uncle a tacit
compact, to take turns in sitting with the patient. On this occasion
Sasha closed her reading-book, and without uttering a word, went softly
out of the room. Laptev took an historical novel from the chest of
drawers, and looking for the right page, sat down and began reading it
aloud.

Nina Fyodorovna was born in Moscow of a merchant family. She and her two
brothers had spent their childhood and early youth, living at home in
Pyatnitsky Street. Their childhood was long and wearisome; her father
treated her sternly, and had even on two or three occasions flogged her,
and her mother had had a long illness and died. The servants were
coarse, dirty, and hypocritical; the house was frequented by priests and
monks, also hypocritical; they ate and drank and coarsely flattered her
father, whom they did not like. The boys had the good-fortune to go to
school, while Nina was left practically uneducated. All her life she
wrote an illegible scrawl, and had read nothing but historical novels.
Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, on a summer holiday at
Himki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, a landowner
called Panaurov, had fallen in love with him, and married him secretly
against her father's will. Panaurov, a handsome, rather impudent fellow,
who whistled and lighted his cigarette from the holy lamp, struck the
father as an absolutely worthless person. And when the son-in-law began
in his letters demanding a dowry, the old man wrote to his daughter that
he would send her furs, silver, and various articles that had been left
at her mother's death, as well as thirty thousand roubles, but without
his paternal blessing. Later he sent another twenty thousand. This
money, as well as the dowry, was spent; the estate had been sold and
Panaurov moved with his family to the town and got a job in a provincial
government office. In the town he formed another tie, and had a second
family, and this was the subject of much talk, as his illicit family was
not a secret.

Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical
novel, she was thinking how much she had gone through in her life, how
much she had suffered, and that if any one were to describe her life it
would make a very pathetic story. As the tumour was in her breast, she
was persuaded that love and her domestic grief were the cause of her
illness, and that jealousy and tears had brought her to her hopeless
state.

At last Alexey Fyodorovitch closed the book and said:

"That's the end, and thank God for it. To-morrow we'll begin a new one."

Nina Fyodorovna laughed. She had always been given to laughter, but of
late Laptev had begun to notice that at moments her mind seemed weakened
by illness, and she would laugh at the smallest trifle, and even without
any cause at all.

"Yulia came before dinner while you were out," she said. "So far as I
can see, she hasn't much faith in her papa. 'Let papa go on treating
you,' she said, 'but write in secret to the holy elder to pray for you,
too.' There is a holy man somewhere here. Yulia forgot her parasol here;
you must take it to her to-morrow," she went on after a brief pause.
"No, when the end comes, neither doctors nor holy men are any help."

"Nina, why can't you sleep at night?" Laptev asked, to change the
subject.

"Oh, well, I don't go to sleep--that's all. I lie and think."

"What do you think about, dear?"

"About the children, about you . . . about my life. I've gone through a
great deal, Alyosha, you know. When one begins to remember and remember.
. . . My God!" She laughed. "It's no joke to have borne five children as
I have, to have buried three. . . Sometimes I was expecting to be
confined while my Grigory Nikolaitch would be sitting at that very time
with another woman. There would be no one to send for the doctor or the
midwife. I would go into the passage or the kitchen for the servant, and
there Jews, tradesmen, moneylenders, would be waiting for him to come
home. My head used to go round . . . . He did not love me, though he
never said so openly. Now I've grown calmer--it doesn't weigh on my
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