Volodya

Anton Chekhov

AT five o'clock one Sunday afternoon in summer, Volodya, a plain, shy, sickly-looking lad

of seventeen, was sitting in the arbour of the Shumihins' country villa, feeling dreary. His

despondent thought flowed in three directions. In the first place, he had next day, Monday,

an examination in mathematics; he knew that if he did not get through the written

examination on the morrow, he would be expelled, for he had already been two years in the

sixth form and had two and three-quarter marks for algebra in his annual report. In the

second place, his presence at the villa of the Shumihins, a wealthy family with aristocratic

pretensions, was a continual source of mortification to his amour-propre. It seemed to him

with these gentlefolk. He tried to persuade her, said rude things, but she -- a frivolous,

pampered woman, who had run through two fortunes, her own and her husband's, in her

time, and always gravitated towards acquaintances of high rank -- did not understand him,

and twice a week Volodya had to accompany her to the villa he hated.

In the third place, the youth could not for one instant get rid of a strange, unpleasant feeling

which was absolutely new to him. . . . It seemed to him that he was in love with Anna

Fyodorovna, the Shumihins' cousin, who was staying with them. She was a vivacious, loud-

voiced, laughter-loving, healthy, and vigorous lady of thirty, with rosy cheeks, plump

shoulders, a plump round chin and a continual smile on her thin lips. She was neither young

nor beautiful -- Volodya knew that perfectly well; but for some reason he could not help

feeling relieved every time he went back to town.

Now, sitting in the arbour, thinking of his examination next day, and of his maman, at

whom they laughed, he felt an intense desire to see Nyuta (that was what the Shumihins

called Anna Fyodorovna), to hear her laughter and the rustle of her dress. . . . This desire

was not like the pure, poetic love of which he read in novels and about which he dreamed

every night when he went to bed; it was strange, incomprehensible; he was ashamed of it,

and afraid of it as of something very wrong and impure, something which it was

disagreeable to confess even to himself.

"It's not love," he said to himself. "One can't fall in love with women of thirty who are

married. It is only a little intrigue. . . . Yes, an intrigue. . . ."

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Pondering on the "intrigue," he thought of his uncontrollable shyness, his lack of

moustache, his freckles, his narrow eyes, and put himself in his imagination side by side

with Nyuta, and the juxtaposition seemed to him impossible; then he made haste to imagine

himself bold, handsome, witty, dressed in the latest fashion.

"Who is here?" asked Nyuta, going into the arbour. "Ah, it is you, Volodya? What are you

doing here? Thinking? And how can you go on thinking, thinking, thinking? . . . That's the

way to go out of your mind!"

Volodya got up and looked in a dazed way at Nyuta. She had only just come back from

bathing. Over her shoulder there was hanging a sheet and a rough towel, and from under the

white silk kerchief on her head he could see the wet hair sticking to her forehead. There was

the cool damp smell of the bath-house and of almond soap still hanging about her. She was

out of breath from running quickly. The top button of her blouse was undone, so that the

boy saw her throat and bosom.

"Why don't you say something?" said Nyuta, looking Volodya up and down. "It's not polite

you might smile at least! Phew, the horrid philosopher!" she laughed. "But do you know,

Volodya, why you are such a clumsy seal? Because you don't devote yourself to the ladies.

Why don't you? It's true there are no girls here, but there is nothing to prevent your flirting

with the married ladies! Why don't you flirt with me, for instance?"

Volodya listened and scratched his forehead in acute and painful irresolution.

"It's only very proud people who are silent and love solitude," Nyuta went on, pulling his

hand away from his forehead. "You are proud, Volodya. Why do you look at me like that

from under your brows? Look me straight in the face, if you please! Yes, now then, clumsy

seal!"

Volodya made up his mind to speak. Wanting to smile, he twitched his lower lip, blinked,

"I . . . I love you," he said.

Nyuta raised her eyebrows in surprise, and laughed.

"Bravo, bravo!" he heard a merry laugh. "Why don't you speak? I want you to speak!

Well?"

laughing face, and clumsily, awkwardly, put both arms round her waist, his hands meeting

behind her back. He held her round the waist with both arms, while, putting her hands up to

her head, showing the dimples in her elbows, she set her hair straight under the kerchief and

said in a calm voice:

"You must be tactful, polite, charming, and you can only become that under feminine

don't be surly; you are young and will have plenty of time for philosophising. Come, let go

across the arbour, then he sat down on the bench and smiled again. He felt insufferably

acuteness and intensity. Shame made him smile, gesticulate, and whisper some

He was ashamed that he had been treated like a small boy, ashamed of his shyness, and,

most of all, that he had had the audacity to put his arms round the waist of a respectable

married woman, though, as it seemed to him, he had neither through age nor by external

quality, nor by social position any right to do so.

He jumped up, went out of the arbour, and, without looking round, walked into the recesses

of the garden furthest from the house.

"Ah! only to get away from here as soon as possible," he thought, clutching his head. "My

God! as soon as possible."

The train by which Volodya was to go back with his maman was at eight-forty. There were

once without waiting for his maman.

At eight o'clock he went to the house. His whole figure was expressive of determination:

what would be, would be! He made up his mind to go in boldly, to look them straight in the

face, to speak in a loud voice, regardless of everything.

him. And you know he has a way with him! When he told me he was in love with me, there

was something brutal in his face, like a Circassian."

"Really!" gasped maman, going off into a peal of laughter. "Really! How he does remind

Volodya ran back and dashed out into the open air.

"How could they talk of it aloud!" he wondered in agony, clasping his hands and looking up

to the sky in horror. "They talk aloud in cold blood . . . and maman laughed! . . . Maman!

My God, why didst Thou give me such a mother? Why?"

But he had to go to the house, come what might. He walked three times up and down the

"I am sorry, it's . . . it's time for me to go," he muttered, not raising his eyes. "Maman, it's

Goodbye, my dear. . . . Let me make the sign of the cross over you."

She made the sign of the cross over her son, and said in French, turning to Nyuta:

"He's rather like Lermontov . . . isn't he?"

Saying good-bye after a fashion, without looking any one in the face, Volodya went out of

the dining-room. Ten minutes later he was walking along the road to the station, and was

glad of it. Now he felt neither frightened nor ashamed; he breathed freely and easily.

About half a mile from the station, he sat down on a stone by the side of the road, and gazed

at the sun, which was half hidden behind a barrow. There were lights already here and there

at the station, and one green light glimmered dimly, but the train was not yet in sight. It was

little. The darkness of the arbour, the footsteps, the smell of the bath-house, the laughter,

and the waist -- all these rose with amazing vividness before his imagination, and all this

was no longer so terrible and important as before.

"It's of no consequence. . . . She did not pull her hand away, and laughed when I held her by

dark garden, there would be an opportunity!

"I will go back," he thought, "and will go by the morning train to-morrow. . . . I will say I

have missed the train."

And he turned back. . . . Madame Shumihin, Maman, Nyuta, and one of the nieces were

sitting on the verandah, playing vint. When Volodya told them the lie that he had missed

the train, they were uneasy that he might be late for the examination day, and advised him

to get up early. All the while they were playing he sat on one side, greedily watching Nyuta

and waiting. . . . He already had a plan prepared in his mind: he would go up to Nyuta in the

dark, would take her by the hand, then would embrace her; there would be no need to say

I'll wait till to-morrow . . . to-morrow in the arbour. It doesn't matter. . . ."

He did not attempt to go to sleep, but sat in bed, hugging his knees and thinking. All

would expel him, and that there was nothing terrible about his being expelled. On the

contrary, it was a good thing -- a very good thing, in fact. Next day he would be as free as a

bird; he would put on ordinary clothes instead of his school uniform, would smoke openly,

come out here, and make love to Nyuta when he liked; and he would not be a schoolboy but

"a young man." And as for the rest of it, what is called a career, a future, that was clear;

Volodya would go into the army or the telegraph service, or he would go into a chemist's

shop and work his way up till he was a dispenser. . . . There were lots of callings. An hour

or two passed, and he was still sitting and thinking. . . .

Towards three o'clock, when it was beginning to get light, the door creaked cautiously and

his maman came into the room.

"Aren't you asleep?" she asked, yawning. "Go to sleep; I have only come in for a

"What for?"

"Poor Lili has got spasms again. Go to sleep, my child, your examination's to-morrow. . . ."

"Do you understand? Morphine," Nyuta explained in a whisper. "There must be a label in

Latin. Wake Volodya; he will find it."

loose wrapper in which she had gone to bathe. Her hair hung loose and disordered on her

shoulders, her face looked sleepy and dark in the half-light. . . .

"Why, Volodya is not asleep," she said. "Volodya, look in the cupboard for the morphine,

there's a dear! What a nuisance Lili is! She has always something the matter."

as though cold waves were running all over his inside. He felt suffocated and giddy from

up with his trembling fingers and spilled in so doing.

"I believe maman has gone," he thought. "That's a good thing . . . a good thing. . . ."

"Will you be quick?" said Nyuta, drawling.

"In a minute. . . . Here, I believe this is morphine," said Volodya, reading on one of the

labels the word "morph . . ." "Here it is!"

Nyuta was standing in the doorway in such a way that one foot was in his room and one was

in the passage. She was tidying her hair, which was difficult to put in order because it was

so thick and long, and looked absent-mindedly at Volodya. In her loose wrap, with her

sleepy face and her hair down, in the dim light that came into the white sky not yet lit by the

sun, she seemed to Volodya captivating, magnificent. . . . Fascinated, trembling all over,

and remembering with relish how he had held that exquisite body in his arms in the arbour,

"How wonderful you are!"

"What?"

She left off smiling, thought a minute, and said:

"Wait a little; I think somebody is coming. Oh, these schoolboys!" she said in an undertone,

going to the door and peeping out into the passage. "No, there is no one to be seen. . . ."

She came back.

Then it seemed to Volodya that the room, Nyuta, the sunrise and himself -- all melted

together in one sensation of acute, extraordinary, incredible bliss, for which one might give

up one's whole life and face eternal torments. . . . But half a minute passed and all that

vanished. Volodya saw only a fat, plain face, distorted by an expression of repulsion, and he

. .

" 'Ugly duckling' . . ." he thought after she had gone away. "I really am ugly . . . everything

The sun was rising, the birds were singing loudly; he could hear the gardener walking in the

garden and the creaking of his wheelbarrow . . . and soon afterwards he heard the lowing of

the cows and the sounds of the shepherd's pipe. The sunlight and the sounds told him that

somewhere in this world there is a pure, refined, poetical life. But where was it? Volodya

had never heard a word of it from his maman or any of the people round about him.

When the footman came to wake him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep. . . .

"Bother it! Damn it all!" he thought.

He got up between ten and eleven.

sleepless night, he thought:

"It's perfectly true . . . an ugly duckling!"

When maman saw him and was horrified that he was not at his examination, Volodya said:

Nyuta was wearing a Little Russian dress which did not suit her at all, and made her look

clumsy; the architect was making dull and vulgar jokes. The rissoles served at lunch had too

much onion in them -- so it seemed to Volodya. It also seemed to him that Nyuta laughed

memory of the night did not trouble her in the least, and that she was not aware of the

presence at table of the "ugly duckling."

At four o'clock Volodya drove to the station with his maman. Foul memories, the sleepless

night, the prospect of expulsion from school, the stings of conscience -- all roused in him

now an oppressive, gloomy anger. He looked at maman's sharp profile, at her little nose,

He was insulting her, and she moved her little eyes about in alarm, flung up her hands, and

coachman will hear! He can overhear everything."

"I don't love you . . . I don't love you!" he went on breathlessly. "You've no soul and no

morals. . . . Don't dare to wear that raincoat! Do you hear? Or else I will tear it into rags. . . .

"

"Control yourself, my child," maman wept; "the coachman can hear!"

"And where is my father's fortune? Where is your money? You have wasted it all. I am not

ashamed of being poor, but I am ashamed of having such a mother. . . . When my

schoolfellows ask questions about you, I always blush."

In the train they had to pass two stations before they reached the town. Volodya spent all

to go into the compartment because there the mother he hated was sitting. He hated himself,