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Love By: Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) |
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VOLUME 13 LOVE AND OTHER STORIES BY ANTON TCHEKHOV Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT
CONTENTS
LOVE
LIGHTS
A STORY WITHOUT AN END
MARI D'ELLE
A LIVING CHATTEL
THE DOCTOR
TOO EARLY!
THE COSSACK
ABORIGINES
AN INQUIRY
MARTYRS
THE LION AND THE SUN
A DAUGHTER OF ALBION
CHORISTERS
NERVES
A WORK OF ART
A JOKE
A COUNTRY COTTAGE
A BLUNDER
FAT AND THIN
THE DEATH OF A GOVERNMENT CLERK
A PINK STOCKING
AT A SUMMER VILLA
LOVE "THREE o'clock in the morning. The soft April night is looking in
at my windows and caressingly winking at me with its stars. I can't
sleep, I am so happy! "My whole being from head to heels is bursting with a strange,
incomprehensible feeling. I can't analyse it just now I haven't
the time, I'm too lazy, and there hang analysis! Why, is a man
likely to interpret his sensations when he is flying head foremost
from a belfry, or has just learned that he has won two hundred
thousand? Is he in a state to do it?" This was more or less how I began my love letter to Sasha, a girl
of nineteen with whom I had fallen in love. I began it five times,
and as often tore up the sheets, scratched out whole pages, and
copied it all over again. I spent as long over the letter as if it
had been a novel I had to write to order. And it was not because I
tried to make it longer, more elaborate, and more fervent, but
because I wanted endlessly to prolong the process of this writing,
when one sits in the stillness of one's study and communes with
one's own day dreams while the spring night looks in at one's window.
Between the lines I saw a beloved image, and it seemed to me that
there were, sitting at the same table writing with me, spirits as
naïvely happy, as foolish, and as blissfully smiling as I. I wrote
continually, looking at my hand, which still ached deliciously where
hers had lately pressed it, and if I turned my eyes away I had a
vision of the green trellis of the little gate. Through that trellis
Sasha gazed at me after I had said goodbye to her. When I was saying
good bye to Sasha I was thinking of nothing and was simply admiring
her figure as every decent man admires a pretty woman; when I saw
through the trellis two big eyes, I suddenly, as though by inspiration,
knew that I was in love, that it was all settled between us, and
fully decided already, that I had nothing left to do but to carry
out certain formalities. It is a great delight also to seal up a love letter, and, slowly
putting on one's hat and coat, to go softly out of the house and
to carry the treasure to the post. There are no stars in the sky
now: in their place there is a long whitish streak in the east,
broken here and there by clouds above the roofs of the dingy houses;
from that streak the whole sky is flooded with pale light. The town
is asleep, but already the water carts have come out, and somewhere
in a far away factory a whistle sounds to wake up the workpeople.
Beside the postbox, slightly moist with dew, you are sure to see
the clumsy figure of a house porter, wearing a bell shaped sheepskin
and carrying a stick. He is in a condition akin to catalepsy: he
is not asleep or awake, but something between. If the boxes knew how often people resort to them for the decision
of their fate, they would not have such a humble air. I, anyway,
almost kissed my postbox, and as I gazed at it I reflected that the
post is the greatest of blessings. I beg anyone who has ever been in love to remember how one usually
hurries home after dropping the letter in the box, rapidly gets
into bed and pulls up the quilt in the full conviction that as soon
as one wakes up in the morning one will be overwhelmed with memories
of the previous day and look with rapture at the window, where the
daylight will be eagerly making its way through the folds of the
curtain. Well, to facts. . . . Next morning at midday, Sasha's maid brought
me the following answer: "I am delited be sure to come to us to day
please I shall expect you. Your S." Not a single comma... Continue reading book >>
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