The Tales of Chekhov, vol 9 | Page 8

education, poverty, and so on -- are
forced to sell their honor for money. They know nothing of pure love,
have no children, have no civil rights; their mothers and sisters weep
over them as though they were dead, science treats of them as an evil,
men address them with contemptuous familiarity. But in spite of all that,
they do not lose the semblance and image of God. They all
acknowledge their sin and hope for salvation. Of the means that lead to
salvation they can avail themselves to the fullest extent. Society, it is
true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary
of Egypt is no lower than the other saints. When it had happened to
Vassilyev in the street to recognize a fallen woman as such, by her
dress or her manners, or to see a picture of one in a comic paper, he
always remembered a story he had once read: a young man, pure and
self-sacrificing, loves a fallen woman and urges her to become his wife;
she, considering herself unworthy of such happiness, takes poison.
Vassilyev lived in one of the side streets turning out of Tverskoy
Boulevard. When he came out of the house with his two friends it was
about eleven o'clock. The first snow had not long fallen, and all nature
was under the spell of the fresh snow. There was the smell of snow in
the air, the snow crunched softly under the feet; the earth, the roofs, the
trees, the seats on the boulevard, everything was soft, white, young, and
this made the houses look quite different from the day before; the street
lamps burned more brightly, the air was more transparent, the carriages
rumbled with a deeper note, and with the fresh, light, frosty air a
feeling stirred in the soul akin to the white, youthful, feathery snow.
"Against my will an unknown force," hummed the medical student in
his agreeable tenor, "has led me to these mournful shores."
"Behold the mill . . ." the artist seconded him, "in ruins now. . . ."
"Behold the mill . . . in ruins now," the medical student repeated,
raising his eyebrows and shaking his head mournfully.
He paused, rubbed his forehead, trying to remember the words, and
then sang aloud, so well that passers-by looked round:
"Here in old days when I was free, Love, free, unfettered, greeted me."

The three of them went into a restaurant and, without taking off their
greatcoats, drank a couple of glasses of vodka each. Before drinking the
second glass, Vassilyev noticed a bit of cork in his vodka, raised the
glass to his eyes, and gazed into it for a long time, screwing up his
shortsighted eyes. The medical student did not understand his
expression, and said:
"Come, why look at it? No philosophizing, please. Vodka is given us to
be drunk, sturgeon to be eaten, women to be visited, snow to be walked
upon. For one evening anyway live like a human being!"
"But I haven't said anything . . ." said Vassilyev, laughing. "Am I
refusing to?"
There was a warmth inside him from the vodka. He looked with
softened feelings at his friends, admired them and envied them. In these
strong, healthy, cheerful people how wonderfully balanced everything
is, how finished and smooth is everything in their minds and souls!
They sing, and have a passion for the theatre, and draw, and talk a great
deal, and drink, and they don't have headaches the day after; they are
both poetical and debauched, both soft and hard; they can work, too,
and be indignant, and laugh without reason, and talk nonsense; they are
warm, honest, self-sacrificing, and as men are in no way inferior to
himself, Vassilyev, who watched over every step he took and every
word he uttered, who was fastidious and cautious, and ready to raise
every trifle to the level of a problem. And he longed for one evening to
live as his friends did, to open out, to let himself loose from his own
control. If vodka had to be drunk, he would drink it, though his head
would be splitting next morning. If he were taken to the women he
would go. He would laugh, play the fool, gaily respond to the passing
advances of strangers in the street. . . .
He went out of the restaurant laughing. He liked his friends -- one in a
crushed broad-brimmed hat, with an affectation of artistic untidiness;
the other in a sealskin cap, a man not poor, though he affected to
belong to the Bohemia of learning. He liked the snow, the pale street
lamps, the sharp black tracks left in the first snow by the feet of the
passers-by.