The Tales of Chekhov, vol 5 | Page 4

by conversations, newspapers, and
horrible weather -- worried by all this, I worked listlessly and
ineffectively. I was writing "A History of Railways"; I had to read a
great number of Russian and foreign books, pamphlets, and articles in
the magazines, to make calculations, to refer to logarithms, to think and
to write; then again to read, calculate, and think; but as soon as I took
up a book or began to think, my thoughts were in a muddle, my eyes
began blinking, I would get up from the table with a sigh and begin
walking about the big rooms of my deserted country-house. When I
was tired of walking about I would stand still at my study window, and,
looking across the wide courtyard, over the pond and the bare young
birch-trees and the great fields covered with recently fallen, thawing
snow, I saw on a low hill on the horizon a group of mud-coloured huts

from which a black muddy road ran down in an irregular streak through
the white field. That was Pestrovo, concerning which my anonymous
correspondent had written to me. If it had not been for the crows who,
foreseeing rain or snowy weather, floated cawing over the pond and the
fields, and the tapping in the carpenter's shed, this bit of the world
about which such a fuss was being made would have seemed like the
Dead Sea; it was all so still, motionless, lifeless, and dreary!
My uneasiness hindered me from working and concentrating myself; I
did not know what it was, and chose to believe it was disappointment. I
had actually given up my post in the Department of Ways and
Communications, and had come here into the country expressly to live
in peace and to devote myself to writing on social questions. It had long
been my cherished dream. And now I had to say good-bye both to
peace and to literature, to give up everything and think only of the
peasants. And that was inevitable, because I was convinced that there
was absolutely nobody in the district except me to help the starving.
The people surrounding me were uneducated, unintellectual, callous,
for the most part dishonest, or if they were honest, they were
unreasonable and unpractical like my wife, for instance. It was
impossible to rely on such people, it was impossible to leave the
peasants to their fate, so that the only thing left to do was to submit to
necessity and see to setting the peasants to rights myself.
I began by making up my mind to give five thousand roubles to the
assistance of the starving peasants. And that did not decrease, but only
aggravated my uneasiness. As I stood by the window or walked about
the rooms I was tormented by the question which had not occurred to
me before: how this money was to be spent. To have bread bought and
to go from hut to hut distributing it was more than one man could do, to
say nothing of the risk that in your haste you might give twice as much
to one who was well-fed or to one who was making. money out of his
fellows as to the hungry. I had no faith in the local officials. All these
district captains and tax inspectors were young men, and I distrusted
them as I do all young people of today, who are materialistic and
without ideals. The District Zemstvo, the Peasant Courts, and all the
local institutions, inspired in me not the slightest desire to appeal to
them for assistance. I knew that all these institutions who were busily
engaged in picking out plums from the Zemstvo and the Government

pie had their mouths always wide open for a bite at any other pie that
might turn up.
The idea occurred to me to invite the neighbouring landowners and
suggest to them to organize in my house something like a committee or
a centre to which all subscriptions could be forwarded, and from which
assistance and instructions could be distributed throughout the district;
such an organization, which would render possible frequent
consultations and free control on a big scale, would completely meet
my views. But I imagined the lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the
noise, the waste of time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that
mixed provincial company would inevitably bring into my house, and I
made haste to reject my idea.
As for the members of my own household, the last thing I could look
for was help or support from them. Of my father's household, of the
household of my childhood, once a big and noisy family, no one
remained but the governess Mademoiselle Marie, or, as she was now
called, Marya Gerasimovna, an absolutely insignificant person. She
was a