Forty Stories (47 page)

For a long while Nadya paced up and down the room, listening to her grandmother’s sobs; then she picked up the telegram and read it. The telegram said that on the previous morning, in Saratov, Alexander Timofeyich, Sasha for short, had died of consumption.

Grandmother and Nina Ivanovna went to the church to order a service for the dead, while Nadya remained in her room, deep in thought. She realized clearly that her life had been revolutionized, as Sasha had wished, and she was a stranger here, lonely and unwanted, and there was nothing she wanted here. She realized, too, that the past had been ripped away from her and had now vanished altogether, as though it had been burned and the ashes had been scattered in the winds. She went into Sasha’s room and stood there.

“Good-by, dear Sasha,” she murmured.

In her imagination life stretched before her, a new, vast, infinitely spacious life, and this life, though still obscure and full of mysteries, lured and attracted her.

She went upstairs to her own room to pack, and the next morning said good-by to her family, and left the town. She was full of life and high spirits, and she expected never to return.

1903

ANTON CHEKHOV
was born on January 17, 1860, in the small seaport town of Taganrog in the south of Russia, the grandson of a serf. In debt, his family fled Taganrog, leaving behind the sixteen-year-old Chekhov, who was forced to serve as a tutor to their creditor’s son. By the time he was nineteen, Chekhov had entered medical school and had begun writing stories for magazines. In spite of a lifelong battle with tuberculosis, Chekhov assumed complete responsibility for his parents and siblings, and was consequently always in financial straits, pooling his resources as a doctor and writer to support them. An inveterate nomad, he traveled throughout Russia, Germany, Italy, France, and parts of the Far East, seeking relief for his poor health and inspiration for his work. Acknowledged as possibly the greatest Russian playwright, his stories are also those of a master. As Sir V. S. Pritchett remarked, “[Chekhov’s] genius, in my opinion, lies above all in his creative gifts as a writer of short stories.” He died on July 2, 1904, in Germany.