Kiss and Other Stories

Anton Chekhov

Description

While at a party organized by the lieutenant of his regiment, the shy and awkward Ryabovitch is suddenly kissed by an unknown woman in a dark room. This unexpected and electrifying encounter marks a turning point in his life and a shift in his personality, arousing his passions and setting him on a desperate quest to discover the identity of the mysterious lady.One of Chekhov's most admired stories, 'The Kiss' is joined in this volume by five equally celebrated tales in a brand-new translation by Hugh Aplin: 'The Lady with the Little Dog', 'Ward Number Six', 'The Black Monk', 'The House with the Mezzanine' and 'The Peasants' - making this an indispensable collection for those wanting to discover Chekhov at his creative best.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Alma Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780714545752
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

The Kiss and Other Stories
Anton Chekhov
Translated by Hugh Aplin

ALMA CLASSICS




Alma Classics Ltd 3 Castle Yard Richmond Surrey TW10 6TF United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
This translation first published by Alma Classics Ltd in 2016
Translation © Hugh Aplin, 2016
Extra Material © Alma Classics Ltd
Cover Image: Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky / Library of Congress
Printed in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-419-1
All the pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or pre sumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status, but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error in subsequent printings.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circulated without the express prior consent of the publisher.


Contents
The Kiss and Other Stories
The Kiss
Ward Six
The Black Monk
The House with a Mezzanine
Peasants
The Lady with the Little Dog
The Bishop
Note on the Text
Notes
Extra Material
Anton Chekhov’s Life
Anton Chekhov’s Works
Select Bibliography


The Kiss and Other Stories


The Kiss
A t eight o’clock in the evening on the twentieth of May, all six batteries of the N— Reserve Artillery Brigade, which was on its way to camp, stopped for the night in the village of Mestechki. At the very height of the hurly-burly – when some officers were bustling about by the cannons and others, having gathered on the square by the church railings, were hearing out the quartermasters – there appeared from behind the church a rider in civilian dress on a strange horse. The horse, dun-coloured and small, with a pretty neck and a short tail, was walking not straight, but kind of sideways, and was performing little dancing movements with its legs, as though it were being hit on the legs with a whip. Having ridden up to the officers, the rider raised his hat and said:
“His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek, the local landowner, invites the gentlemen officers to come to his house this very minute for tea…”
The horse bowed, began to dance and retreated, sideways on; the rider raised his hat again and, in an instant, he, along with his strange horse, had disappeared behind the church.
“The Devil knows what’s going on!” grumbled some of the officers, dispersing to their billets. “You want a sleep, then here’s this von Rabbek with his tea! We know the sort of tea you get around here!”
The officers of all six batteries had vivid recollections of an incident the previous year, when, during manoeuvres, they – and with them the officers of a Cossack regiment – had been invited to tea in just the same way by a landowning count, a retired military man; the hospitable and genial count was nice to them, fed and watered them, and would not let them go back to their billets in the village, keeping them with him for the night. That’s all very well, of course – nothing better could be desired – but the problem was that the retired military man went too far in his delight at the young men. Right through until dawn he was recounting episodes from his fine past to the officers, taking them from room to room, showing them expensive paintings, old engravings, rare weapons, and reading them original letters from people in high places, while the worn-out, exhausted officers listened, looked and, pining for their beds, yawned cautiously into their sleeves; when their host did finally let them go, it was already too late to sleep.
But was this von Rabbek like that too? Whether he was or not, there was nothing for it. The officers dressed themselves up, dusted themselves off and set off in a crowd to look for the landowner’s house. On the square by the church they were told that they could get to the master and mistress by the low road – go down to the river behind the church and walk along the bank as far as the garden, and then tree-lined avenues would lead you where you needed – or by the high road – straight down the road from the church, and half a verst * from the village it runs into the master’s storehouses. The officers decided to take the high road.
“Who is this von Rabbek?” they debated on the way. “Not the one who commanded the N— Cavalry Division at Plevna?” *
“No, that wasn’t von Rabbek, just Rabbe, without the von.”
“What lovely weather, though!”
By the first of the master’s storehouses the road forked: one branch went straight on and disappeared in the evening gloom, the other led to the right towards the master’s house. The officers turned right and began talking more quietly… Down both sides of the road stretched stone storehouses with red roofs, heavy and severe, very like the barracks of a district town. Ahead there gleamed the windows of the master’s house.
“Gentlemen, a good sign!” said one of the officers. “Our setter’s walking on ahead of everyone else: that means he can sense there’s going to be a bag!…”
The man walking on ahead of everyone else, Lieutenant Lobytko, tall and thickset, but with no moustache whatsoever (he was over twenty-five, but on his round, well-fed face there was still for some reason no growth of hair in evidence), renowned in the brigade for his intuition and ability to divine the presence of women at a distance, turned around and said:
“Yes, there’s got to be women here. My instinct says so.”
The officers were met at the threshold of the house by von Rabbek himself, a fine-looking old man of about sixty wearing civilian clothes. Shaking his guests by the hand, he said he was very glad and happy, but begged the officers earnestly, for God’s sake, to excuse him for not having invited them to the house for the night: his two sisters and their children, his brothers and his neighbours were visiting him, and so he had not a single room left free.
The General was shaking everyone by the hand, begging to be excused and smiling, but it was evident from his face that he was nowhere near as glad of the guests as the count of the previous year, and that he had invited the officers only because, in his opinion, decorum demanded it. And the officers themselves, going up the soft staircase and listening to him, sensed they had been invited to this house only because it would have been awkward not to invite them, and at the sight of the servants hurrying to light the lights downstairs by the entrance and upstairs in the hallway, it began to seem to them that they had brought agitation and alarm with them into the house. Where two sisters and their children, brothers and neighbours had gathered, presumably for some family celebration or event, could the presence of nineteen unknown officers be welcome?
Upstairs, by the entrance to the reception hall, the guests were met by a tall and shapely old woman with a long, black-browed face, very like the Empress Eugénie. * Smiling cordially and majestically, she said she was glad and happy to see the guests in her house, and apologized for her and her husband being deprived on this occasion of the opportunity of inviting the gentlemen officers to the house for the night. From her beautiful, majestic smile, which instantly disappeared from her face every time she turned away from her guests for something, it was evident that she had seen many gentlemen officers in her time, that she could not be bothered with them now, and if she had invited them to her house and was apologizing, it was only because her upbringing and position in society demanded it.
In the large dining room that the officers entered, sitting to one side of a long table were about a dozen men and women, old and young, having tea. Behind their chairs, shrouded in light cigar smoke, was a dark group of men; in its midst stood some lean young fellow with ginger sideburns who spoke with a burr and was talking loudly about something in English. Behind the group, through a door, could be seen a bright room with blue furniture.
“Gentlemen, there are so many of you that there’s no chance whatsoever of presenting you!” said the General loudly, trying to seem very jolly. “Introduce yourselves, gentlemen, without ceremony!”
The officers, some with very serious and even stern faces, others forcing smiles, and all of them together feeling very awkward, one way or another made their bows and sat down to tea.
Feeling most awkward of all was Staff Captain Ryabovich, a small, rather round-shouldered officer in spectacles and with side-whiskers like a lynx’s. At the same time as some of his comrades were pulling serious faces and others were forcing smiles, his face, lynx’s side-whiskers and spectacles seemed to be saying: “I’m the most timid, most modest and most colourless officer in the entire brigade!” To begin with, entering the dining room and then sitting having tea, he was quite unable to concentrate his attention on any one face or object. Faces, dresses, crystal carafes of brandy, steam coming from glasses, moulded cornices, all of it merged into a single enormous general impression that inspired in Ryabovich alarm and a desire to hide his head. Like a reader performing in front of an audience for the first time, he saw everything that was in front of his eyes, but what he saw was somehow poorly understood (among physiologists, the condition when a subject sees but does not understand is called “psychic blindness”). But a little later, feeling more at home, Ryabovich recov