 Love by Anton Chekhov, read for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis-Strake. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Love by Anton Chekhov Three o'clock in the morning. The soft April light is looking in at my window 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 analyze 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 it 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 or 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 daydreams 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 naively 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 goodbye 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 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 to 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 work-people. Besides the post-box, 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 in 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 post-box, 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 delighted. Be sure to come to us today. Please, I shall expect you. Your S. Not a single comma. This lack of punctuation and the misspelling of the word delighted, the whole letter, and even the long, narrow envelope in which it was put, filled my heart with tenderness. In the sprawling, but diffident handwriting I recognize Sasha's walk, her way of raising her eyebrow when she laughed, the movement of her lips. But the contents of the letter did not satisfy me. In the first place, poetical letters are not answered in that way. And in the second, why should I go to Sasha's house to wait till it should occur to her stout mama, her brothers, and her poor relations to leave us alone together? It would never enter their heads. And nothing is more hateful than to have to restrain one's raptures simply because of the intrusion of some animate trumpery in the shape of a half-deaf old woman, or little girl pestering one with questions. I sent an answer by the maid, asking Sasha to select some park or boulevard for a rendezvous. My suggestion was readily accepted. I had struck the right chord, as the saying is. In four in five o'clock in the afternoon I made my way to the furthest and most overgrown part of the park. There was not a soul in the park, and the trist might have taken place somewhere nearer in one of the avenues or arbors, but the women don't like doing it by halves in romantic affairs. In for a penny, in for a pound. If you're in for a trist, let it be the furthest and most impenetrable thicket, where one runs the risk of stumbling upon some rough or drunken man. When I went up to Sasha, she was standing with her back to me, and in that back I could read a devilish lot of mystery. It seemed as though that back and the nape of her neck and the black spots on her dress were saying, hush! The girl was wearing a simple cotton dress over which she had thrown a light cape. To add to the air of mysterious secrecy, her face was covered with a white veil. Not to spoil the effect, I had to approach on tiptoe, and speak in a half whisper. From what I remember now, I was not so much the essential point of the rendezvous as a detail of it. Sasha was not so much absorbed in the interview herself as, in its romantic mysteriousness, my kisses, the silence of the gloomy tree, my vows. There was not a minute in which she forgot herself, was overcome, or let the mysterious expression drop from her face. And really, if there had been any Ivan Sidorich, or Sidor Ivanish in my place, she would have felt just as happy. How is one to make out in such circumstances whether one is loved or not, whether the love is the real thing or not? From the park I took Sasha home with me. The presence of the beloved woman in one's bachelor quarters affects one like wine and music. Usually one begins to speak of the future and the confidence and self-reliance with which one does is beyond bounds. You make plans and projects, talk fervently of the rank of general, though you have not yet reached the rank of a lieutenant, and altogether you fire off such high-flown nonsense that your listener must have a great deal of love and ignorance of life to ascend to it. Fortunately for men, women in love are always blinded by their feelings and never know anything of life. Far from not assenting, they actually turn pale with holy awe, are full of reverence, and hang greedily on the maniac's words. Sasha listened to me with attention, but I soon detected an absent-minded expression on her face. She did not understand me, the future of which I talked, interested her only in its external aspect, and I was wasting time in displaying my plans and projects before her. She was keenly interested in knowing which would be her room, what papers she would have in her room, why I had an upright piano instead of a grand piano, and so on. She examined carefully all the little things on my table, looked at the photographs, sniffed at the bottles, peeled the old stamps off the envelopes, saying she wanted them for something. Please collect old stamps for me, she said, making a grave face. Please do. Then she found a nut in the window, noisily cracked it, and ate it. Why don't you stick little labels on the backs of your books? She asked, taking a look at the bookcase. What for? Oh, so that each book should have its number. And where am I to put my books? I've got books, too, you know. What books have you got? I asked. Sasha raised her eyebrows, thought a moment, and said, All sorts. And, if it had entered my head to ask her what thoughts, what convictions, what aims she had, she would no doubt have raised her eyebrows, thought a minute, and have said it all the same way. All sorts. Later I saw Sasha home and left her house regularly, officially engaged, and was so reckoned till our wedding. If the reader will allow me to judge merely from my personal experience, I maintain that to be engaged is very dreary, far more than to be a husband or nothing at all. An engaged man is neither one nor the other. He has left one side of the river, and not yet reached the other. He is not married, and yet he can't be said to be a bachelor, but is in something not unlike the condition of the porter, whom I have mentioned above. Every day, as soon as I had a free moment, I hastened to my fiancée. As I went, I usually bore with me a multitude of hopes, desires, intentions, suggestions, phrases. I always fancied that as soon as the maid opened the door, I should, from feeling oppressed and stifled, plunge at once up to my neck into a sea of refreshing happiness. But it always turned out otherwise, in fact. Every time I went to see my fiancée, I found all her family and other members of the household busy over the silly trousseau. And by the way, they were hard at work sewing for two months, and then they had less than a hundred ruples worth of things. There was a smell of irons, candle-grease, and fumes. Bugles scrunched under one's feet. The two most important rooms were piled up with billows of linen, calico, and muslin, and from among the billows peeped out Sasha's little head, with a thread between her teeth. All the sewing party welcomed me with cries of delight, but at once led me off into the dining room, where I could not hinder them nor see what only husbands are permitted to behold. In spite of my feelings, I had to sit in the dining room and converse with Pimenova, one of the poor relations. Sasha looked worried and excited, kept running by me with a thimble, a skein of wool, or some other boring object. Wait, wait! I shan't be a minute. She would say when I raised imploring eyes to her. Only fancy, that wretch steppanita has spoiled the bodice of the ballet's dress. And after waiting in vain for this grace, I lost my temper, went out the house and walked about the streets in the company of the new cane I had bought, or I would want to go for a walk or a drive with my fiancée, would go round and find her already standing in the hall with her mother dressed to go out and playing with her parasol. Oh, we are going to the arcade, she would say. We have got to buy some more cashmere and change the hat. My outing is knocked on the head. I join the ladies and go with them to the arcade. It is revoltingly dull to listen to women shopping, haggling and trying to outdo the sharp shopman. I felt ashamed when Sasha, after turning over masses of material and knocking down the prices to a minimum, walked out of the shop without buying anything, or else told the shopman to cut her some half-rubbles worth. When they came out of the shop, Sasha and her mama would scared and worried faces would discuss at length having made a mistake, having bought the wrong thing, the flowers and the chins being too dark, and so on. Yes, it is a bore to be engaged. I am glad it's over. Now I am married. It is evening. I am sitting in my study reading. Behind me on the sofa Sasha is sitting, munching something noisily. I want a glass of beer. Sasha, look for the corkscrew, I say. It's lying about somewhere. Sasha leaps up, rummages in a disorderly way among two or three heaps of papers, drops the matches, and without finding the corkscrew sits down in silence. Five minutes pass. Ten. I begin to be fretted both by thirst and vexation. Sasha, do look for the corkscrew, I say. Sasha leaps up again, rummages among the papers near me. Her munching and rustling of the papers affects me like the sound of sharpening knives against each other. I get up and begin looking for the corkscrew myself. At last it is found and the beer is uncorked. Sasha remains by the table and begins telling me something at great length. You'd better read something, Sasha, I say. She takes up a book, sits down facing me, and begins moving her lips. I look at her little forehead, moving lips, and sink into thought. She is getting on for twenty, I reflect. If one takes a boy of the educated class and of that age and compares them, what a difference! The boy would have knowledge and convictions and some intelligence. But I forgive that difference just as the low forehead and moving lips are forgiven. I remember in my old lovelace days I had cast off woman for a stain on their stockings, and for one foolish word, or for not cleaning their teeth. And now I forgive everything, the munching, the muddling about after the corkscrew, the slovenliness, the long talking about nothing that matters. I forgive it all, almost unconsciously, with no effort of will, as though Sasha's mistakes were my mistakes and many things which would have made me wince in old days, moved me to tenderness and even rapture. The explanation of this forgiveness of everything lies in my love for Sasha. But what is the explanation of the love itself? I really don't know. End of Love by Anton Chekhov This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Story Without a Title by Anton Chekhov Red for LibriVox.org by Alan Davis Drake In the fifth century, just as now, the sun rose every morning, and every evening retired to rest. In the morning, when the first rays kissed the dew, the earth revived, the air was filled with the sounds of rapture and hope. While in the evening the same earth subsided into silence and plunged into gloomy darkness. One day was like another, one night like another. From time to time a storm cloud raced up and there was the angry rumble of thunder, or a negligent star fell out of the sky, or a pale monk ran to tell the brotherhood that not far from the monastery he had seen a tiger. The monks worked and prayed, and their father superior played on the organ, made Latin verses, and wrote music. The wonderful old man possessed an extraordinary gift. He played on the organ with such art that even the oldest monks, whose hearing had grown somewhat dull towards the end of their lives, could not restrain their tears when the sounds of the organ floated from his cell. When he spoke of anything, even the most ordinary things, for instance, of the trees, of the wild beasts, or of the sea, they would not listen to him without a smile or tears. And it seemed that the same chords vibrated in his soul as in the organ. His face flushed, and his voice thundered. And as the monks listened to him, they felt that their souls were spellbound from his inspiration. At such marvelous, splendid moments his power over them was boundless, and if he had bitten his elders fling themselves into the sea, they would all, every one of them, have hastened to carry out his wishes. His music, his voice, his poetry in which he glorified God, the heavens, and the earth, or a continual source of joy to the monks. It sometimes happened that through the monotony of their lives they grew weary of the trees, the flowers, the spring, the autumn. Their ears were tired of the sound of the sea, and the song of the birds seemed tedious to them. But the talents of their father's superior were as necessary to them as their daily bread. Dozens of years passed by, and every day was like every other day, every night was like every other night. Except the birds and the wild beasts, not one soul appeared near the monastery. The nearest human habitation was far away, and to reach it from the monastery, or to reach the monastery from it, meant a journey of over seventy miles across the desert. Only men who despised life, who had renounced it, and who came to the monastery as to the grave, ventured to cross the desert. What was the amazement of the monks, therefore, when one night they are knocked at their gate, a man who turned out to be from the town, and the most ordinary sinner who loved life? Before saying his prayers and asking for the father's superior's blessing, this man asked for wine and food. To the question how he had come from the town into the desert, he answered, by a long story of hunting. He had gone out hunting, and had drunk too much, and lost his way. To the suggestion that he should enter the monastery and save his soul, he replied with a smile, I am not a fit companion for you. When he had eaten and drunk, he looked at the monks who had served him, shook his head reproachfully, and said, you don't do anything, you monks. You are good for nothing but eating and drinking. Is that the way to save one soul? Only think, while you sit here in peace, eat and drink and dream of beatitude, your neighbors are perishing and going to hell. You should see what is going on in the town. Some are dying of hunger, others not knowing what to do with their gold, sink into proflicacy, and perish like flies struck in honey. There is no faith, no truth in men. Whose task is it to save them? Whose work is to preach to them? It is not for me, drunk from morning till night as I am. Can a meek spirit, a loving heart, and faith in God have been given to you, for you to sit here within four walls doing nothing? The townsmen's drunken words were insolent and unseemly, but they had a strange effect upon the Father Superior. The old man exchanged glances with the monks, turned pale, and said, My brothers, he speaks the truth, you know. Indeed, poor people in their weakness and lack of understanding are perishing in vice and infidelity, while we do not move, as though it did not concern us. Why should I not go and remind them of the Christ whom they have forgotten? The townsmen's words had carried the old man away. The next day he took his staff, said farewell to the brotherhood, and set off for the town. And the monks were left without music, without his speeches and verses. They spent a month drearily, then a second, but the old man did not come back. At last, after three months had passed, the familiar tap of his staff was heard. The monks flew to meet him and showered questions upon him. But instead of being delighted to see them, he wept bitterly and did not utter a word. The monks noticed that he looked greatly aged and had grown thinner. His face looked exhausted and wore an expression of profound sadness. And when he wept, he had the air of a man who had been outraged. The monks fell into weeping too and began with sympathy asking him why he was weeping, why his face was so gloomy. But he locked himself in his cell without uttering a word. For seven days he sat in his cell, eating and drinking nothing, weeping and not playing on his organ. To knocking at his door and the entreaties of the monks to come out and share his grief with them, he replied with unbroken silence. At last he came out. Gathering all the monks around him with a tear-stained face and with an expression of grief and indignation, he began telling them of what had befallen him during those three months. His voice was calm and his eyes were smiling when he described his journey from the monastery to the town. On the road, he told them, the birds sang to him, the brooks gurgled, and sweet youthful hopes agitated his soul. He marched on and felt like a soldier going to battle and confident of victory. He walked on dreaming and composed poems and hymns and reached the end of his journey without noticing it. But his voice quivered, his eyes flashed, and he was full of wrath when he came to speak of the town and of the men in it. Never in his life had he seen or even dared to imagine what he met with when he went into the town. Only then for the first time in his life, in his old age, he saw and understood how powerful was the devil, how fair was the evil, and how weak and faint-hearted and worthless were men. By an unhappy chance the first dwelling he entered was the abode of vice. Some fifty men in possession of much money were eating and drinking wine beyond measure. Intoxicated by the wine, they sang songs and boldly uttered terrible revolting words such as a God-fearing man could not bring himself to pronounce. Boundlessly free, self-confident and happy, they feared neither God nor their devil nor death. But said and did what they liked and went wither their lust led them, and the wine clear as amber, flecked with sparks of gold, must have been irresistibly sweet and fragrant for each man who drank it smiled blissfully and wanted to drink more. To the smile of man it responded with a smile and sparkled joyfully when they drank it as though it knew the devilish charm it kept hidden in its sweetness. The old man, growing more and more incensed and weeping with wrath, went on to describe what he had seen. On a table in the midst of the revelers he said stood a sinful, half-naked woman. It was hard to imagine or to find in nature anything more lovely and fascinating. This reptile, young, long-haired, dark-skinned, with black eyes and full lips, shameless and insolent, showed her snow-white teeth and smiled as though to say, Look how shameless, how beautiful I am. Silken brocade fell in lovely folds from her shoulders, but her beauty would not hide itself under her clothes, but eagerly thrust itself through the folds, like the young grass with the ground in spring. The shameless woman drank wine, sang songs, and abandoned herself to anyone who wanted her. Then the old man, wrathfully brandishing his arms, described the horse races, the bullfights, the theaters, the artist studios, where they painted naked women or modeled them of clay. He spoke with inspiration, with sonorous beauty, as though he were playing on unseen chords, while the monks petrified, greedily drank in his words and gasped with rapture. After describing all the charms of the devil, the beauty of evil, and the fascinating grace of the dreadful female form, the old man cursed the devil, turned and shut himself up in his cell. When he came out of his cell in the morning, there was not a monk left in the monastery. They had all fled to the town. End of A Story Without a Title. This recording is in the public domain. THE BEAUTIES by Anton Chekhov This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Will Larson, Berkeley, California. THE BEAUTIES by Anton Chekhov Translation by Constance Garnette 1. I remember, when I was a high school boy in the fifth or sixth class, I was driving with my grandfather from the village of Bolshoye Kuryapkoye in the dawn region to rust off on the dawn. It was a sultry, languidly dreary day of August. Our eyes were glued together and our mouths were parched from the heat and the dry, burning wind which drove clouds of dust to meet us. One did not want to look or speak or think, and when our drowsy driver, a little Russian called Karpo, swung his whip at the horses and lashed me on my cap, I did not protest or utter a sound, but only rousing myself from half slumber, gazed mildly and dejectedly into the distance to see whether there was a village visible through the dust. We stopped to feed the horses in a big Armenian village at a rich Armenians whom my grandfather knew. Never in my life have I seen a greater caricature than that Armenian. Imagine a little shave in head with thick, overhanging eyebrows, a beak of a nose, long gray mustaches, and a wide mouth with a long cherry-wood shabook sticking out of it. This little head was clumsily attached to a lean, hunchback carcass, attired in a fantastic garb, a short red jacket and full bright blue trousers. This figure walked straddling its legs and shuffling with its slippers, spoke without taking the shabook out of its mouth, and behaved with truly Armenian dignity, not smiling but staring with wide open eyes and trying to take as little notice as possible of its guests. There was neither wind nor dust in the Armenians' rooms, but it was just as unpleasant, stifling and dreary as in the steppe and on the road. I remember, dusty and exhausted by the heat, I sat in the corner on a green box. The unpainted wooden walls, the furniture, and the floors colored with yellow ochre, smelt of dry wood baked by the sun. Wherever I looked there were flies and flies and flies. Grandfather and the Armenian were talking about grazing, about manure, and about oats. I knew that they would be a good hour getting his samovar. That grandfather would be not less than an hour drinking his tea, and then would lie down to sleep for two or three hours. That I should waste a quarter of the day waiting, after which there would be again the heat, the dust, the jolting cart. I heard the muttering of the two voices, and it began to seem to me that I had been seeing the Armenian, the cupboard with the crockery, the flies, the windows with the burning sun beating on them for ages and ages, and should only cease to see them in the far-off future, and I was seized with hatred for the steppe, the sun, the flies. A little Russian peasant woman in a kerchief brought in a tray of tea-things, then the samovar. The Armenian went slowly out into the passage and shouted, Masha, come and pour out tea! Where are you, Masha? Her eed footsteps were heard, and there came into the room a girl of sixteen in a simple cotton dress and a white kerchief. As she washed the crockery and poured out the tea, she was standing with her back to me, and all I could see was that she was of a slender figure, bare-footed, and that her little bare heels were covered by long trousers. The Armenian invited me to have tea. Sitting down to the table, I glanced at the girl who was handing me a glass of tea, and felt all at once as though a wind were blowing over my soul and blowing away all the impressions of the day with their dust and dreariness. I saw the bewitching features of the most beautiful face I have ever met in real life or in my dreams. Before me stood a beauty, and I recognized that at the first glance, as I should have recognized lightning. I am ready to swear that Masha, or as her father called her, Masha, was a real beauty, but I don't know how to prove it. It sometimes happens that clouds are huddled together in disorder on the horizon, and the sun hiding behind them colors them in the sky with tints of every possible shade. Crimson, orange, gold, lilac, muddy pink. One cloud is like a monk, another like a fish, a third like a turk in a turban. The glow of sunset enveloping a third of the sky gleams on the cross on the church. Flashes on the windows of the manor house. Is reflected in the river and the puddles, quivers on the trees. Far, far away against the background of the sunset, a flock of wild ducks is flying homewards. And the boy, herding the cows, and the surveyor, driving in his shares over the dam, and the gentleman out for a walk, all gaze at the sunset, and every one of them thinks it is terribly beautiful, but no one knows or can say in what its beauty lies. I was not the only one to think the Armenian girl beautiful. My grandfather, an old man of seventy, gruff and indifferent to women in the beauties of nature, looked caressingly at Masha for a full minute, and asked, Is that your daughter Avernazaric? Yes, she is my daughter, answered the Armenian. A fine young lady, said my grandfather approvingly. An artist would have called the Armenian girl's beauty classical and severe. It was just that beauty, the contemplation of which, God knows why, inspires in one the conviction that one is seeing correct features, that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, bosom, and every movement of the young body all go together in one complete, harmonious accord in which nature has not blundered over the smallest line. You fancy, for some reason, that the ideally beautiful woman must have such a nose as Masha's. Straight and slightly aquiline. Just such great dark eyes. Such long lashes. Such a languid glance. You fancy that her black curly hair and eyebrows go with a soft white tint of her brow and cheeks as the green reeds go with a quiet stream. Masha's white neck and her youthful bosom were not fully developed, but you fancy the sculptor would need a great creative genius to mold them. You gaze, and little by little the desire comes over you to say to Masha something extraordinarily pleasant, sincere, beautiful, as beautiful as she herself was. At first I felt hurt and abashed that Masha took no notice of me, but was all the time looking down. It seemed to me as though a peculiar atmosphere, proud and happy, separated her from me and jealously screened her from my eyes. That's because I'm covered with dust, I thought, am sunburnt and am still a boy. But little by little I forgot myself, and gave myself up entirely to the consciousness of beauty. I thought no more now of the dreary step of the dust, no longer heard the buzzing of the flies, no longer tasted the tea, and felt nothing except that a beautiful girl was standing only the other side of the table. I felt this beauty rather strangely. It was not desire, nor ecstasy, nor enjoyment that Masha excited in me, but a painful, though pleasant, sadness. It was a sadness vague and undefined as a dream. For some reason I felt sorry for myself, for my grandfather and for the Armenian, even for the girl herself. And I had a feeling as though we all four had lost something important and essential to life which we should never find again. My grandfather too grew melancholy. He talked no more about manure or about oats, but sat silent, looking pensively at Masha. After tea my grandfather lay down for a nap, while I went out of the house into the porch. The house, like all the houses in the Armenian village, stood in the full sun. There was not a tree, not an awning, no shade. The Armenians' great courtyard, overgrown with goosefoot and wild mallows, was lively and full of gaiety in spite of the great heat. Threshing was going on behind one of the low hurdles which intersected the big yard here and there. Round a post, stuck into the middle of the threshing floor, ran a dozen horses, harnessed side by side, so that they formed one long radius. A little Russian, in a long waistcoat and full trousers was walking beside them, cracking a whip, and shouting in a tone that sounded as though he were jeering at the horses, and showing off his power over them. Ah! Ah! Ah! You damned brutes! Ah! Ah! Ah! Plague take you! Are you frightened? The horses, sorrel, white, and piebald, not understanding why they were made to run round in one place, and to crush the wheat straw, ran unwillingly, as though with effort, swinging their tails with an offended air. The wind raised up perfect clouds of golden chaff from under their hoofs, and carried it away far beyond the hurdle. Near the tall fresh stacks peasant women were swarming with rakes, and carts were moving, and beyond the stacks in another yard, another dozen similar horses were running round a post, and a similar little Russian was cracking his whip, and jeering at the horses. The steps on which I was sitting were hot. On the thin rails, and here and there on the window frames sap was oozing out of the wood from the heat. Red ladybirds were huddling together in the streaks of shadow, under the steps, and under the shutters. The sun was baking me on my head, on my chest, and on my back, but I did not notice it, and was conscious only of the thud of bare feet on the uneven floor, in the passage and in the rooms behind me. After clearing away the tea-things, Masha ran down the steps, fluttering the air as she passed, and like a bird flew into a little grimy out-house, I suppose the kitchen, from which came the smell of roast mutton and the sound of angry talk in Armenian. She vanished into the dark doorway, and in her place there appeared on the threshold an old, bent, red-faced Armenian woman wearing green trousers. The old woman was angry and was scolding someone. Soon afterwards Masha appeared in the doorway, flushed with the heat of the kitchen and carrying a big black loaf on her shoulder. Sweying gracefully under the weight of the bread, she ran across the yard to the threshing floor, darted over the hurdle, and wrapped in a cloud of golden chaff, vanished behind the carts. The little Russian who was driving the horses lowered his whip, sank into silence, and gazed for a minute in the direction of the carts. Then, when the Armenian girl darted again by the horses, and leaped over the hurdle, he followed her with his eyes, and shouted to the horses in a tone as though he were greatly disappointed. Plague take you, unclean devils! And all the while I was unceasingly hearing her bare feet, and seeing how she walked across the yard with a grave, preoccupied face. She ran now down the steps, wishing the air about me, now into the kitchen, now to the threshing floor, now through the gate, and I could hardly turn my head quickly enough to watch her, and the oftener she fluttered by me with her beauty, the more acute became my sadness. I felt sorry both for her and for myself, and for the little Russian who mournfully watched her every time she ran through the cloud of chaff to the carts. Whether it was envy of her beauty, or that I was regretting that the girl was not mine, and never would be, or that I was a stranger to her, or whether I vaguely felt that her rare beauty was accidental, unnecessary, and like everything on earth of short duration, or whether perhaps my sadness was that peculiar feeling which is excited in man by the contemplation of real beauty, God only knows. The three hours of waiting passed unnoticed. It seemed to me that I had not had time to look properly at Masha. When Carpo drove up to the river, bathed the horse, and began to put it in the shafts. The wet horse snorted with pleasure, and kicked his hoofs against the shafts. Carpo shouted to it, Back! My grandfather woke up. Masha opened the creaking gates for us. We got into the shez and drove out of the yard. We drove in silence as though we were angry with one another. When two or three hours later, Rostov and Nahitchevan appeared in a distance. Carpo, who had been silent the whole time, looked round quickly and said, A fine wench that, at the Armenians! And he lashed the horses. Two. Another time, after I had become a student, I was traveling by rail to the south. It was May. At one of the stations, I believe it was between Bielgorod and Harkov, I got out of the train to walk about the platform. The shades of evening were already lying on the station garden, on the platform, and on the fields. The station screened off the sunset, but on the topmost clouds of smoke from the engine, which were tinged with rosy light, one could see the sun had not yet quite vanished. As I walked up and down the platform, I noticed that the greater number of the passengers were standing or walking near a second class compartment, and that they looked as though some celebrated person were in that compartment. Among the curious whom I met near this compartment I saw, however, an artillery officer who had been my fellow-traveller, an intelligent, cordial, and sympathetic fellow, as people mostly are whom we meet on our travels by chance, and with whom we are not long acquainted. What are you looking at there? I asked. He made no answer, but only indicated with his eyes a feminine figure. It was a young girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a Russian dress, with her head bare and a little shawl flung carelessly on one shoulder. Not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or daughter of the station master. She was standing near the carriage window, talking to an elderly woman who was in the train. Before I had time to realize what I was seeing, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling I had once experienced in the Armenian village. The girl was remarkably beautiful. And that was unmistakable to me and to those who were looking at her as I was. If one is to describe her appearance, feature by feature, as the practice is, the only really lovely thing was her thick, wavy, fair hair, which hung loose with the black ribbon tied round her head. All the other features were either irregular or very ordinary. Either from a peculiar form of coquettishness, or from short-sightedness, her eyes were screwed up. Her nose had an undecided tilt. Her mouth was small. Her profile was feebly and insipidly drawn. Her shoulders were narrow and undeveloped for her age. And yet the girl made the impression of being really beautiful, and looking at her I was able to feel convinced that the Russian face does not need strict regularity in order to be lovely. What is more, that if instead of her turn-up nose the girl had been given a different one, correct and plastically irreproachable like the Armenian girls, I fancy her face would have lost all its charm from the change. Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment put her arms at Kimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to straighten her hair. Talked, laughed, while her face at one moment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror. And I don't remember a moment when her face and body were at rest. The whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the subtle grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the purity of her soul that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with the weakness we love so much in children, in birds, in fawns, and in young trees. It was that butterfly's beauty so in keeping with waltzing, darting about the garden, laughter, and gaiety, and incongruous with serious thought, grief, and repose. And it seemed as though a gust of wind blowing over the platform, or a fall of rain, would be enough to wither the fragile body and scatter the capricious beauty like the pollen of a flower. So the officer muttered with a sigh when, after the second bell, we went back to our compartment. And what that so meant, I will not undertake to decide. Perhaps he was sad, and did not want to go away from the beauty in the spring evening into the stuffy train. Or perhaps he, like me, was unaccountably sorry for the beauty, for himself, and for me, and for all the passengers who were listlessly and reluctantly sauntering back to their compartments. As we passed the station window, at which a pale red-haired telegraphist with upstanding curls and a faded, broad-cheeked face was sitting beside his apparatus, the officer heaved a sigh and said, Ah, I bet that telegraphist is in love with that pretty girl. To live out in the wilds under one roof with that ethereal creature, and not fall in love, is beyond the power of man. And what a calamity, my friend, what an ironical fate, to be stooping, unkempt, gray, a decent fellow, and not a fool, and to be in love with that pretty stupid little girl who would never take a scrap of notice of you. Or worse still, imagine that telegraphist is in love, and at the same time married. And that his wife is as stooping, as unkempt, and as decent a person as himself. On the platform between our carriage and the next, the guard was standing with his elbows on the railing, looking in the direction of the beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasantly beefy face, exhausted by sleepless nights and the jolting of the train, wore a look of tenderness, and of the deepest sadness, as though in that girl he saw happiness, his own youth, soberness, purity, wife, children, as though he were repenting and feeling in his whole being that that girl was not his, and that for him, with his premature old age, his uncouthness and his beefy face, the ordinary happiness of a man and a passenger was as far away as heaven. The third bell rang, the whistles sounded, and the train slowly moved off. First the guard, the station master, then the garden, the beautiful girl with her exquisitely sly smile, passed before our windows, putting my head out and looking back. I saw how, looking after the train, she walked along the platform by the window where the telegraph clerk was sitting, smoothed her hair and ran into the garden. The station no longer screamed off the sunset. The plane lay open before us, but the sun had already set, and the smoke lay in black clouds over the green velvety young corn. It was melancholy in the spring air, and in the darkening sky, and in the railway carriage. The familiar figure of the guard came into the carriage, and he began lighting the candles. End of The Beauties by Anton Chekov. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. $1.87. That was all, and $0.60 of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man in the butcher until one's cheek burned with silent imputation of parsimony. That such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it $1.87, and the next day would be Christmas. There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl, so Della did it, which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles with sniffles predominating. While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letter box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining, therein too was a card bearing the name Mr. James Dillingham Young. The Dillingham had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above, he was called Jim, and greatly hugged by Miss James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you is Della, which is all very good. Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with a powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out Dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87, with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months with this result. $20 a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling. Something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim. There was a pure glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pure glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art. Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within 20 seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length. Now there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the air shaft, Della would have let her hair hung out the window someday to dry just to depreciate her majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor with all his treasure piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy. So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet. On winter old brown jacket. On winter old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street, where she stopped the sign red. Madame Safrané. Hair goods of all kinds. One flight up Della ran and collected herself panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the Safrané. Will you buy my hair, Astella? I buy hair, said Madame. Take your hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it. Down rippled the brown cascade. Twenty dollars, said Madame. Lifting the mass with a practice hand. Give it to me quick, said Della. Oh, in the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present. She found it at last it surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum phobe chain, simple in chaston design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation, as all good things should do. It was even worthy of the watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him, quietness and value. The description applied to both. Twenty one dollars they took from her for it and she hurried home with the eighty seven cents. With that chain on his watch, Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain. When Della reached home, her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went on to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love, which is always a tremendous task dear friends, a mammoth task. Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close line curls that made her look wonderfully like a trance schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, long, carefully and critically. If Jim doesn't kill me, she said to herself, before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do? Oh, what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents? At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops. Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stairway down on the first flight and she turned white for just a moment. She had had a habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things and now she whispered, please God, make him think I am still pretty. The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two and to be burdened with a family, he needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves. Jim stopped inside the door as immovable as a setter at the scent of a quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della and there was an expression in them that she could not read and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her, fixedly, with that peculiar expression on his face. Della wriggled off the table and went for him. Jim, darling, she cried, don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again, you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say Merry Christmas, Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice, what a beautiful nice gift I've got for you. You've cut off your hair, asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at the patent fact yet, even after the hardest mental labor. Cut it off and sold it, said Della. Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I? Jim looked about the room curiously. You say your hair is gone, he said, with an air almost of idiocy. You needn't look for it, said Della. It's sold, I'll tell you, sold and gone too. It's Christmas Eve, boy, be good to me for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered. She went on with sudden serious sweetness, but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim? Out of his trance, Jim seemed quickly to awake. He unfolded his Della. For 10 seconds, led us to guard with the screed scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week, or a million a year. What is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The Magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on. Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table. Don't make any mistake, Della, he said. About me, I don't think there's anything in a way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less, but if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first. White fingers and nimble tore the string in the paper, and then an ecstatic scream of joy, and then alas a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the Lord of the Flat. For there lay the combs, the set of combs side and back that Della had worshiped long in a Broadway window, but beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with drooled rims, just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession, and now they were hers. But the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone, but she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with the dim eyes and a smile and said, my hair grows fast, Jim, and then Della leaped up like a little sing cat and cried, oh, oh, Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull, precious metal seemed to flash with the reflection of her bright and ardent spirit. Isn't it dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch, I want to see how it looks on it. Instead of a bane, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled. Della said he, let's put our Christmas presents away and keep them awhile. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs, and now suppose you put the chops on. The Magi, as you know, were wise men, wonderfully wise men, who brought gifts to the babe and the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents, being wise their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat, who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts, these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receives gifts, such as they are wisest, everywhere they are wisest, they are the Magi. This is the end of the gift of the Magi.