Anton Chekhov
Translated by Ivy Litvinov
[1] They went back to the house.And only after the lamp was lit in the great drawingroom on the upper floor, and Burkin and Ivan Ivanich, in silk dressing-gowns and warm slippers, were seated in arm-chairs, while Alekhin, washed and combed, paced the room in his new frock-coat, enjoying the warmth, the cleanliness, his dry clothes and comfortable slippers, while the fair Pelageya, smiling benevolently, stepped noiselessly over the carpet with her tray of tea and preserves, did Ivan Ivanich embark upon his yarn, the ancient dames, young ladies, and military gentlemen looking down at them severely from the gilded frames, as if they, too, were listening.
[2] “There were two of us brothers,” he began.“Ivan Ivanich (me), and my brother Nikolai Ivanich, two years younger than myself.I went in for learning and became a veterinary surgeon, but Nikolai started working in a government office when he was only nineteen.Our father, Chimsha-Himalaisky, was educated in a school for the sons of private soldiers, but was later promoted to officer’s rank, and was made a hereditary noble man and given a small estate.After his death the estate had to be sold for debts, but at least our childhood was passed in the freedom of the countryside, where we roamed the fields and the woods like peasant children, taking the horses to graze, peeling bark from the trunks of limetrees, fishing, and all that sort of thing.And anyone who has once in his life fished for perch, or watched the thrushes fly south in the autumn, rising high over the village on clear, cool days, is spoilt for town life, and will long for the countryside for the rest of his days.My brother pined in his government office.The years passed and he sat in the same place every day, writing out the same documents and thinking all the time of the same thing — how to get back to the country.And these longings of his gradually turned into a definite desire, into a dream of purchasing a little estate somewhere on the bank of a river or the shore of a lake.