The Problem In The Story

The Author Anton Chekhov

A Problem

by Anton Chekhov

THE strictest measures were taken that the Uskovs' family secret might not leak out and become by and large known. Half of the servants were sent off to the theatre or the circus; the other one-half were sitting in the kitchen and non allowed to go out it. Orders were given that no one was to be admitted. The wife of the Colonel, her sister, and the governess, though they had been initiated into the cloak-and-dagger, kept up a pretence of knowing nothing; they sabbatum in the dining-room and did not show themselves in the drawing-room or the hall.

Sasha Uskov, the young man of twenty-v who was the cause of all the commotion, had arrived some fourth dimension before, and by the advice of kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, his uncle, who was taking his function, he sat meekly in the hall past the door leading to the study, and prepared himself to make an open, aboveboard explanation.

The other side of the door, in the study, a family council was being held. The subject under discussion was an exceedingly disagreeable and frail 1. Sasha Uskov had cashed at i of the banks a false promissory note, and it had become due for payment three days before, and now his ii paternal uncles and Ivan Markovitch, the blood brother of his dead female parent, were deciding the question whether they should pay the money and save the family unit award, or wash their easily of information technology and go out the case to get for trial.

To outsiders who have no personal interest in the matter such questions seem simple; for those who are so unfortunate every bit to accept to decide them in hostage they are extremely difficult. The uncles had been talking for a long time, but the problem seemed no nearer conclusion.

"My friends!" said the uncle who was a colonel, and at that place was a note of burnout and bitterness in his voice. "Who says that family accolade is a mere convention? I don't say that at all. I am simply alarm you against a false view; I am pointing out the possibility of an unpardonable mistake. How can yous fail to see it? I am not speaking Chinese; I am speaking Russian!"

"My dear fellow, we do understand," Ivan Markovitch protested mildly.

"How can you understand if you say that I don't believe in family award? I echo again: fa-mil-y ho-nour fal-sely united nations-der-stood is a prejudice! Falsely understood! That's what I say: whatever may exist the motives for screening a scoundrel, whoever he may exist, and helping him to escape punishment, it is contrary to law and unworthy of a gentleman. It'south not saving the family honour; it's civic cowardice! Take the army, for example. . . . The honour of the regular army is more precious to us than any other honor, yet we don't screen our guilty members, just condemn them. And does the laurels of the regular army suffer in result? Quite the contrary!"

The other paternal uncle, an official in the Treasury, a taciturn, dull-witted, and rheumatic homo, saturday silent, or spoke only of the fact that the Uskovs' proper name would become into the newspapers if the instance went for trial. His stance was that the case ought to be hushed upwards from the commencement and not become public belongings; only, apart from publicity in the newspapers, he avant-garde no other statement in support of this opinion.

The maternal uncle, kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch, spoke smoothly, softly, and with a tremor in his vox. He began with saying that youth has its rights and its peculiar temptations. Which of us has non been young, and who has not been led off-target? To say nothing of ordinary mortals, even great men have not escaped errors and mistakes in their youth. Take, for instance, the biography of bully writers. Did not every one of them chance, drink, and draw down upon himself the anger of right-thinking people in his young days? If Sasha's error bordered upon criminal offense, they must retrieve that Sasha had received practically no education; he had been expelled from the loftier school in the 5th grade; he had lost his parents in early on babyhood, and so had been left at the tenderest age without guidance and good, benevolent influences. He was nervous, excitable, had no firm ground under his anxiety, and, above all, he had been unlucky. Even if he were guilty, anyway he deserved indulgence and the sympathy of all compassionate souls. He ought, of course, to exist punished, but he was punished as it was by his conscience and the agonies he was enduring now while awaiting the sentence of his relations. The comparison with the army made by the Colonel was delightful, and did credit to his lofty intelligence; his appeal to their feeling of public duty spoke for the knightly of his soul, but they must not forget that in each individual the denizen is closely linked with the Christian. . . .

"Shall we exist false to civic duty," Ivan Markovitch exclaimed passionately, "if instead of punishing an erring boy we hold out to him a helping hand?"

Ivan Markovitch talked farther of family unit honour. He had not the honour to belong to the Uskov family himself, simply he knew their distinguished family went back to the thirteenth century; he did not forget for a infinitesimal, either, that his precious, beloved sister had been the wife of one of the representatives of that name. In short, the family unit was dearest to him for many reasons, and he refused to admit the idea that, for the sake of a paltry fifteen hundred roubles, a absorb should be cast on the escutcheon that was beyond all toll. If all the motives he had brought forward were non sufficiently disarming, he, Ivan Markovitch, in determination, begged his listeners to ask themselves what was meant past crime? Criminal offense is an immoral act founded upon sick-volition. Only is the will of homo gratis? Philosophy has not however given a positive answer to that question. Different views were held by the learned. The latest school of Lombroso, for instance, denies the liberty of the will, and considers every criminal offence as the product of the purely anatomical peculiarities of the individual.

"Ivan Markovitch," said the Colonel, in a voice of entreaty, "we are talking seriously well-nigh an important matter, and you bring in Lombroso, you lot clever fellow. Recollect a little, what are yous saying all this for? Can y'all imagine that all your thunderings and rhetoric will furnish an reply to the question?"

Sasha Uskov saturday at the door and listened. He felt neither terror, shame, nor depression, but only weariness and inward emptiness. It seemed to him that it made absolutely no difference to him whether they forgave him or not; he had come up here to hear his sentence and to explain himself merely considering kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had begged him to exercise so. He was not afraid of the time to come. Information technology made no difference to him where he was: here in the hall, in prison house, or in Siberia.

"If Siberia, then let it exist Siberia, damn it all!"

He was ill of life and found it insufferably hard. He was inextricably involved in debt; he had not a farthing in his pocket; his family had become detestable to him; he would have to part from his friends and his women sooner or later, as they had begun to exist likewise contemptuous of his sponging on them. The future looked black.

Sasha was indifferent, and was only disturbed by one circumstance; the other side of the door they were calling him a scoundrel and a criminal. Every infinitesimal he was on the point of jumping upward, bursting into the study and shouting in respond to the detestable metallic voice of the Colonel:

"Yous are lying!"

"Criminal" is a dreadful give-and-take -- that is what murderers, thieves, robbers are; in fact, wicked and morally hopeless people. And Sasha was very far from being all that. . . . It was true he owed a great deal and did not pay his debts. Simply debt is non a crime, and information technology is unusual for a man not to be in debt. The Colonel and Ivan Markovitch were both in debt. . . .

"What have I washed wrong as well?" Sasha wondered.

He had discounted a forged note. But all the young men he knew did the aforementioned. Handrikov and Von Flare-up always forged IOU's from their parents or friends when their allowances were non paid at the regular fourth dimension, then when they got their money from home they redeemed them before they became due. Sasha had done the same, only had not redeemed the IOU because he had not got the money which Handrikov had promised to lend him. He was not to blame; it was the fault of circumstances. It was true that the use of another person'due south signature was considered reprehensible; just, withal, information technology was not a crime only a generally accepted dodge, an ugly formality which injured no ane and was quite harmless, for in forging the Colonel's signature Sasha had had no intention of causing everyone damage or loss.

"No, it doesn't mean that I am a criminal . . ." idea Sasha. "And it'southward not in my grapheme to bring myself to commit a criminal offense. I am soft, emotional. . . . When I have the coin I help the poor. . . ."

Sasha was musing after this mode while they went on talking the other side of the door.

"But, my friends, this is endless," the Colonel alleged, getting excited. "Suppose we were to forgive him and pay the money. You know he would not give up leading a dissipated life, squandering money, making debts, going to our tailors and ordering suits in our names! Can you guarantee that this will be his terminal prank? As far every bit I am concerned, I have no religion any in his reforming!"

The official of the Treasury muttered something in reply; after him Ivan Markovitch began talking blandly and suavely once more. The Colonel moved his chair impatiently and drowned the other's words with his insufferable metallic voice. At final the door opened and Ivan Markovitch came out of the study; in that location were patches of cerise on his lean shaven face.

"Come along," he said, taking Sasha by the hand. "Come up and speak frankly from your heart. Without pride, my dear male child, humbly and from your middle."

Sasha went into the written report. The official of the Treasury was sitting down; the Colonel was standing earlier the tabular array with i hand in his pocket and one knee joint on a chair. It was smoky and stifling in the report. Sasha did not wait at the official or the Colonel; he felt suddenly ashamed and uncomfortable. He looked uneasily at Ivan Markovitch and muttered:

"I'll pay it . . . I'll give it back. . . ."

"What did y'all wait when you discounted the IOU?" he heard a metallic voice.

"I . . . Handrikov promised to lend me the money earlier now."

Sasha could say no more than. He went out of the written report and sat down again on the chair near the door.

He would accept been glad to go abroad birthday at once, but he was choking with hatred and he awfully wanted to remain, to tear the Colonel to pieces, to say something rude to him. He sabbatum trying to call up of something violent and effective to say to his hated uncle, and at that moment a woman's effigy, shrouded in the twilight, appeared at the cartoon-room door. It was the Colonel's wife. She beckoned Sasha to her, and, wringing her hands, said, weeping:

"Alexandre, I know you lot don't like me, but . . . mind to me; listen, I beg yous. . . . But, my dear, how can this have happened? Why, it's awful, awful! For goodness' sake, beg them, defend yourself, entreat them."

Sasha looked at her quivering shoulders, at the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks, heard behind his back the hollow, nervous voices of worried and exhausted people, and shrugged his shoulders. He had not in the to the lowest degree expected that his aristocratic relations would raise such a tempest over a paltry 15 hundred roubles! He could not empathize her tears nor the quiver of their voices.

An hour later he heard that the Colonel was getting the best of information technology; the uncles were finally inclining to permit the case go for trial.

"The matter'due south settled," said the Colonel, sighing. "Plenty."

After this determination all the uncles, fifty-fifty the emphatic Colonel, became noticeably depressed. A silence followed.

"Merciful Heavens!" sighed Ivan Markovitch. "My poor sister!"

And he began saying in a subdued voice that nigh likely his sister, Sasha's female parent, was present unseen in the report at that moment. He felt in his soul how the unhappy, saintly woman was weeping, grieving, and begging for her boy. For the sake of her peace beyond the grave, they ought to spare Sasha.

The sound of a muffled sob was heard. Ivan Markovitch was weeping and muttering something which information technology was incommunicable to catch through the door. The Colonel got upward and paced from corner to corner. The long conversation began over again.

Only then the clock in the cartoon-room struck two. The family council was over. To avoid seeing the person who had moved him to such wrath, the Colonel went from the study, not into the hall, but into the vestibule. . . . Ivan Markovitch came out into the hall. . . . He was agitated and rubbing his hands joyfully. His tear-stained optics looked good-humoured and his mouth was twisted into a smile.

"Majuscule," he said to Sasha. "Give thanks God! Y'all can get dwelling house, my dear, and sleep tranquilly. We take decided to pay the sum, but on status that you repent and come with me tomorrow into the country and gear up to work."

A minute later Ivan Markovitch and Sasha in their great-coats and caps were going down the stairs. The uncle was muttering something edifying. Sasha did non listen, but felt as though some uneasy weight were gradually slipping off his shoulders. They had forgiven him; he was costless! A gust of joy sprang upwardly inside him and sent a sweet chill to his heart. He longed to breathe, to motion swiftly, to live! Glancing at the street lamps and the black sky, he remembered that Von Burst was jubilant his name-day that evening at the "Bear," and once more a rush of joy flooded his soul. . . .

"I am going!" he decided.

Merely and then he remembered he had not a farthing, that the companions he was going to would despise him at once for his empty pockets. He must get hold of some coin, come up what may!

"Uncle, lend me a hundred roubles," he said to Ivan Markovitch.

His uncle, surprised, looked into his face and backed confronting a lamp-mail.

"Give it to me," said Sasha, shifting impatiently from one foot to the other and beginning to pant. "Uncle, I entreat you, give me a hundred roubles."

His face worked; he trembled, and seemed on the signal of attacking his uncle. . . .

"Won't yous?" he kept asking, seeing that his uncle was even so amazed and did not understand. "Listen. If y'all don't, I'll give myself up tomorrow! I won't permit yous pay the IOU! I'll present another imitation notation tomorrow!"

Petrified, muttering something incoherent in his horror, Ivan Markovitch took a hundred-rouble note out of his pocket-book and gave information technology to Sasha. The immature man took it and walked rapidly away from him. . . .

Taking a sledge, Sasha grew calmer, and felt a rush of joy inside him again. The "rights of youth" of which kind-hearted Ivan Markovitch had spoken at the family unit council woke up and asserted themselves. Sasha pictured the drinking-political party before him, and, among the bottles, the women, and his friends, the thought flashed through his mind:

"Now I see that I am a criminal; yeah, I am a criminal."

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