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By the walls stood a sofa, and a desk whose green cloth was untidily bestrewn with the accumulated litter of years and copiously spotted with candle grease, reminiscent of the long, dreary nights Ivanov had spent a prey to loneliness. A heap of horse trappings collars, straps, saddles, bridles lay by the large, square, bare windows.
Ivanov walked through the fields, descended by a chalky ribbon of a footpath to the ravine, crossed over it by a narrow shadow-dappled pathway hidden among a maze of trees, and made his way along its further ridge to a forest watch-house.
He lay on his back, his arms extended; the outlines of his body could just be discerned. Lydia sat down quietly beside him and laid her hand on his breast. Ivanov sighed, drew in his arms and raised his head quickly from the pillow: "Who is there?" "It is I, Sergius me Lida," answered Lydia Constantinovna in a rapid whisper. "I know you do not wish to speak to me.
Ivanov smiled faintly, and dropped her hands. "All right, it does not matter, I will come to-morrow at dusk." Then in a low voice he added: "Will you come?" Arina moved closer to him, and she too spoke under her breath: "Yes, come this way. And we will have a walk ... Bother my father! But go now, I am in a hurry ... there is the house to put straight.... I feel the baby under my heart. Go!"
In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a theatrical manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to write something for his theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote "Ivanov" in a fortnight, sending off every act for rehearsal as it was completed. By this time he had won a certain amount of recognition, everyone was talking of him, and there was consequently great curiosity about his new play.
Aganka turned round sharply, tossing her head. "Well, I am not a dead creature!" "You are not, my girl; indeed you are not only hold your tongue!" Ivanov glanced at her. She was like a little wild fawn with her fresh young body and sparkling eyes, always so ready to bewitch.
If Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in the chief town of the province he would certainly have had a house of his own, and people would have addressed him as Yakov Matveyitch; here in this wretched little town people called him simply Yakov; his nickname in the street was for some reason Bronze, and he lived in a poor way like a humble peasant, in a little old hut in which there was only one room, and in this room he and Marfa, the stove, a double bed, the coffins, his bench, and all their belongings were crowded together.
"The cranes have come down!" he cried in an excited whisper, as though afraid of frightening them. Then he began to bustle about, muttering: "I must grease the double-barrel...." Ivanov also bestirred himself. Because while tracking the cranes he would be seeing her, Arina's image now came vividly before him broad, strong, ardent, with soft sensual lips, and wearing a red handkerchief.
This story had the honor of occupying an entire meeting of the psychiatrists attached to the Academy of Medicine of St. Petersburg. According to the report of Dr. Ivanov, the assembly was almost unanimous in declaring the murderer insane. Another psychiatrist, who thought he saw proofs of an abnormal mentality in all the stories of Andreyev, pronounced the same verdict against Dr.
To exhaustion, boredom, and the feeling of guilt add one more enemy: loneliness. Were Ivanov an official, an actor, a priest, a professor, he would have grown used to his position. But he lives on his estate. He is in the country. His neighbours are either drunkards or fond of cards, or are of the same type as the doctor.
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