Chekhov's 1896 works My Life - A Mainlander's Story one The director said to me: "I retain you purely out of respect for your venerable father, otherwise, you would have gone away from me." I replied to him: "My lord, do you think I will go away?" It's an honor." Then I heard him say, "Take this gentleman away, he's making me angry." After two days or so, I was fired.I have changed jobs like this nine times since I was considered a man, much to the grief of my father, a city architect.I've been in all sorts of institutions, but all those nine jobs are alike to each other, as this drop of water is to that: I always have to sit and write, and listen to stupid or rude reprimands, and so on. With dismissal.

When I went to see my father, he was reclining in an armchair with his eyes closed. His face was thin and dry, blue where the beard was shaved, like an old organist in a cathedral, with a humble, resigned expression.He ignored my greeting and did not open his eyes, but said: "If my dear wife, your mother, were alive today, your life would be a constant source of distress to her. She died I think it's a blessing so early." Opening his eyes, he continued, "Please teach me, you wretch, what shall I do with you?" When I was young, my relatives and friends knew what to do with me: some advised me to join the army, some advised me to enter the pharmacy, and some advised me to enter the telegraph office, but now I have reached the age of twenty. At the age of five, gray hair even appeared on the temples. I have already joined the army, worked as a pharmacist, and worked in the telegraph office. I seem to have done all the jobs in the world. up.

"What do you think of yourself?" the father went on. "Ordinary young people have a solid social status at your age, but look at yourself, no family, no job, a beggar, hanging on your father's neck and relying on him to support you!" Then, as usual, he said that the young people of today are ruining themselves because they believe in materialism instead of religion, and they are too conceited. own responsibility. "Let's go together tomorrow, you have to apologize to the director, and promise him to work diligently in the future," he finally said. "You shouldn't have social status, not even for a day."

"Listen to me, please," I said sullenly, not expecting anything of this kind of talk. "What you call social status is a privilege bought with money and education. People who have no money and no education live by manual labor. I see no reason why I should be an exception." "When you talk about manual labour, what you say is stupid and absurd!" said the father angrily. "You see, fool, brainless fellow, you have gods besides your brute physical strength, the holy fire, which raises you far above asses and reptiles, and brings you closer to gods! Only the best Only people can get this flame. Your great-grandfather, General Poloznev, fought in the Battle of Borodino, your grandfather was a poet, orator, chief nobleman, your uncle was a teacher, and finally I, your father, am an architect!

This sacred fire passed down from generation to generation in the Poloznev family must require you to extinguish it! " "It should be fair," I said. "Thousands and tens of thousands of people are doing manual labor." "Let them do manual labor! They won't do anything else! The manual labor that anyone can do, even the utter fool and the convict, is the labor that characterizes the slave and the savage, and the sacred fire is only available to a few! " It is useless to talk any further.Father adored himself, and only his own words could convince him.In addition, I know very well that his haughty attitude towards heavy labor is not based on the consideration of the holy fire or the like, but because he secretly worries that I will become a laborer, which will arouse the discussion of the whole city.The main thing is that all my peers have already graduated from university and have a good future. The son of the National Bank Office Director has already become an eighth-rank civil servant, but I, the only son, can't say anything!It was useless and unpleasant to talk about it any further, but I sat there, refusing him feebly, hoping he would finally understand me.In fact, the whole problem is simple and clear. It is nothing more than what means I use to maintain my life, but my father doesn't understand. bad mannerisms, a now-forgotten poet, and rudely called me a brainless fool and a fool.And how I wish he knew what I meant!Anyway, I love my father and my sister.

I have developed a habit since I was a child to always ask for their permission to do things. This habit has been deeply ingrained, and I am afraid I will not get rid of it in the future.It doesn't matter whether it's right or not, in short, I'm afraid of hurting their hearts. I'm afraid that my father will be agitated, and seeing his thin neck turn red, I'm afraid that he will have a stroke. "At my age," I began, "it is disgraceful and embarrassing to be sitting in a stuffy room copying, like a writing machine. What a holy fire there is!" "It's mental work after all," said the father. "But forget it, don't talk about it anymore. I'm warning you anyway: if you don't go to work and indulge your despicable tendencies, then my daughter and I will love you no more. I swear to God : I want to cancel your inheritance right!"

Sincerely wishing to prove that my motives were entirely pure, and that I intended to live by them for the rest of my life, I said: "The question of inheritance is of no importance to me. I declare in advance that I want nothing." For some reason, completely unexpected to me, these words annoyed my father so deeply that his face flushed red. "Don't you talk to me like that, fool!" he cried in a thin voice. "Bad guy!" He slapped me twice on the cheek with quick, skillful and habitual movements. "You have become lawless!" When I was a child, my father beat me. I always stood upright, with my palms facing the seams of my trousers, looking straight into his face.Now that he hit me, I was flustered, as if my childhood was still going on, I straightened my body and tried to look straight into his face.

My father is old and thin, but his lean muscles must be as strong as a belt, because he beat me so badly. I backed up to the front hall, where he grabbed an umbrella and hit me on the head and shoulders several times.At this time, my sister pushed open the door of the living room, wanting to see why there was so much noise, but she immediately turned away with a look of fear and pity, and didn't say a word of intercession for me. My desire to start a new working life without going back to the office was unshakable.It remained but to choose a trade, which was not very difficult; for I found myself strong and hardy, and able to bear the heaviest labor.Before me was the monotonous life of a workingman, half-starved, foul-smelling, indecent surroundings, constant calculations of wages and bread.And who knows?In the future, when I come back from work and walk through the Great Noble Street, I may more than once envy the engineer Torshikov, who lives on intellectual work, but now I think of this suffering in the future and feel happy.In the past, I also wanted intellectual work, imagining myself as a teacher, a doctor, and a writer, but the wish was always just a wish.I am passionately fond of intellectual pleasures, such as the theatre, and reading; but I do not know whether I have the talent for mental work.In middle school I hated Greek so much that my family had to pull me out of school when I was in fourth grade.For a long period of time, my family hired a tutor to help me with my homework, preparing for the fifth grade exam.Later, I worked in various institutions and spent most of my day leisurely, but people told me that this was mental work.I don't need a strong intelligence to study in school or work in an institution, nor do I need any talents or personal talents, let alone a passion for creation, which is a mechanical activity.I regard such intellectual labor as inferior to physical labor, I despise it, and I think that this kind of labor can never be a reason for a carefree and idle life, because this kind of labor is itself nothing but a deception. It's just a form of idleness.Probably, I have never seen real mental work.

Evening came.We live on Grand Noble Street, which is one of the main streets in the city.Due to the lack of decent city parks, our Beaumonde ② always takes a walk in this street every evening.This beautiful street has taken the place of a park at least because it is lined with poplars that give off a nice fragrance, especially after the rain.In addition, acacia trees, tall lilac bushes, thick plum trees, and apple trees emerged from the fence and small garden.How strange and unusual the twilight of May, the soft fresh shades, the scent of the lilacs, the buzzing of the beetles, the silence, the warmth, seemed, though spring came every year!I stood at the door and watched the walkers.Most of them I grew up with and played with before, and now I can only embarrass them by standing next to them, because I dress poorly and unfashionably, and people see my narrow trouser legs and Big, stupid boots, let's say they're like two pieces of macaroni hanging from a ship.Besides, I had a bad reputation in the town because I had no social status, played billiards in cheap taverns, and maybe because I was twice dragged to see a gendarmerie officer, which on my part was really bad. No fault was committed.

In the big house of the engineer Torschikov across the street someone was playing the piano.It was getting dark and the stars were starting to shine in the sky.At this time, my father was wearing an old top hat with a wide brim rolled up, holding my sister's arm, nodding to an acquaintance, and walking slowly over. "Look!" he said to my sister, pointing at the sky with the same umbrella that hit me just now. "Look at the sky! The stars, even the tiniest ones, form a world! How insignificant man is compared to the universe!" Listening to his tone, it seems that he feels very proud and happy that he is so small.What a mediocre man he is!Unfortunately he is the only architect in our city, and as far as I can remember, not a single decent house has been built in the city in the past fifteen or twenty years.Whenever people come to ask him to design, he always draws the hall and reception room first.Just as the students of the noble girls' high schools in the old days had to dance from the stove, his artistic conception can only start from the hall and the reception room and progress forward.After drawing the hall and reception room, he drew the dining room, children's room, and study room. All rooms have doors connected to each other. As a result, those rooms inevitably become corridors, and each room has two or three redundant doors.Probably his ideas are always unclear, very messy and incomplete.Every time he seemed to feel that there was still something missing, he came up with various ways to patch it up, adding a room here, squeezing a room there.I still remember those narrow and small vestibules, the narrow and small passages, the little winding stairs leading to the attic where one had to stoop to stand, and there were three floors Large steps replace the floor, like a steam bed in the bathroom.

The kitchen must have been under the house, with a vaulted roof and a brick floor.The front of the house was heavy and rigid, with a dry, cramped look.The roof is low and flat. Over the thick, puffy chimneys there are always wire covers, with a creaking black weathervane on the cover.These houses, designed and built by my father, were very much like each other, and for some reason always reminded me vaguely of his top hat and the stiff, shriveled back of his head.Over time, people in the city got used to my father's mediocrity, so this mediocrity took root and became our style. My father also brought this style into my sister's life.First he named her Kleopatra (as he named me Michel).When she was a little girl, he told her about the stars, the sages in ancient times, our ancestors, and spent a long time explaining to her what life and responsibility are, which made her tremble , scared in my heart.Now she is twenty-six years old, but he still tells his old routine, only allowing her to go out with him alone, holding his arm.For some reason, he imagined that sooner or later a well-behaved young man would be willing to marry her out of respect for his character.She, for her part, adored my father, feared him, and believed in his uncommon wisdom. It was completely dark, and there were gradually no pedestrians on the street.The music in the house opposite stopped, the gates opened, and out came a three-horse carriage, driving down our street, tinkling softly with little bells.This is the engineer taking his daughter out for a drive.It's time for me to sleep! I have my own room in the main house, but I live in a hut in the yard which shares the roof with the brick shed.This hut was probably built to store harnesses, and there were big hooks on the wall, but now the hut is useless. For thirty years, my father has stored newspapers in this room, and for some reason, he still binds these newspapers into a book every six months. book, no one is allowed to move.I lived here, and my father and his guests had less chance of seeing me.I figured that since I didn't live in a real room, and didn't eat in the main house every day, it wouldn't sound so bad for my father to say that I was supported by him. My sister is waiting for me.Without telling my father she brought me supper: a small piece of cold veal and a small piece of bread.We often say things like this in our family: "Money needs to be calculated and spent", "A little accumulation makes a lot", etc. My sister couldn't stand the pressure of these clichés, so she tried every means to save money, so we ate badly.She put the dishes on the table, sat down on my bed, and cried. "Missel!" she said, "what are you doing to us?" She did not cover her face with her hands, and her tears fell on her breasts, on her hands.She looked sad.She threw herself on the pillow, weeping heartily, shaking all over. "You quit your job again..." she said. "Oh, how dreadful it is!" "But you have to understand me, sister, you have to understand..." I said.When she cries, I panic. As if on purpose, the kerosene in my little lamp had completely burned out, black smoke was coming out of the lamp, and the lamp was about to go out.The old hooks on the wall looked menacing, their shadows dancing. "Have pity on us!" My sister sat up and said. "Father is very sad, and I am almost mad with grief. What will you do?" she asked, holding out her hand to me while weeping. "I beg you, I beg you, I beg you in the name of our dead mother, go back to work!" "I can't do it, Kleopatra!" I said, feeling like I was going to give in in a moment. "I can't do it!" "Why?" My sister went on. "Why? Yes, if you don't get on well with your boss, you can get another job. Why don't you work on the railway, for example? I just talked to Anyuta Bragovo , she's sure the railways will use you, she's even agreed to run for you. For Christ's sake, Michel, think it over! Think it over, I beg you!" We talked for a while longer and I gave in.I said: I have never considered working as an errand on the railway under construction, I might as well give it a try. She smiled happily with tears in her eyes, and took my hand, but she was still weeping, because she couldn't stop her own tears.I went to the kitchen to get kerosene. "Notes" ① One of the biggest battles in the Russo-French War of 1812. In this battle, the Russian army defeated the French army led by Napoleon I near the village of Borodino in the west of Moscow. ②French: Men and women of the upper class.