"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

Sea; it was all so still, motionless, lifeless, and dreary!

My uneasiness hindered me from working and concentrating myself;
I did not know what it was, and chose to believe it was
disappointment. I had actually given up my post in the Department
of Ways and Communications, and had come here into the country
expressly to live in peace and to devote myself to writing on
social questions. It had long been my cherished dream. And now I
had to say good-bye both to peace and to literature, to give up
everything and think only of the peasants. And that was
inevitable, because I was convinced that there was absolutely
nobody in the district except me to help the starving. The people
surrounding me were uneducated, unintellectual, callous, for the
most part dishonest, or if they were honest, they were
unreasonable and unpractical like my wife, for instance. It was
impossible to rely on such people, it was impossible to leave the
peasants to their fate, so that the only thing left to do was to
submit to necessity and see to setting the peasants to rights
myself.

I began by making up my mind to give five thousand roubles to the
assistance of the starving peasants. And that did not decrease,
but only aggravated my uneasiness. As I stood by the window or
walked about the rooms I was tormented by the question which had
not occurred to me before: how this money was to be spent. To
have bread bought and to go from hut to hut distributing it was
more than one man could do, to say nothing of the risk that in
your haste you might give twice as much to one who was well-fed
or to one who was making. money out of his fellows as to the
hungry. I had no faith in the local officials. All these district
captains and tax inspectors were young men, and I distrusted them
as I do all young people of today, who are materialistic and
without ideals. The District Zemstvo, the Peasant Courts, and all
the local institutions, inspired in me not the slightest desire
to appeal to them for assistance. I knew that all these
institutions who were busily engaged in picking out plums from
the Zemstvo and the Government pie had their mouths always wide
open for a bite at any other pie that might turn up.

The idea occurred to me to invite the neighbouring landowners and
suggest to them to organize in my house something like a
committee or a centre to which all subscriptions could be
forwarded, and from which assistance and instructions could be
distributed throughout the district; such an organization, which
would render possible frequent consultations and free control on
a big scale, would completely meet my views. But I imagined the
lunches, the dinners, the suppers and the noise, the waste of
time, the verbosity and the bad taste which that mixed provincial
company would inevitably bring into my house, and I made haste to
reject my idea.