The Kiss

The Kiss by Anton Chekhov (1884)

Lieutenant Ryabovitch, a shy, undistinguished-looking officer with lynx-like whiskers, is among nineteen officers of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade invited to tea at the estate of Lieutenant-General von Rabbek during a halt at the village of Myestetchki. The host and his wife receive the officers with polite but insincere hospitality, apologizing that they cannot offer lodging since relatives are visiting. At tea and afterward in the drawing-room, Ryabovitch feels awkward among the confident guests while dancing begins to piano music. Having never danced or held a woman's waist, he wanders off with others to watch a game of billiards, then grows bored and starts back toward the drawing-room. Taking a wrong turn in the unfamiliar house, Ryabovitch enters a dark room. A woman's voice whispers "At last!", and unseen arms embrace his neck and kiss him before the woman gives a startled cry and flees, realizing her mistake. Shaken and elated, Ryabovitch returns to the drawing-room, his cheek and neck tingling, and spends the rest of the evening trying to guess which woman among the guests kissed him — considering the young lady in lilac and the fair girl in black — but cannot settle on an answer, instead mentally assembling an imagined composite of features. At supper and afterward, Ryabovitch is consumed by the memory. Walking back to their quarters with the other officers through the dark garden, he wonders whether he too will someday have a house and family like von Rabbek's. That night, in the hut he shares with Lieutenant Lobytko and Lieutenant Merzlyakov, he lies awake reliving the sensation. Lobytko, unsatisfied, goes out in a vain search for beer and company before returning to bed. The next morning the brigade resumes its march to camp. Riding among the guns, wagons, and men, Ryabovitch loses himself in daydreams about the unknown woman, imagining love, separation, reunion, marriage, and children, and reflecting that such happiness is, after all, an ordinary thing that comes to everyone, which comforts him. The brigade's commander, Lebedetsky, and the brigade general appear briefly, the general teasing Lobytko about a stout lady named Madame Lopuhov. That evening, drinking beer with Merzlyakov and Lobytko, Ryabovitch impulsively tells them about the kiss. Merzlyakov dryly speculates the woman must be "some sort of hysterical neurotic," and Lobytko responds with an unrelated boastful, implausible story of his own about a woman on a train, which Merzlyakov skeptically punctures. Embarrassed, Ryabovitch resolves never to confide in them again. Through the following weeks of camp life, Ryabovitch continues to feel as though he is in love, thinking constantly of Myestetchki, von Rabbek's household, and the dark room, even while joining the other officers on nighttime excursions "to the suburb," though he always feels guilty afterward. On August 31st, returning with two batteries, he approaches Myestetchki again, full of hope of seeing the woman or at least revisiting the room. But no messenger comes to invite the officers to von Rabbek's this time. Restless, Ryabovitch walks alone at night to the church, the garden, and the river, finding everything dark and silent, without the nightingale or scent of the previous visit. Watching the river, he reflects bitterly on the pointlessness and randomness of it all — the water flowing on as it always does, indifferent to him — and concludes that the whole episode, and life itself, is an unintelligible, aimless jest. Returning to his hut, he learns from his orderly that all his comrades have gone to von Rabbek's after all, having received a belated invitation. A flash of joy rises in him at the news, but he suppresses it and, out of spite toward his fate, refuses to go.

By Anton Chekhov · First published 1884 · Genre: Romance, Realism, Drama · 7,481 words

First lines

At eight o'clock on the evening of the twentieth of May all the six batteries of the N---- Reserve Artillery Brigade halted for the night in the village of Myestetchki on their way to camp. When the general commotion was at its height, while some officers were busily occupied around the guns, while others, gathered together in the square near the church enclosure, were listening to the quartermasters, a man in civilian dress, riding a strange horse, came into sight round the church. The little dun-coloured horse with a good neck and a short tail came, moving not straight forward, but as it were sideways, with a sort of dance step, as though it were being lashed about the legs. When he reached the officers the man on the horse took off his hat and said: "His Excellency Lieutenant-General von Rabbek invites the gentlemen to drink tea with him this minute."

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love · romance · short story · human emotions · social class · misunderstanding · desire · regret · relationships · Russian literature · intimacy · irony

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