The Schoolmaster and other stories - Penn State University

Anton TchekhovWhat you want of me I don’t understand.”The secretary and the sacristan went out of the studyand reached the street while he was still stamping andshouting:“Leave me in peace! What you want of me I don’tunderstand. Lea-eave me in peace!”STRONG IMPRESSIONSIT HAPPENED not so long ago in the Moscow circuit court.The jurymen, left in the court for the night, before lyingdown to sleep fell into conversation about strongimpressions. They were led to this discussion by recallinga witness who, by his own account, had begun tostammer and had gone grey owing to a terrible moment.The jurymen decided that before going to sleep, eachone of them should ransack among his memories andtell something that had happened to him. Man’s life isbrief, but yet there is no man who cannot boast thatthere have been terrible moments in his past.One juryman told the story of how he was nearlydrowned; another described how, in a place where therewere neither doctors nor chemists, he had one night poisonedhis own son through giving him zinc vitriol bymistake for soda. The child did not die, but the father79