A Joke

Anton Chekhov

IT was a bright winter midday. . . . There was a sharp snapping frost and the curls on

Nadenka's temples and the down on her upper lip were covered with silvery frost. She was

holding my arm and we were standing on a high hill. From where we stood to the ground

below there stretched a smooth sloping descent in which the sun was reflected as in a

looking-glass. Beside us was a little sledge lined with bright red cloth.

"Let us go down, Nadyezhda Petrovna!" I besought her. "Only once! I assure you we shall

be all right and not hurt."

But Nadenka was afraid. The slope from her little goloshes to the bottom of the ice hill

her in the sledge, pale and trembling, put my arm round her and with her cast myself down

the precipice.

The sledge flew like a bullet. The air cleft by our flight beat in our faces, roared, whistled in

our ears, tore at us, nipped us cruelly in its anger, tried to tear our heads off our shoulders.

We had hardly strength to breathe from the pressure of the wind. It seemed as though the

devil himself had caught us in his claws and was dragging us with a roar to hell.

Surrounding objects melted into one long furiously racing streak . . . another moment and it

seemed we should perish.

"I love you, Nadya!" I said in a low voice.

The sledge began moving more and more slowly, the roar of the wind and the whirr of the

really uttered those four words or had she fancied them in the roar of the hurricane. And I

stood beside her smoking and looking attentively at my glove.

She took my arm and we spent a long while walking near the ice-hill. The riddle evidently

would not let her rest. . . . Had those words been uttered or not? . . . Yes or no? Yes or no?

It was the question of pride, or honour, of life -- a very important question, the most

important question in the world. Nadenka kept impatiently, sorrowfully looking into my

face with a penetrating glance; she answered at random, waiting to see whether I would not

speak. Oh, the play of feeling on that sweet face! I saw that she was struggling with herself,

that she wanted to say something, to ask some question, but she could not find the words;

she felt awkward and frightened and troubled by her joy. . . .

"Do you know what," she said without looking at me.

"Well?" I asked.

"Let us . . . slide down again."

We clambered up the ice-hill by the steps again. I sat Nadenka, pale and trembling, in the

expressed the utmost bewilderment, and on her face was written: "What does it mean? Who

uttered those words? Did he, or did I only fancy it?"

The uncertainty worried her and drove her out of all patience. The poor girl did not answer

my questions, frowned, and was on the point of tears.

"Hadn't we better go home?" I asked.

"Well, I . . . I like this tobogganning," she said, flushing. "Shall we go down once more?"

She "liked" the tobogganning, and yet as she got into the sledge she was, as both times

before, pale, trembling, hardly able to breathe for terror.

We went down for the third time, and I saw she was looking at my face and watching my

lips. But I put my handkerchief to my lips, coughed, and when we reached the middle of the

"It cannot be that the wind said them! And I don't want it to be the wind that said them!"

Next morning I got a little note:

"If you are tobogganning to-day, come for me. --N."

And from that time I began going every day tobogganning with Nadenka, and as we flew

down in the sledge, every time I pronounced in a low voice the same words: "I love you,

Nadya!"

Soon Nadenka grew used to that phrase as to alcohol or morphia. She could not live without

it. It is true that flying down the ice-hill terrified her as before, but now the terror and

danger gave a peculiar fascination to words of love -- words which as before were a mystery

and tantalized the soul. The same two -- the wind and I were still suspected. . . . Which of

the two was making love to her she did not know, but apparently by now she did not care;

from which goblet one drinks matters little if only the beverage is intoxicating.

Nadenka go up to the ice-hill and look about for me. . . then she timidly mounted the steps. .

. . She was frightened of going alone -- oh, how frightened! She was white as the snow, she

back, resolutely. She had evidently determined to put it to the test at last: would those sweet

saw her getting up from the sledge looking faint and exhausted. And one could tell from her

face that she could not tell herself whether she had heard anything or not. Her terror while

she had been flying down had deprived of her all power of hearing, of discriminating

sounds, of understanding.

But then the month of March arrived . . . the spring sunshine was more kindly. . . . Our ice-

hill turned dark, lost its brilliance and finally melted. We gave up tobogganning. There was

them, since there was no wind and I was going to Petersburg -- for long, perhaps for ever.

It happened two days before my departure I was sitting in the dusk in the little garden which

was separated from the yard of Nadenka's house by a high fence with nails in it. . . . It was

was already the scent of spring and the rooks were cawing loudly as they settled for their

night's rest. I went up to the fence and stood for a long while peeping through a chink. I saw

Mercy! The change that came over Nadenka! She uttered a cry, smiled all over her face and

And I went off to pack up. . . .

That was long ago. Now Nadenka is married; she married -- whether of her own choice or

not does not matter -- a secretary of the Nobility Wardenship and now she has three

children. That we once went tobogganning together, and that the wind brought her the

words "I love you, Nadenka," is not forgotten; it is for her now the happiest, most touching,

and beautiful memory in her life. . . .

But now that I am older I cannot understand why I uttered those words, what was my

motive in that joke. . . .

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