THE EXCLAMATION POINT (a Christmas Story) by Anton Chekhov

ON THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, Efim Fomich Perekladin, a collegiate secretary,1 went to bed offended and even insulted.

“Stop bothering me, you she-devil!” he barked angrily at his wife when she asked why he was so gloomy.

The trouble was that he had just come back from a party where many things had been said that he found unpleasant and offensive. At first they talked about the benefits of education in general, then they moved on imperceptibly to the educational requirements for civil servants, about the low level of which a great many laments, reproaches, and even gibes were voiced. And here, as is customary in all Russian gatherings, they moved on from the general to the personal.

“Take you, for instance, Efim Fomich.” A young man turned to Perekladin. “You occupy a respectable post…but what kind of education did you receive?”

“None, sir. For us no education’s needed,” Perekladin said meekly. “Just write correctly…”

“And where did you learn to write correctly?”

“Habit, sir…After forty years of service you get the knack of it, sir…Of course, it was hard at first, I made mistakes, but then I got used to it, sir…no problem…”

“And punctuation?”

“Punctuation’s no problem…Just put it in correctly.”

“Hm!…” The young man became embarrassed. “But habit’s not the same as education. It’s not enough to put in punctuation correctly…not enough, sir! You should put it in consciously! When you put in a comma, you should know why you’re putting it in…yes, sir! And this unconscious…reflex orthography of yours isn’t worth a kopeck. It’s mechanical production and nothing more.”

Perekladin held his tongue and even smiled meekly (the young man was the son of a state councillor and had the right to the tenth rank), but now, on going to bed, he was all transformed into anger and indignation.

“I’ve served for forty years,” he thought, “and no one has ever called me a fool, but now just look what critics have turned up! ‘Unconscious…Lefrex! Mechanical production…’ Ah, you, devil take you! Anyhow, maybe I understand more than you do, even if I didn’t study in your universities.”

Having mentally poured out all the abuse known to him at the critic’s expense and getting warm under the blanket, Perekladin began to calm down.

“I know…I understand…,” he thought, falling asleep. “I wouldn’t put a colon where a comma’s called for, which means I’m aware, I understand. Yes…So there, young man…First you’ve got to live, serve, and only then judge your elders…”

In the closed eyes of the dozing Perekladin, through a crowd of dark, smiling clouds, a fiery comma flew like a meteor. It was followed by a second, a third, and soon the whole boundless dark background spread out before his imagination was covered with dense clusters of flying commas…

“Take just these commas…,” thought Perekladin, feeling his limbs turning sweetly numb from the onset of sleep. “I understand them perfectly…I can find a place for each one, if you like…and…and consciously, not by chance…Test me and you’ll see…Commas are put in various places, where they go, and where they don’t. The more confusing the document, the more commas are needed. They’re put before ‘which’ and sometimes before ‘that.’ If there’s a list of officials, each one should be separated by a comma…I know!”

The golden commas spun around and raced off to one side. They were replaced by fiery periods…

“And periods are put at the end of a document…Where a big pause and a glance at the listener is needed, there should also be a period. After every long passage a period is needed, so that the secretary’s mouth doesn’t go dry while he’s reading. Periods are not put anywhere else…”

Again the commas come flying…They mix with the periods, whirl around—and Perekladin sees a whole multitude of colons and semicolons…

“And these I know…,” he thinks. “Where a comma is too little and a period is too much, there we need a semicolon. Before ‘but’ and ‘therefore’ I always put a semicolon…Well, and the colon? A colon is needed after the phrases ‘it has been decreed’ or ‘decided’…”

The colons and semicolons fade away. It is the turn of the question marks. They leap down from the clouds dancing the cancan…

“As if we’ve never seen question marks! Even if there were a thousand of them, I’d find a place for them all. They’re always used when there’s a request to be made or, let’s say, documents are being examined: ‘Where is the remainder of the sums for such-and-such year?’ or ‘Will the police department find it possible for a certain Mrs. Ivanov…?’ and so on.”

The question marks nodded their hooks in approval and instantly, as if on command, straightened themselves into exclamation points…

“Hm!…This punctuation mark is often used in letters. ‘My dear sir!’ or ‘Your Excellency, father and benefactor!…’ But when in documents?”

The exclamation points drew themselves up still taller and stood waiting…

“They’re used in documents when…well…that’s…how is it? Hm!…In fact, when are they used in documents? Wait…God help me remember…Hm!…”

Perekladin opened his eyes and turned on his other side. But before he could close them again, the exclamation points appeared once more against the dark background.

“Devil take them…When should they be used?” he thought, trying to drive the uninvited guests out of his imagination. “Can it be I’ve forgotten? Forgotten, or…just never used them…”

Perekladin began to recall the contents of all the documents he had written out in his forty years of service; but however much he thought, however much he furrowed his brow, in his past he did not find a single exclamation point.

“How odd! Writing for forty years and never once using an exclamation point…Hm!…But when does the long devil get used?”

From behind the row of fiery exclamation points appeared the sarcastically grinning mug of his young critic. The points also smiled and merged into one big exclamation point.

Perekladin shook his head and opened his eyes.

“Devil knows what…,” he thought. “Tomorrow morning I have to get up for matins, and I can’t drive this fiendish thing out of my head…Pah! But…when do we use it then? There’s habit for you! There’s getting the knack for you! Not a single exclamation point in forty years! Eh?”

Perekladin crossed himself and closed his eyes, but immediately opened them again; the big point still stood there against the dark background…

“Pah! This way I won’t sleep all night. Marfusha!” He turned to his wife, who often boasted of having finished boarding school. “Do you know, sweetheart, when to use an exclamation point in documents?”

“As if I don’t! I didn’t spend seven years in boarding school for nothing. I remember all of grammar by heart. It’s used in appeals, exclamations, and expressions of delight, indignation, joy, anger, and other feelings.”

“So-o-o…,” thought Perekladin. “Delight, indignation, joy, anger, and other feelings…”

The collegiate secretary fell to thinking…For forty years he had been writing out documents, he had written out thousands, tens of thousands of them, but he did not remember a single line that expressed delight, indignation, or anything of the sort…

“And other feelings…,” he thought. “But is there any need for feelings in documents? Even a man with no feelings can write them out…”

The young critic’s mug peeked out again from behind the fiery point and smiled sarcastically. Perekladin got up and sat on the bed. He had a headache, cold sweat stood out on his brow…In the corner an icon lamp glimmered cozily, the furniture was clean and had a festive look, over everything spread the warmth and presence of a woman’s hands, but the poor little clerk was cold, uncomfortable, as if he were sick with typhus. The exclamation point no longer stood in his closed eyes, but before him, in the room, by his wife’s dressing table, and it winked mockingly at him…

“Machine! Writing machine!” whispered the ghost, wafting dry cold at the clerk. “Unfeeling block of wood!”

The clerk covered himself with the blanket, but he also saw the ghost under the blanket; he pressed his face to his wife’s shoulder, but it stuck out from behind her shoulder as well…Poor Perekladin suffered all night, but in the daytime the ghost did not leave him. He saw it everywhere: in the boots he was putting on, in his cup of tea, in his Stanislas medal…2

“And other feelings…,” he thought. “It’s true there haven’t been any feelings…I’m going now to sign my superior’s Christmas greeting…but is it done with any feelings? So, it’s all nothing…A merry-christmas machine…”

When Perekladin went out and hailed a cab, it seemed to him that an exclamation point drove up instead of a cabby.

Coming to his superior’s anteroom, instead of a porter he saw the same exclamation point…And it all spoke to him of delight, indignation, anger…The pen in its stand also looked like an exclamation point. Perekladin took it, dipped the pen in ink, and wrote:

“Collegiate Secretary Efim Perekladin!!!”

And in setting down these three exclamation points he felt delight, indignation, joy, and he seethed with anger.

“There, take that! Take that!” he muttered as he pressed down with the pen.

The fiery exclamation point was satisfied and vanished.

1885