“There you are!” the first-class passenger laughed. “He knows the Tula cardsharp, but ask him if he knows Semiradsky, Tchaikovsky, or the philosopher Soloviev, he’ll just shake his head…Swinishness!”
Some three minutes passed in silence.
“Allow me to ask you in my turn,” the vis-à-vis coughed timidly, “is the name Pushkov known to you?”
“Pushkov? Hm!…Pushkov…No, I don’t know it.”
“It’s my name…” the vis-à-vis said shyly. “So you don’t know it? And I’ve been a professor at one of the Russian universities for thirty-five years…a member of the Academy of Science, sir…have published extensively…”
The first-class passenger and the vis-à-vis looked at each other and burst out laughing.
1886
DIFFICULT PEOPLE
SHIRYAEV, EVGRAF IVANOVICH, a petty landowner and priest’s son (his late parent, Father Ioann, had received 274 acres of land as a gift from General Kuvshinnikov’s wife), was standing in the corner in front of a copper washstand, washing his hands. As usual, he looked glum and preoccupied, and his beard was dishevelled.
“Well, some weather!” he said. “It’s not weather, it’s divine punishment. Raining again!”
He was grumbling, and his family was sitting at the table and waiting until he finished washing his hands so as to begin dinner. His wife, Fedosya Semyonovna; their son Pyotr, a student; their daughter Varvara; and the three little boys had long been sitting at the table and waiting. The boys—Kolka, Vanka, and Arkhipka—pug-nosed, grimy, with fleshy faces and coarse, long-untrimmed hair, fidgeted impatiently on their chairs, while the adults sat without stirring, and it seemed it was all the same to them whether they ate or waited…
As if testing their patience, Shiryaev slowly dried his hands, slowly said a prayer, and unhurriedly sat down at the table. Cabbage soup was served at once. From the yard came the rapping of carpenters’ axes (a new barn was being built at Shiryaev’s) and the laughter of the farmhand Fomka, who was teasing a turkey. Few but big drops of rain struck the window.
The student Pyotr, in spectacles and round-shouldered, was eating and exchanging glances with his mother. He set his spoon down several times and coughed, wishing to begin talking, but, taking a close look at his father, fell to eating again. Finally, when the kasha was served, he coughed resolutely and said:
“I should take the evening train tonight. It’s long been time, I’ve already missed two weeks. The lectures started on the first of September!”
“Go, then,” Shiryaev consented. “What are you waiting around here for? Just up and go with God!”
A minute passed in silence.
“He’ll need money for the road, Evgraf Ivanych,” the mother said softly.
“Money? Oh, well! You can’t travel without money. Take it right now, since you need it. Could have taken it long ago!”
The student sighed with relief and exchanged cheerful glances with his mother. Shiryaev unhurriedly took the wallet from his side pocket and put on his spectacles.
“How much?” he asked.
“In fact, the trip to Moscow costs eleven roubles forty-two…”
“Ah, money, money!” the father sighed (he always sighed when he saw money, even receiving it). “Here’s twelve for you. There’ll be some change, boy, it’ll come in handy during the trip.”
“Thank you.”
After a few moments, the student said:
“Last year I didn’t find lessons right away. I don’t know how it will be this year; I probably won’t earn any money for a while. I’d like to ask you to give me maybe fifteen roubles for room and board.”
Shiryaev pondered and sighed.
“Ten’ll be enough for you,” he said. “Here, take it!”
The student thanked him. He should have requested more for clothes, to pay for attending lectures, for books, but, having looked closely at his father, he decided not to pester him any more. But his mother, unpolitic and unreasonable, as all mothers are, could not help herself and said:
“Give him another six roubles, Evgraf Ivanovich, so he can buy boots. No, just look, how can he go to Moscow in such tatters?”
“He can take my old ones. They’re still quite new.”
“Give him some for trousers, too. It’s a shame to look at him…”
And immediately after that appeared a precursor of the storm before which the entire family trembled: Shiryaev’s short, thick neck suddenly turned Turkey red. The color slowly spread to his ears, from his ears to his temples, and gradually covered his whole face. Evgraf Ivanych fidgeted on his chair and unbuttoned the collar of his shirt so as not to suffocate. He was evidently struggling with the feeling that was coming over him. A dead silence ensued. The children held their breath, but Fedosya Semyonovna, as if not understanding what was happening with her husband, went on:
“He’s not a little boy. He’s ashamed to go around badly dressed.”
Shiryaev suddenly jumped up and with all his might hurled his fat wallet into the middle of the table, knocking a piece of bread off the plate. On his face flared up a repulsive expression of wrath, offense, greed—all of it together.
“Take it all!” he shouted in a voice not his own. “Rob me! Take it all! Strangle me!”
He jumped away from the table, clutched himself by the head, and ran stumbling around the room.
“Bleed me dry!” he shouted in a shrieking voice. “Squeeze me to the last drop! Rob me! Strangle me by the throat!”
The student turned red and dropped his eyes. He was no longer able to eat. Fedosya Semyonovna, who in twenty-five years had not grown used to her husband’s difficult character, shrank into herself and murmured something in her own defense. On her haggard birdlike face, always dumb and frightened, appeared an expression of astonishment and dumb fear. The boys and the older daughter Varvara, an adolescent girl with a pale, unattractive face, set down their spoons and froze.
Shiryaev, growing more and more furious, uttering words one more terrible than the other, ran to the table and started shaking the money out of his wallet.
“Take it!” he muttered, trembling all over. “You’ve eaten, you’ve drunk, so take the money, too! I need nothing! Make yourselves new boots and uniforms!”
The student turned pale and stood up.
“Listen, Papa,” he began, gasping for breath. “I…I beg you to stop, because…”
“Silence!” the father shouted at him, so loudly that his spectacles fell off his nose. “Silence!”
“Before I…I could put up with these scenes, but now…I’ve lost the habit! Understand! I’ve lost the habit!”
“Silence!” the father shouted and stamped his feet. “You must listen to what I say! I say what I like, and you—keep silent! At your age I earned my own money, and you, you scoundrel, do you know how much you cost me? I’ll throw you out! Parasite!”
“Evgraf Ivanych!” Fedosya Semyonovna murmured, nervously twitching her fingers. “But he…but Petya…”
“Silence!” Shiryaev shouted at her, and wrath even brought tears to his eyes. “It’s you who spoiled them! You! You’re to blame for it all! He doesn’t respect us, he doesn’t pray to God, he doesn’t earn any money! There’s ten of you and one of me. I’ll throw you out of the house!”
The daughter Varvara stared open-mouthed at her mother for a long time, then shifted her dumb gaze to the window, turned pale, and, with a loud cry, threw herself against the back of the chair. Her father waved his hand, spat, and ran outside.
This was how family scenes usually ended at the Shiryaevs’. But this time, unfortunately, an insurmountable anger suddenly came over the student Pyotr. He was as hot-tempered and difficult as his father, and as his grandfather, an archpriest who used to hit his parishioners on the head with a stick. Pale, his fists clenched, he went up to his mother and screamed in the highest tenor notes he was capable of producing: