“The pan has never seen a Polish pani, and says what is not possible,” the pan with the pipe observed to Maximov.
The pan with the pipe spoke Russian quite well, much better, at least, than he pretended. If he happened to use Russian words, he distorted them in a Polish manner.
“But I was married to a Polish pani myself, sir,” Maximov giggled in reply.
“And did you also serve in the cavalry? You were talking about the cavalry. But you’re no cavalryman,” Kalganov immediately mixed in.
“No, indeed, he’s no cavalryman! Ha, ha!” cried Mitya, who was listening greedily and quickly shifting his questioning glance to each speaker in turn, as if he expected to hear God knows what from each of them.
“No, you see, sir,” Maximov turned to him, “I mean, sir, that those young Polish girls ... pretty girls, sir ... as soon as they’d danced a mazurka with one of our uhlans ... as soon as she’d danced a mazurka with him, she’d jump on his lap like a little cat, sir ... a little white cat, sir ... and the pan father and the pani mother see it and allow it ... allow it, sir ... and the next day the uhlan would go and offer his hand ... like that, sir ... offer his hand, hee, hee!” Maximov ended with a giggle.
“The pan is a lajdak!”[249] the tall pan on the chair suddenly growled and crossed one leg over the other. All that caught Mitya’s eye was his enormous greased boot with its thick and dirty sole. Generally, the clothing of both pans was rather grimy.
“So it’s lajdak now! Why is he calling names?” Grushenka suddenly became angry.
“Pani Agrippina,[250] what the pan saw in the Polish land were peasant women, not noble ladies,” the pan with the pipe observed to Grushenka.
“You can bet on that!” the tall pan on the chair snapped contemptuously.
“Really! Let him talk! People talk, why interfere with them? It’s fun to be with them,” Grushenka snarled.
“I am not interfering, pani” the pan in the wig observed significantly, with a prolonged look at Grushenka, and, lapsing into an imposing silence, began sucking on his pipe again.
“But no, no, what the pan just said is right,” Kalganov got excited again, as if the matter involved were God knows how important. “He hasn’t been to Poland, how can he talk about Poland? You didn’t get married in Poland, did you?”
“No, sir, in Smolensk province. But, anyway, an uhlan brought her from Poland, sir, I mean my future spouse, sir, with her pani mother, and her aunt, and yet another female relation with a grown-up son, right from Poland ... and let me have her. He was one of our sublieutenants, a very nice young man. First he wanted to marry her himself, but he didn’t because she turned out to be lame ...”
“So you married a lame woman?” Kalganov exclaimed.
“A lame woman, sir. They both deceived me a little bit then and concealed it. I thought she was skipping ... she kept skipping all the time, and I thought it was from high spirits ...”
“From joy that she was marrying you?” Kalganov yelled in a ringing, childlike voice.
“Yes, sir, from joy. And the reason turned out to be quite different, sir. Later, when we got married, that same evening after the church service, she confessed and asked my forgiveness with great feeling. She once jumped over a puddle in her young years, she said, and injured her little foot, hee, hee, hee!”
Kalganov simply dissolved in the most childlike laughter and almost collapsed on the sofa. Grushenka laughed, too. Mitya was in perfect bliss. “You know, you know, he’s telling the truth now, he’s not lying anymore!” Kalganov exclaimed, addressing Mitya. “And you know, he was married twice—it’s his first wife he’s talking about—and his second wife, you know, ran away and is still alive, did you know that?”
“She did?” Mitya quickly turned to Maximov, his face expressing remarkable amazement.
“Yes, sir, she ran away, I’ve had that unpleasantness,” Maximov confirmed humbly. “With a certain monsieur, sir. And the worst of it was that beforehand she first of all transferred my whole village to her name alone. You’re an educated man, she said, you can always earn your keep. So she left me flat. A venerable bishop once observed to me: your first wife was lame, and the second too lightfooted, hee, hee!”
“Listen, listen!” Kalganov was really bubbling over, “even if he’s lying— and he lies all the time—he’s lying so as to give pleasure to us alclass="underline" that’s not mean, is it? You know, sometimes I love him. He’s awfully mean, but naturally so, eh? Don’t you think? Other people are mean for some reason, to get some profit from it, but he just does it naturally ... Imagine, for instance, he claims (he was arguing about it yesterday all the while we were driving) that Gogol wrote about him in Dead Souls.[251] Remember, there’s a landowner Maximov, and Nozdryov thrashes him and is taken to court ‘for inflicting personal injury on the landowner Maximov with a birch while in a drunken condition’—do you remember? Imagine, now, he claims that was him, that it was he who was thrashed! But how can it be? Chichikov was traveling around in the twenties at the latest, the beginning of the twenties, so the dates don’t fit at all. He couldn’t have been thrashed then. He really couldn’t, could he?”
It was hard to conceive why Kalganov was so excited, but his excitement was genuine. Mitya entered wholeheartedly into his interests.
“Well, what if he was thrashed!” he cried with a loud laugh.
“Not really thrashed, but just so,” Maximov suddenly put in.
“How ‘so’? Thrashed, or not thrashed?”
“Która godzina, partie (What time is it) ?” the pan with the pipe addressed the tall pan on the chair with a bored look. The latter shrugged his shoulders in reply: neither of them had a watch.
“Why not talk? Let other people talk, too. You mean if you’re bored, no one should talk?” Grushenka roused herself again, apparently provoking him on purpose. For the first time, as it were, something flashed through Mitya’s mind. This time the pan replied with obvious irritation.
“Pani, I do not contradict, I do not say anything.”
“All right, then. And you, go on with your story,” Grushenka cried to Maximov. “Why are you all silent?” “But there’s really nothing to tell, because it’s all foolishness,” Maximov picked up at once with obvious pleasure, mincing a bit, “and in Gogol it’s all just allegorical, because he made all the names allegoricaclass="underline" Nozdryov really wasn’t Nozdryov but Nosov, and Kuvshinnikov doesn’t bear any resemblance, because he was Shkvornyev. And Fenardi was indeed Fenardi, only he wasn’t an Italian but a Russian, Petrov, sirs, and Mamzelle Fenardi was a pretty one, with pretty legs in tights, sirs, a short little skirt all-over sequins, and she made pirouettes, only not for four hours but just for four minutes, sirs ... and seduced everyone ...”
“What were you thrashed for, what did they thrash you for?” Kalganov kept on shouting.
“For Piron, sir,” Maximov replied.[252]
“What Piron?” cried Mitya.
“The famous French writer Piron, sirs. We were all drinking wine then, a big company, in a tavern, at that fair. They invited me, and first of all I started reciting epigrams: ‘Is it you, Boileau, in that furbelow?’[253] And Boileau answers that he’s going to a masquerade, meaning to the bathhouse, sirs, hee, hee—so they took it personally. Then I hastened to tell them another one, very well known to all educated people, a sarcastic one, sirs: