‘Chick! ... chick! chick!’’
Behind her sat a ginger dog with sharp ears. Seeing the visitors, it ran to the gate and barked in a tenor voice (all ginger dogs bark in a tenor voice).
‘‘Who do you want?’’ shouted the woman, shielding her eyes from the sun.
‘‘Good morning!’’ Ivan Ivanych also shouted to her, fending off the ginger dog with his stick. ‘‘Tell me, please, does Nastasya Petrovna Toskunov live here?’’
‘‘She does! What do you want with her?’’
Ivan Ivanych and Egorushka went up to her. She looked them over suspiciously and repeated:
‘‘What do you want with her?’’
‘‘Might you be Nastasya Petrovna?’’
‘‘So I am!’’
‘‘Very pleased... You see, your old friend Olga Ivanovna Knyazev sends you her greetings. This is her little son. And I, as you may remember, am her brother, Ivan Ivanych... You come from our N. You were born there and married...’
Silence ensued. The stout woman stared senselessly at Ivan Ivanych, as if not believing or not understanding, then flushed all over and clasped her hands; oats poured from her apron, tears burst from her eyes.
‘‘Olga Ivanovna!’’ she shrieked, breathing heavily from excitement. ‘‘My own darling! Ah, dear hearts, why am I standing here like a fool? My pretty little angel...’
She embraced Egorushka, wetted his face with her tears, and began weeping in earnest.
‘‘Lord!’’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘‘Olechka’s little son! What joy! Just like his mother! Exactly! But why are we standing in the yard? Please come in!’’
Weeping, breathless, and talking as she went, she hastened to the house; the visitors trudged after her.
‘‘It’s not tidied up!’’ she said, leading the visitors into a small and stuffy parlor all filled with icons and flowerpots. ‘‘Ah, Mother of God! Vasilissa, open the blinds, at least! My little angel! My indescribable beauty! I didn’t even know Olechka had such a son!’’
When she had calmed down and grown used to her visitors, Ivan Ivanych asked to have a private talk with her. Egorushka went to another room; there was a sewing machine there, in the window hung a cage with a starling in it, and there were as many icons and plants as in the parlor. A girl stood motionless by the sewing machine, sunburnt, with cheeks as plump as Titus’s, and in a clean cotton dress. She looked at Egorushka without blinking and apparently felt very awkward. Egorushka looked at her for a moment in silence, then asked:
‘‘What’s your name?’’
The girl moved her lips, made a tearful face, and answered softly:
‘Atka...’
This meant ‘‘Katka.’’
‘‘He’ll live with you,’’ Ivan Ivanych was whispering in the parlor, ‘‘if you’ll be so kind, and we’ll pay you ten roubles a month. He’s a quiet boy, not spoiled...’
‘‘I don’t really know what to say to you, Ivan Ivanych!’’ Nastasya Petrovna sighed tearfully. ‘‘Ten roubles is good money, but I’m afraid to take someone else’s child! What if he gets sick or something...’
When Egorushka was called back to the parlor, Ivan Ivanych was standing hat in hand and saying good-bye.
‘‘Well? So he can stay with you now,’’ he was saying. ‘‘Good-bye! Stay here, Egor!’’ he said, turning to his nephew. ‘‘Behave yourself, listen to Nastasya Petrovna... Good-bye! I’ll come again tomorrow.’’
And he left. Nastasya Petrovna embraced Egorushka once more, called him a little angel, and tearfully began setting the table. In three minutes Egorushka was already sitting beside her, answering her endless questions, and eating rich, hot cabbage soup.
And in the evening he was sitting again at the same table, his head propped on his hand, listening to Nastasya Petrovna. Now laughing, now weeping, she told him about his mother’s youth, about her own marriage, about her children... A cricket called out from the stove, and the mantle in the gas lamp hummed barely audibly. The mistress spoke in a low voice and kept dropping her thimble from excitement, and Katya, her granddaughter, went under the table to fetch it, and each time stayed under the table for a long while, probably studying Egorushka’s legs. And Egorushka listened drowsily and studied the old woman’s face, her wart with hairs on it, the streaks of her tears... And he felt sad, very sad! His bed was made up on a trunk, and he was informed that if he wanted to eat during the night, he should go out to the corridor and take some of the chicken that was there on the windowsill, covered with a plate.
The next morning Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor came to say good-bye. Nastasya Petrovna was glad and wanted to prepare the samovar, but Ivan Ivanych, who was in a great hurry, waved his hand and said:
‘‘We have no time for any teas and sugars! We’re about to leave.’’
Before saying good-bye, they all sat down and were silent for a moment. Nastasya Petrovna sighed deeply and looked at the icons with tearful eyes.
‘‘Well,’’ Ivan Ivanych began, getting up, ‘‘so you’re staying...’
The businesslike dryness suddenly left his face, he turned a little red, smiled sadly, and said:
‘‘See that you study... Don’t forget your mother and listen to Nastasya Petrovna... If you study well, Egor, I won’t abandon you.’’
He took a purse from his pocket, turned his back to Egorushka, rummaged for a long time among the small change, and, finding a ten-kopeck piece, gave it to the boy. Father Khristofor sighed and unhurriedly blessed Egorushka.
‘‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit... Study,’’ he said. ‘‘Work hard, old boy... If I die, remember me. Here’s ten kopecks from me, too...’
Egorushka kissed his hand and wept. Something in his soul whispered to him that he would never see the old man again.
‘‘I’ve already applied to the school, Nastasya Petrovna,’’ Ivan Ivanych said in such a voice as if there was a dead person laid out in the parlor. ‘‘On the seventh of August you’ll take him to the examination... Well, good-bye! May God be with you. Good-bye, Egor!’’
‘‘You should at least have some tea!’’ Nastasya Petrovna groaned.
Through the tears that clouded his eyes, Egorushka did not see his uncle and Father Khristofor leave. He rushed to the window, but they were no longer in the yard, and the ginger dog, just done barking, trotted back from the gate with a look of duty fulfilled. Egorushka, not knowing why himself, tore from his place and went flying out of the house. When he came running through the gate, Ivan Ivanych and Father Khristofor, the one swinging his curved-handled stick, the other his staff, were just turning the corner. Egorushka felt that with these people, everything he had lived through up to then had vanished forever, like smoke; he sank wearily onto a bench and with bitter tears greeted the new, unknown life that was now beginning for him...
What sort of life would it be?
1888
THE DUEL
I
IT WAS EIGHT o’clock in the morning—the time when officers, officials, and visitors, after a hot, sultry night, usually took a swim in the sea and then went to the pavilion for coffee or tea. Ivan Andreich Laevsky, a young man about twenty-eight years old, a lean blond, in the peaked cap of the finance ministry1 and slippers, having come to swim, found many acquaintances on the shore, and among them his friend the army doctor Samoilenko.
With a large, cropped head, neckless, red, big-nosed, with bushy black eyebrows and gray side-whiskers, fat, flabby, and with a hoarse military bass to boot, this Samoilenko made the unpleasant impression of a bully and a blusterer on every newcomer, but two or three days would go by after this first acquaintance, and his face would begin to seem remarkably kind, nice, and even handsome. Despite his clumsiness and slightly rude tone, he was a peaceable man, infinitely kind, good-natured, and responsible. He was on familiar terms with everybody in town, lent money to everybody, treated everybody, made matches, made peace, organized picnics, at which he cooked shashlik and prepared a very tasty mullet soup; he was always soliciting and interceding for someone and always rejoicing over something. According to general opinion, he was sinless and was known to have only two weaknesses: first, he was ashamed of his kindness and tried to mask it with a stern gaze and an assumed rudeness; and second, he liked it when medical assistants and soldiers called him ‘‘Your Excellency,’’ though he was only a state councillor.2