Then it struck him that it might almost be that he alone -^ was to blame, and this made him even more unhappy.
His old acquaintances he ceased to visit; meeting new faces chilled him. After his conversation with his uncle, he sank into still deeper lethargy ; his soul was wrapped in complete slumber. He fell into a kind of stony indifference, lived in indolence, and obstinately cut himself off from everything that even reminded him of the civilised world.
' What does it matter how one lives so long as one lives!' he said. ' Every one is free to take life as he likes, and then to die.'
He sought the society of men of sour turn of mind, of embittered feelings, and found relief for his heart in listening to their spiteful epigrams on destiny; or wasted his time with people inferior to him both in intelligence and education, most frequently of all with Kostyakoff, the old man whom Zayeshaloff had tried to introduce to riotr Ivanitch. Kostyakoff lived in Peskae, and walked about the street there in a shiny cap and a dressing-gown, tied round the waist with a pocket-handkerchief. With him lived a cook with whom he used to play cribbage in the evening.
If a fire broke out, he was the first man to be on the spot and the last to go away. If he passed by a church where a funeral service was being conducted, he would force his way through the crowd to take a look at the face of the corpse, and then would proceed to follow the funeral to the cemetery.
He was devoted to ceremonies of every kind, whether mournful or festive in character; he liked also to be present at any extraordinary events, such as street brawls, fatal accidents, roofs falling in, &c, and read with peculiar enjoyment the account of such occurrences in the newspapers. Besides this, he used to read medical books, ' so as to know what is in man/ he used to say. In the winter Alexandr used to play draughts with him, and in the summer he used to make excursions out of town to go fishing with him. The old man would talk of one thing and another. When
they went into a field, he talked of the crop and of sowing; on the bank of the river he talked of fish, of navigation; in the street, he made remarks about the houses, about architecture, and building materials and rents .... no abstract ideas of any kind. He looked on life as a good thing if he had money, and vice versd. Such a man was quite without danger for Alexandr; he could not awaken any spiritual emotion.
Alexandr tried as zealously to mortify the spiritual element in himself as hermits try to mortify the flesh. At the office he was silent; if he met acquaintances he exchanged two or three words and, on the pretext of want of time, made his escape. His friend Kostyakoff, however, he saw every day. Sometimes the old man would spend the whole day at Adouev's, sometimes he would invite him home to eat cabbage soup. He had already taught Alexandr to make beverages and to cook pickled cabbage and tripe. Later they would set off together somewhere in the surrounding neighbourhood to the open country. Kostyakoff had many acquaintances everywhere. With the peasants, he would talk about their way of living, with the women he would joke, and was precisely the merry fellow that Zayeshaloff had eulogised him for being. Alexandr gave him full liberty to talk, but for his part was mostly silent.
He already felt that ideas of the world he had abandoned visited him less frequently, moved more slowly through his head, and meeting nothing to reflect them or resist them in his surroundings, did not find utterance and died away without coming to anything. His soul was in as wild and sterile a condition as an overgrown garden. He had still not quite attained the state of complete petrifaction. A few months more, and it would be over! But this is what happened.
One day Alexandr had gone fishing with Kostyakoff. Kostyakoff in a full-skirted overcoat and leather foraging cap, after setting on the bank several hooks of various sizes, with floats and little bells and reels, was smoking a short pipe, and without daring so much as to wink, was keeping guard over the whole battery of hooks, including Adouev's as well, for Alexandr was standing leaning against a tree and gazing in an opposite direction. They stood thus a long while in silence.
'You've got a bite! look, Alexandr Fedoritch,' said Kostyakoff suddenly in a whisper.
Adouev looked at the water, and turned away again.
' No, it's the current makes you think so,' he said.
' Look, look !' cried Kostyakoff; ' it's a bite, upon my soul, it's a bite. Ah, ah ! pull it up, pull it up ! hold it!'
The float did actually plunge under water, and after it the line, and after the line the rod too began to slip from behind the bushes. Alexandr clutched the rod, and then the line.
' Softly, gently there, not so . . . . what are you doing ? ' cried Kostyakoff, laying hold of the line. ' My dear sir, what a weight; don't hold it; let it go, let it go, or it will break. There so, to the right, to the left; here, to the bank. Let it go! further; now draw it up, draw it up, only not all at once; that's the way—so.'
A huge pike appeared above the surface of the water. It twisted quickly with a flash of silver scales, beat its tail to right and to left, and sprinkled them both with drops. Kostyakoff was quite pale with excitement.
' What a pike !' he cried almost in tones of awe, and stretching over the water he fell down stumbling over his hooks, and with both hands tried to capture the pike as it was wriggling back to the water.
' Come to the bank, this way, further! there now, it's ours, and no wriggling back. See, it's as slippery as the devil! Ah, what a pike ! '
' Ah !' some one repeated from behind.
Alexandr turned round. Two paces from them stood an old man, and on his arm a tall pretty young girl, with her head uncovered and a sunshade in her hands. Her brows were slightly knitted. She was bending a little forward and following every movement of Kostyakoff with great interest. She had not even noticed Alexandr.
This unexpected apparition rather disturbed Adouev. He let the rod slip out of his hands, the pike went flop into the water, gracefully shook its tail, and was off into the depths, drawing the line after it. All this took place in a second.
' Alexandr Fedoritch ! what are you doing,' Kostyakoff shouted like a madman, beginning to seize the line. He kept hold of it, but drew out only the end, without the hook and without the pike.
Quite pale, he turned to Alexandr, showed him the end of the line, and looked furiously at him for a minute without speaking, then he spat on the ground.
' I will never go fishing with you again; I'll be damned if I do,' he ejaculated, and turned away to his own hooks.
Meanwhile the young girl had noticed that Alexandr was looking at her; she blushed and was stepping away. The old man, apparently her father, bowed to Adouev. Adouev responded sullenly to his salutation, threw down the hooks and sat down some ten paces away on a bench under a tree.
' Even here there is no peace !' he thought. ' Here is some CEdipus with an Antigone. Woman again ! There's no escaping them anywhere. Good Heavens ! what heaps of them there are everywhere.'
' Call yourself an angler !' said Kostyakoff meanwhile, setting his hooks in order, and looking angrily at Alexandr from time to time; how are you going to catch fish ? You'd better catch mice sitting at home on your sofa ; but come to really catching fish ! How are you going to catch it, now it's slipped out of your hands ; it was almost in your mouth all but cooked. It's a wonder your fish don't slip off your plate.'
' Do you get many bites ? ' asked the old man.
' Well, you see here,' answered Kostyakoff, ' here on my six hooks scarcely a wretched gremille has bitten in mockery; but there meanwhile with his one ordinary line, a pike of ten pounds or so, and then he let it slip. Well, they say the game runs to meet the sportsman. But it's not so; if it had broken away from me, I should have caught it in the water; but there's the pike hiding in the stream while we're asleep—and call himself an angler. What sort of angler's that ? are anglers generally like that ? No, a real angler would have fallen on it like a cannon-ball, he would have stopped to look at it. And that an angler! You'll never catch fish !'
The young girl meanwhile had time to observe that Alexandr was altogether a different kind of person from Kostyakoff. Alexandr's dress was not like KostyakorFs, nor his figure, nor his age, nor his manners, nor anything. She quickly noticed signs of education in him; she read thoughtfulness in his face; even the shade of melancholy did not escape her.
' But why has he run away!' she thought; 'it's a strange thing. I didn't think I was the sort of person to run away from.'
She drew herself up haughtily, and dropped her eyelids, then raising them she gazed with no friendly expression at Alexandr. Already she was offended. She drew her father away, and haughtily came near Adouev. The
