If anyone treated him cruelly, it was Maria Vasilievna. What he did
not do for her! He brought her tickets for the theatre, staying at home
himself. He gave her flowers. I heard him begging her to take care of
herself and give up her job. He was no less attentive to her visitors. The
moment anyone came to see her, he would be there on the spot. Very
genial, he would engage the guest in conversation, while Maria
Vasilievna sat on the couch, smoking and brooding.
He was his most amiable when Korablev called. He obviously looked
at Whiskers as his own guest, for he would drag him off at once to his
own room or into the dining-room and not allow him to talk shop.
Generally, everybody brightened up when Korablev came, especially
Maria Vasilievna. Wearing a new dress with a white collar, she would lay
the table herself and do the honours, looking more beautiful than ever.
She would even laugh sometimes when Korablev, after combing his
moustache before the mirror, began paying noisy court to the old lady.
Nikolai Antonich laughed too .and paled. It was an odd trait of his-he
always turned pale when he laughed.
He did not like me. For a long time I never suspected it. At first he
merely showed surprise at seeing me, then he started to make a wry face
and became sort of sniffy. Then he started lecturing:
'Is that the way to say 'thank you'?' He had heard me thank the old
lady for something. 'Do you know what 'thank you' means? Bear in
mind that the course your whole life will take depends upon whether
you know this or not, whether you understand it or not. We live in
human society, and one of the motive forces of that society is the sense
of gratitude. Perhaps you have heard that I once had a cousin.
Repeatedly, throughout his life, I rendered him material as well as
moral assistance. He turned out to be ungrateful. And the result? It
disastrously affected his whole life.'
Listening to him somehow made me aware of the patches on my
trousers. Yes, I wore broken-down boots, I was small, grubby and far
too pale. I was one thing and they, the Tatarinovs, quite another. They
were rich and I was poor. They were clever and learned people, and I
was a fool. Here indeed was something to think about!
I was not the only one to whom Nikolai Antonich held forth about his
cousin. It was his pet subject. He claimed that he had cared for him all
his life, ever since he was a child at Genichesk, on the shores of the Sea
of Azov. His cousin came from a poor fisherman's family, and but for
Nikolai Antonich, would have remained a fisherman, like his father, his
grandfather and seven generations of his forefathers. Nikolai Antonich,
'having noticed in the boy remarkable talents and a penchant for
reading', had taken him to Rostov-on-Don and pulled strings to get his
cousin enrolled in a nautical school. During the winter he paid him a
'monthly allowance', and in the summer he got him a job as seaman in
vessels plying between Batum and Novorossiisk. He was instrumental in
getting his brother a billet in the navy, where he passed his exam as
naval ensign. With great difficulty, Nikolai Antonich got permission for
him to take his exams for a course at Naval College and afterwards
assisted him financially when, on graduation, he had to get himself a
new uniform. In short, he had done a great deal for his cousin, which
explained why he was so fond of talking about him. He spoke slowly,
64
going into great detail, and the women listened to him with something
akin to awed reverence.
I don't know why, but it seemed to me that at those moments they felt
indebted to him, deeply indebted for all that he had done for his cousin.
As a matter of fact they did owe him an unpayable debt, because that
cousin, whom Nikolai Antonich alternately referred to as 'my poor' or
'missing' cousin, was Maria Vasilievna's husband, consequently Katya's
father.
Everything in the flat used to belong to him and now belonged to
Maria Vasilievna and Katya. The pictures, too, for which, according to
the old lady, 'the Tretyakov Gallery was offering big money', and some
'insurance policy' or other for which eight thousand rubles was payable
at a Paris bank.
The one person least interested in all these intricate affairs and
relationships among the grown-ups was Katya. She had more important
things to attend to. She carried on a correspondence with two girl
friends in Ensk, and had a habit of leaving these letters lying about
everywhere, so that anyone who felt like it, even visitors, could read
them. She wrote her friends exactly what they wrote her. One friend,
say, would write that she had dreamt of having lost her handbag, when
all of a sudden Misha Kuptsov— 'you remember me writing about
him'—came towards her with the bag in his hand. And Katya would
reply to her friend that she dreamt she had lost, not a handbag, but a
penholder or a ribbon, and that Shura Golubentsev - 'you remember me
writing about him'-had found it and brought it to her. Her friend would
write that she had been to the cinema, and Katya would reply that so
had she, though in fact she had stayed indoors. Later it occurred to me
that her friends were older than her and she was copying them.
Her classmates, however, she treated rather high-handedly. There
was one little girl by the name of Kiren-at least that was what the
Tatarinovs called her—whom she ordered about more than anybody
else. Katya got cross because Kiren was not fond of reading. 'Have you
read Dubrovsky, Kiren?' 'Yes.' 'Don't tell lies.' 'Spit in my eye.'
'Then why didn't Masha marry Dubrovsky - tell me that.' 'She did.'
'Fiddlesticks!' 'But I read that she did marry him.'
Katya tried the same thing on me when I returned Helen Robinson,
but there was nothing doing. I could go on reciting word for word from
any point. She did not like to show surprise and merely said:
'Learned it off by heart, like a parrot.'
I daresay she considered herself as good as Helen Robinson and was
sure that in a similar desperate plight she would have been just as brave.
If you ask me, though, a person who was preparing herself for such an
extraordinary destiny ought not to have spent so much time in front of
the mirror, especially considering that no mirrors are to be found on
desert islands. And Katya did stand a lot in front of mirrors.
