Yes, it is quite true; this is the formula of life, simple and clear. … But why is he so pleased with it? What is there in this to kindle either enthusiasm or indignation? …
The lecture hour passed rapidly and imperceptibly. Towards the end I was suddenly seized with a feeling of intolerable depression and boredom, as though I had penetrated into the most secret essence of life and found therein only filthy and nauseous dregs. I rose and went out. As I closed the door a round of applause rang out in the lecture-hall. I listened to it through the door with surprise and annoyance. The noise of clapping resounding along the corridor frightened the old sub-inspector, who came running with a troubled face. On learning what it was all about he drew a long breath of relief.
“That is all right! That is all right! Heaven be praised! They have just clapped a little; that is much better … They have not hissed.”
I could not get rid of my feeling of amazement. Was it possible that only yesterday, I, too, should have clapped? Yes, I should, and I reflected with a glow of self-satisfaction, that I was now above suchlike frivolities. In there they shift about between enthusiasm and indignation, not knowing that to be impervious alike to enthusiasm and indignation is to understand Truth.
At the door was a two-seated droshky, waiting for a return fare to Moscow. The miserable jades in the shafts stood, with their heads bent and their legs wide apart, as if meditating on their dismal fate. I went down the steps and got into the droshky. Then, suddenly remembering that I did not want to go to Moscow, I got out and walked as usual to a restaurant frequented by the students.
The idea suggested in Byelichka’s lecture seemed to grow wider and wider. “Elementary processes”—this is the final summing up of everything. And everyone has his own fashion of carrying on these processes; Byelichka acts one way, someone else another way, what does it matter?
XIX
At the entrance of the restaurant there stood behind the counter, as usual, a young German girl. She smiled a friendly smile, nodded her pretty almost childlike little head, and handed me my dinner-ticket. I bowed in return, and there must have been something peculiar in my expression, for the Fräulein becoming suddenly confused, dropped her eyes before mine, and all her face, even to the delicate, slightly protruding little ears, flushed scarlet.
A maiden, I thought, with a sort of malevolent flippancy; a specimen of restaurant virginity and German innocence. And, in reality, what is German innocence? It is said that if Shakespeare’s Teutonic ancestors had not gorged themselves with beer and raw beef his types would not have been characterized by such ungovernable passionateness. I wonder what ingredients have developed in the German nation innocence so extremely delicate. After this mental tirade, I went into the dining-room, where the girl’s father, Mr. Schmidt, an exceedingly fat German, with a head that narrowed at the top, and protruding ears like his daughter’s, was helping a student to soup with a majestically patronizing air, as if he were conferring on him a benefit for life.
I knew Mr. Schmidt, and we exchanged civilities every day. A certain strange resemblance between this fat and hideous German and his pretty slim young daughter was a continual source of amusement to me. Today I marked this resemblance even in the smile which stretched his mouth from ear to ear; and I instantly found an appropriate simile; “They are as like as an old toad and a brisk young tadpole.”
“Now ve vill dine mit goot abbedide,” observed Mr. Schmidt, glancing pompously round the room. He repeated this phrase every day, probably in the hope that the example of his appetite, and the sight of his bloated figure would give us a high idea of the quality of his fare.
“Yegor, gif me place by Mr. Gavrilov.”
Yegor laid a cover, served the soup, and uncorked a bottle of beer, whereupon the German set to work on his dinner with the air of a connoisseur and master of his art. In a few minutes there was nothing left on his plate. Mr. Schmidt broke off a piece of bread, and after wiping his greasy lips with it put it into his mouth; this done, he looked at me, winking with an air of cunning triumph, evidently expecting me to admire his wit and grace.
“Vat is ze matter, Mr. Gavrilov?” he asked with sudden severity, “you look at anoder man as he eats, and your soup will be quite colt.” Then, in the manner of a teacher who tempers reprimand with a joke, he added condescendingly, “One must oil ze machine, or it will not go, you know.”
“Yes, Mr. Schmidt, just so; one must oil the machine. Well, we will oil it.”
All this time I had been watching Mr. Schmidt’s proceedings as if it were the first time that I had seen this function performed in real life. I now took several spoonsful of soup, inspecting the spoon every time in a hesitating manner, and thinking how very deftly Mr. Schmidt did the daily oiling of his machine. After swallowing with disgust a little of the half-cold liquid I helplessly put down my spoon.
“Well?” asked Mr. Schmidt encouragingly, at the same time regarding me with sympathetic curiosity.
“I can’t,” I answered quietly, as I rose from the table.
“Ay-a-a-ay! zat means you are ill. Mina! Mr. Gavrilov is ill; fetch me quick von glass of my schnapps and a pinch of pepper; ve vill repair ze machine. …”
But I had already made my escape from Mr. Schmidt, who apparently cherished the fell intention of mending my “machine” as he would have mended his own.
By this time the class had broken up, and I saw the
