She did not add to her thoughts the epilogue, “it does not interest me,” because it did not occur to her to ask herself whether she would be interested in him or not. Why should she be, when Feódor told her so much about him that she was weary of hearing? “He is kind, sister, but he is not sociable. And I told him, sister, that you were a beauty, and, sister, he said, ‘What of that?’ And I told him, sister, ‘that everybody falls in love with pretty girls’; and he said, ‘All stupid people fall in love’; and I said ‘Don’t you like them?’ and he said, ‘I have no time.’ And, sister, I said to him, ‘Don’t you want to get acquainted with Viérotchka?’ and he said, ‘I have a good many acquaintances beside her.’ ”
All this Feódor rattled off immediately after the first lesson, and afterwards he kept saying much the same thing with various additions: “And I told him today, sister, that ‘everybody looks at you whenever you go anywhere,’ and, sister, he said, ‘Well, that’s good’; and I said to him, ‘Don’t you want to see her?’ and he said, ‘I shall have time enough to see her.’ ” And then again: “I told him, sister, ‘what little hands you had,’ and, sister, he said, ‘You want to chatter; haven’t you got anything better to chatter about?’ ”
And the tutor learned from Feódor everything that was worth knowing about his sister; he tried to stop Feódor’s chattering about family affairs, but how can you stop a nine-year-old child from chattering to you about everything unless you threaten him? After he has said five words you succeed in stopping him, but then it is too late; because children begin without any preface, getting the very essence of the thing; and among all sorts of disclosures relating to his family affairs the tutor heard such disjointed sentences as these: “My sister is going to marry a rich man”; “and mámenka says that the bridegroom is a stupid”; “and how mámenka flatters him”; “and mámenka says, ‘sister caught him cute’ ”; “and mámenka says, ‘I am cute, but Viérotchka is cuter’ ”; “and mámenka says, ‘we are going to fire the bridegroom’s mother out of the house’ ”; and so forth.
Naturally, when the young people got such ideas of each other, they had no great desire to become acquainted. However, so far, we know only this much: that it was natural on Viérotchka’s part; she had not reached that stage of development that she had any desire of “defeating savages,” or of “taming such a bear”; nay, she was still far from it; she was glad that she was left in peace; she was like a crushed and tortured man, who has the good fortune to fall in such a way that the broken arm is undisturbed and the pain in the side is not felt, and who fears to move lest the pain in all his joints should return. Why should she care to form new acquaintances, and especially with young men?
Yes, such is Viérotchka. Nu! but he? He is like a savage, to judge him by Feódor’s description, and his head is full of books and anatomical preparations, such as fill the soul of a medical student with the keenest delight and furnish him the richest pabulum. Or perhaps Feódor misrepresented him?
II
No, Feódor did not misrepresent him; Lopukhóf was in fact a student whose head was full of books—what books we shall learn from Marya Alekséyevna’s bibliographical investigations—and with anatomical preparations; for unless a man fills his head with anatomical preparations, he cannot become a professor, and that was Lopukhóf’s ambition. But, as we see, if we depend upon Feódor’s descriptions of Viérotchka made for Lopukhóf’s benefit, Lopukhóf did not learn very accurately about her, and for the same reason we must correct Feódor’s description of his teacher if we would know Lopukhóf better.
As regarded pecuniary matters Lopukhóf belonged to that very small minority of special medical students who are not supported by government, and yet who just escape starvation and freezing.11 How and in what way the great majority of them live is known, of course, only to God, not to mortals. But our story does not intend to deal with people who are in need of victuals, and therefore it will devote only two or three words to the period in Lopukhóf’s life when he suffered such hardships.
And it was not very long that he was in such a condition—only three years, and even less. Before he entered the medical school he had plenty of food. His father, a meshchanín (commoner) of the town of Riazan, lived in the style of the meshchanín, comfortably; that is, his family had shchi (cabbage soup) and meat not on Sundays only, and even had tea every day. He was able to keep his son at the gymnasium after a fashion; but, after his son reached the age of fifteen, he made it easier for him by doing some teaching. The father’s means were not sufficient for the support of his son in Petersburg; however, during the first two years Lopukhóf received from home the sum of thirty-five rubles a year, and he obtained almost as much more by copying papers as unattached clerk in one of the districts of the Vuiborgsky ward. It was only during this time that he was hard up; and that was his own fault. He was accepted as a governmental scholar, but he managed to quarrel with someone and was compelled to take to his own fodder. When he was in the third class, his affairs began to improve; the assistant district supervisor engaged him as a private tutor; then he found other pupils, and now for two years he has not been in need; for a year and
