“Yesterday, in the Arcadia, if you recall, Yr’xcellency,” the office manager began, “I sneezed, sir, and … accidentally sprayed you … Forg …”
“Such trifles … God knows! Can I be of help to you?” the general addressed the next petitioner.
“He doesn’t want to talk!” thought Cherviakov, turning pale. “That means he’s angry … No, it can’t be left like this … I’ll explain to him …”
When the general finished his discussion with the last petitioner and headed for the inner rooms, Cherviakov followed him and murmured:
“Yr’xcellency! If I venture to trouble Yr’xcellency, it’s precisely, I might say, from a feeling of repentance! … It wasn’t on purpose, you know that yourself, sir!”
The general made a tearful face and waved his hand.
“You must be joking, my dear sir!” he said, disappearing behind the door.
“What kind of joke is it?” thought Cherviakov. “This is no kind of joke at all! A general, yet he can’t understand! If that’s the way it is, I won’t apologize to the swaggerer any more! Devil take him! I’ll write him a letter, but I won’t come myself! By God, I won’t!”
So Cherviakov thought, walking home. He wrote no letter to the general. He thought and thought, and simply could not think up that letter. So the next day he had to go himself and explain.
“I came yesterday to trouble Yr’xcellency,” he began to murmur, when the general raised his questioning eyes to him, “not for a joke, as you were pleased to say. I was apologizing for having sneezed and sprayed you, sir … and I never even thought of joking. Would I dare joke with you? If we start joking, soon there won’t be any respect for persons … left…”
“Get out!!” barked the general, suddenly turning blue and shaking.
“What, sir?” Cherviakov asked in a whisper, sinking with terror.
“Get out!!” the general repeated, stamping his feet.
Something in Cherviakov’s stomach snapped. Seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he backed his way to the door, went out, and plodded off… Reaching home mechanically, without taking off his uniform, he lay down on the sofa and … died.
JULY 1883
SMALL FRY
Dear sir, father and benefactor!” the clerk Nevyrazimov1 wrote in the draft of a letter of congratulations. “May you spend this bright day,2 and many more to come, in good health and prosperity And may your fam …”
The lamp, which was running out of kerosene, smoked and stank of burning. On the table, near Nevyrazimov’s writing hand, a stray cockroach was anxiously running about. Two rooms away from the duty-room, the hall porter Paramon was polishing his Sunday boots for the third time, and with such energy that his spitting and the noise of the shoe brush could be heard in all the rooms.
“What else shall I write to the scoundrel?” Nevyrazimov reflected, raising his eyes to the sooty ceiling.
On the ceiling he saw a dark circle—the shadow of the lampshade. Further down were dusty cornices; still further down—walls that had once been painted a bluish-brown color. And the duty-room looked like such a wasteland to him that he felt pity not only for himself but even for the cockroach …
“I’ll finish my duty and leave, but he’ll spend his whole cockroach life on duty here,” he thought, stretching. “Agony! Shall I polish my boots, or what?”
And, stretching once more, Nevyrazimov trudged lazily to the porter’s lodge. Paramon was no longer polishing his boots … Holding the brush in one hand and crossing himself with the other, he was standing by the open vent window,3 listening …
“They’re ringing!” he whispered to Nevyrazimov, looking at him with fixed, wide-open eyes. “Already, sir!”
Nevyrazimov put his ear to the vent and listened. Through the vent, together with the fresh spring air, the ringing of the Easter bells came bursting into the room. The booming of the bells mingled with the noise of carriages, and all that stood out from the chaos of sounds was a pert tenor ringing in the nearest church and someone’s loud, shrill laughter.
“So many people!” sighed Nevyrazimov, looking down the street, where human shadows flitted one after another past the lighted lamps. “Everybody’s running to church … Our fellows must’ve had a drink by now and be hanging around the city. All that laughter and talking! I’m the only one so wretched as to have to sit here on such a day. And every year I have to do it!”
“Who tells you to get yourself hired? You weren’t on duty today, it was Zastupov hired you to replace him. Whenever there’s a holiday, you get yourself hired … It’s greed!”
“The devil it’s greed! What’s there to be greedy about: two roubles in cash, plus a necktie … It’s need, not greed! And, you know, it would be nice to go with them all to church now, and then break the fast4… Have a drink, a bite to eat, then hit the sack … You sit at the table, the kulich5 has been blessed, and there’s a hissing samovar, and some little object beside you … You drink a glass, chuck her under the chin, and it feels good … you feel you’re a human being … Ehh … life’s gone to hell! There’s some rogue driving by in a carriage, and you just sit here thinking your thoughts …”
“To each his own, Ivan Danilych. God willing, you’ll get promoted, too, and drive around in carriages.”
“Me? No, brother, that I won’t. I’ll never get beyond titular councillor,6 even if I burst… I’m uneducated.”
“Our general hasn’t got any education either, and yet …”
“Well, the general, before he amounted to all that, stole a hundred thousand. And his bearing is nothing like
