absent. He was annoyed with himself for having come along and with his friend for growing more talkative and casual every day; he simply could not manage to attune his thoughts to anything serious and lofty.
“The reality Ivan Dmitrich spoke about is getting to me,” he thought, angry at his own pettiness. “However, it’s nonsense … I’ll go home and everything will be as before …”
In Petersburg it was the same: he spent whole days without leaving the hotel room, lay on the sofa, and got up only to have some beer.
Mikhail Averyanych kept urging him to go to Warsaw.
“My dear, why should I go there?” Andrei Yefimych said in an imploring tone. “Go by yourself and let me go home! I beg you!”
“Not for anything!” protested Mikhail Averyanych. “It’s an amazing city. I spent the five happiest years of my life in it.”
Andrei Yefimych did not have enough character to stand up for himself and, sick at heart, went to Warsaw. There he never left the hotel room, lay on the sofa, angry with himself, with his friend, and with the servants who stubbornly refused to understand Russian, while Mikhail Averyanych, hale, hearty, and cheerful as ever, went around the city from morning till evening, looking up his old acquaintances. Several times he stayed away all night. After one such night, spent who knows where, he came home early in the morning, greatly agitated, red-faced, and disheveled. He paced up and down the room for a long time, muttering something to himself, then stopped and said:
“Honor before all!”
After pacing a little more, he clutched his head and said in a tragic voice:
“Yes, honor before all! Cursed be the moment I first thought of coming to this Babylon! My dear,” he turned to the doctor, “despise me: I lost at cards! Give me five hundred roubles!”
Andrei Yefimych counted out five hundred roubles and silently handed them to his friend. The man, still crimson with shame and wrath, uttered some needless oath incoherently, put his cap on his head, and went out. Returning about two hours later, he collapsed into an armchair, sighed loudly, and said:
“My honor is saved! Let’s go, my friend. I don’t want to stay a minute longer in this cursed city. Crooks! Austrian spies!”
When the friends returned to their town, it was already November and the streets were deep in snow. Andrei Yefimych’s post had been taken over by Dr. Khobotov. He was still living in his old apartment, waiting for Andrei Yefimych to come and vacate the hospital apartment. The homely woman whom he called his cook was already living in one of the annexes.
New hospital rumors went around town. It was said that the homely woman had quarreled with the superintendent, and that the man had supposedly crawled on his knees before her, begging forgiveness.
The first day after his arrival, Andrei Yefimych had to find himself an apartment.
“My friend,” the postmaster said to him timidly, “forgive my indiscreet question: what means do you have at your disposal?”
Andrei Yefimych silently counted his money and said:
“Eighty-six roubles.”
“That’s not what I’m asking,” Mikhail Averyanych said in embarrassment, not understanding the doctor. “I’m asking what means you have in general.”
“But I told you: eighty-six roubles … That’s all I have.”
Mikhail Averyanych considered the doctor an honest and noble man, but even so he suspected him of having a capital of some twenty thousand at least. Learning now that Andrei Yefimych was destitute, that he had nothing to live on, he suddenly wept for some reason and embraced his friend.
XV
Andrei Yefimych lived in the little three-windowed house of the tradeswoman Belov. There were only three rooms in this little house, not counting the kitchen. The doctor occupied the two with windows on the street, and in the third and the kitchen lived Daryushka, the tradeswoman, and her three children. Sometimes the landlady’s lover came to spend the night with her, a drunken lout who got violent during the night and terrified the children and Daryushka. When he came, settled himself in the kitchen, and started demanding vodka, everybody felt very crowded, and out of pity the doctor would take the crying children to his rooms and bed them down on the floor, and this gave him great pleasure.
He got up at eight o’clock, as formerly, and after tea sat down to read his old books and magazines. He now had no money for new ones. Either because the books were old, or perhaps because of the change of circumstances, reading wearied him and no longer interested him deeply. So as not to spend his time in idleness, he made a detailed catalogue of his books and glued labels to their spines, and this mechanical, painstaking work seemed to him more interesting than reading. This monotonous, painstaking work lulled his mind in some incomprehensible way, he did not think of anything, and the time passed quickly. He even found it interesting to sit in the kitchen and peel potatoes with Daryushka or sort buckwheat. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church. Standing by the wall, eyes closed, he listened to the singing and thought about his father, his mother, the university, religion; he felt peaceful, sad, and afterwards, leaving the church, was sorry the service had ended so soon.
Twice he went to the hospital to see Ivan Dmitrich and talk with him. But both times Ivan Dmitrich was unusually upset and angry; he begged to be left alone, having long since grown weary of empty chatter, and for all his sufferings he asked only one reward of cursed, mean people—solitary confinement. Was even that to be denied him? Both times, when Andrei Yefimych took leave of him and wished him a good night, he snarled and said:
“Go to the devil!”
And now Andrei Yefimych did not know whether he should go a third time or not. But he wanted to go.
Formerly, in the time after dinner, Andrei Yefimych had paced his rooms and reflected, but now he spent the time between dinner and evening tea lying on the sofa, face to the back, giving himself up to petty thoughts, which he was unable to fight off. He felt offended that for his more than twenty years of service he had been given neither a pension nor a one-time payment. True, he had served dishonestly, but everyone who served got a pension, whether they were honest or not. Contemporary justice consisted in granting rank, decorations, and pensions not to
