moral qualities or abilities but to service in general, however it was performed. Why should he be the only exception? He had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass the grocery shop and look at the shopkeeper. He had already run up a bill of thirty-two roubles for beer. He also owed money to the tradeswoman Belov. Daryushka sold old clothes and books on the sly and lied to the landlady that the doctor was soon to receive a very large sum of money.
He was angry with himself for having spent the thousand roubles he had saved on a trip. How useful that thousand would have been to him now! He was vexed that people would not leave him alone. Khobotov considered it his duty to visit his sick colleague occasionally. Everything about him disgusted Andrei Yefimych: his well-fed face, and his bad, condescending tone, and the word “colleague,” and his high boots; most disgusting was that he considered it his duty to treat Andrei Yefimych and thought that he was indeed treating him. On each of his visits he brought a bottle of potassium bromide and rhubarb pills.
Mikhail Averyanych also considered it his duty to visit his friend and divert him. He always entered Andrei Yefimych’s with affected nonchalance and a forced guffaw and began assuring him that he looked very well today and, thank God, things were improving, from which it could be concluded that he considered his friend’s condition hopeless. He had not yet paid back his Warsaw debt and was weighed down by heavy shame, felt tense, and therefore tried to guffaw more loudly and talk more amusingly. His jokes and stories now seemed endless and were a torment both to Andrei Yefimych and for himself.
In his presence Andrei Yefimych usually lay on the sofa with his face to the wall and listened with clenched teeth; layers of scum settled on his soul, and after each visit from his friend he felt this scum rising higher, as if reaching to his throat.
To stifle his petty feelings, he hastened to reflect that he himself, and Khobotov, and Mikhail Averyanych, must die sooner or later, without leaving even a trace on nature. If one should imagine some spirit, a million years from now, flying through space past the earth, that spirit would see only clay and bare cliffs. Everything—including culture and moral law—would have perished, and no burdock would even be growing.17 What, then, was this shame before the shopkeeper, the worthless Khobotov, the painful friendship of Mikhail Averyanych? It was all nonsense and trifles.
But such reasoning no longer helped. As soon as he imagined the earth a million years from now, Khobotov appeared in high boots from behind a bare cliff, or else the forcedly laughing Mikhail Averyanych, and he even heard his shamefaced whisper: “I’ll pay back the Warsaw debt one of these days, my dear … Without fail.”
XVI
Once Mikhail Averyanych came after dinner, when Andrei Yefimych was lying on the sofa. It so happened that Khobotov also arrived at the same time with the potassium bromide. Andrei Yefimych got up heavily, sat on the sofa, and propped himself with both hands.
“And today, my dear,” Mikhail Averyanych began, “your color has much improved over yesterday. Well done, by God! Well done!”
“It’s high time, high time you got better, colleague,” Khobotov said, yawning. “You must be tired of this flim- flam yourself.”
“We’ll get better,” Mikhail Averyanych said cheerfully. “We’ll live another hundred years! Yes, sir!”
“Hundred or no hundred, there’s enough in him for twenty,” Khobotov reassured. “Never mind, never mind, colleague, don’t be so glum … Stop blowing smoke.”
“We’ll still show ourselves!” Mikhail Averyanych guffawed and patted his friend’s knee. “We’ll show ourselves! Next summer, God willing, we’ll take a swing through the Caucasus and cover it all on horseback—hup! hup! hup! And when we come back from the Caucasus, for all I know, we’ll dance at a wedding.” Mikhail Averyanych winked slyly. “We’ll get you married, dear friend … married …”
Andrei Yefimych suddenly felt the scum rise to his throat; his heart was pounding terribly.
“This is all so banal!” he said, getting up quickly and going to the window. “Don’t you understand that you’re speaking in banalities?”
He wanted to go on gently and politely, but against his will suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted in a voice not his own, turning purple and trembling all over. “Get out! Get out, both of you!”
Mikhail Averyanych and Khobotov stood up and stared at him first in bewilderment, then in fear.
“Get out, both of you!” Andrei Yefimych went on shouting. “Obtuse people! Stupid people! I need neither your friendship nor your medicine, obtuse man! Banality! Filth!”
Khobotov and Mikhail Averyanych, exchanging perplexed looks, backed their way to the door and went out into the front hall. Andrei Yefimych seized the bottle of potassium bromide and hurled it after them; the bottle smashed jingling on the threshold.
“Go to the devil!” he shouted in a tearful voice, running out to the front hall. “To the devil!”
After his visitors left, Andrei Yefimych, trembling as in a fever, lay down on the sofa and for a long time went on repeating:
“Obtuse people! Stupid people!”
When he calmed down, it occurred to him first of all that poor Mikhail Averyanych must now be terribly ashamed and dispirited and that all this was terrible. Nothing like it had ever happened before. Where were his intelligence and tact? Where were his comprehension of things and his philosophical indifference?
The doctor was unable to sleep all night from shame and vexation with himself, and in the morning, around ten o’clock, he went to the post office and apologized to the postmaster.
“We’ll forget what happened,” the moved Mikhail Averyanych said with a sigh, firmly pressing his hand. “Let bygones be bygones. Lyubavkin!” he suddenly shouted so loudly that all the postal clerks and clients jumped. “Fetch a chair! And you wait!” he shouted at a peasant woman who was passing him a certified letter through the grille. “Can’t you see I’m busy? We’ll forget the bygones,” he went on tenderly, addressing Andrei Yefimych. “Sit down, my dear, I humbly beg you.”
He patted his knees in silence for a moment and then said:
“It never occurred to me to be offended with you. Illness is nobody’s friend, I realize. Your fit yesterday
