‘‘The psychological consequences of the age.’’
The chief trading operations were carried out in the city market, in premises known as the warehouse. The entrance to the warehouse was from the yard, where it was always dark, there was a smell of bast, and the hooves of dray horses clattered on the asphalt. An iron-bound door, very modest to look at, led from the yard into a room gone brown from dampness, the walls written all over with charcoal, and lighted by a narrow window with iron bars; then, on the left, to another room, slightly larger and cleaner, with a cast-iron stove and two tables, but also with a jailhouse window: this was the office, and from here a narrow stone stairway led to the second story, where the main premises were located. This was a rather large room, but owing to the perpetual darkness, the low ceiling, and the crowding of boxes, bundles, and scurrying people, it made as ill-favored an impression on a fresh person as the two below. Upstairs as well as in the office, goods lay on the shelves in heaps, stacks, and cardboard boxes, no order or beauty could be seen in the way it was organized, and if it had not been for a crimson thread, or a tassel, or a tail of fringe peeking through a hole in the paper wrapping here and there, it would have been impossible to guess at once what they traded in. And, from a glance at these crumpled paper packages and boxes, it was hard to believe that millions were made from such trifles, and that here in the warehouse, fifty people were occupied with business every day, not counting the customers.
When, at noon on the day after his arrival in Moscow, Laptev went to the warehouse, the workers, packing goods, were hammering so loudly on the crates that no one in the front room or the office heard him come in; the familiar postman came down the stairs with a packet of letters in his hand, wincing from the noise, and also did not notice him. The first to meet him upstairs was his brother, Fyodor Fyodorych, who looked so much like him that they were considered twins. This resemblance constantly reminded Laptev of his own appearance, and now, seeing before him a man of small stature, with red cheeks, thinning hair, narrow, underbred hips, looking so uninteresting and unintellectual, he asked himself: ‘‘Can I be like that?’’
‘‘I’m so glad to see you!’’ said Fyodor, kissing his brother and firmly shaking his hand. ‘‘I’ve been waiting impatiently for you every day, my dear. As soon as you wrote that you were getting married, I began to be tortured by curiosity, and I missed you as well, brother. Consider for yourself, it’s half a year since we’ve seen each other. Well, so? How are things? Nina’s bad? Very?’’
‘‘Very bad.’’
‘‘It’s God’s will,’’ sighed Fyodor. ‘‘Well, and your wife? A beauty, no doubt? I already love her, she’s my little sister. We’ll pamper her together.’’
Laptev glimpsed the broad, stooping back of his father, Fyodor Stepanych, a sight long familiar to him. The old man was sitting at the counter on a stool, talking to a customer.
‘‘Papa, God has sent us joy!’’ cried Fyodor. ‘‘Brother has come!’’
Fyodor Stepanych was tall and of an extremely sturdy build, so that, despite his eighty years and wrinkles, he still had the look of a hale, strong man. He spoke in a heavy, dense, booming bass, which issued from his broad chest as from a barrel. He shaved his beard, wore a clipped military mustache, and smoked cigars. Since he always felt hot, he wore a roomy canvas jacket at all times of the year, in the warehouse and at home. He had recently had a cataract removed, did not see well, and no longer occupied himself with business but only talked and drank tea with jam.
Laptev bent down and kissed him on the hand, then on the lips.
‘‘We haven’t seen each other for a long time, my dear sir,’’ said the old man. ‘‘A long time. So, then, congratulations on a lawful marriage are in order? Well, so be it, my congratulations.’’
And he offered his lips for a kiss. Laptev bent down and kissed him.
‘‘So, then, you’ve brought your young lady?’’ asked the old man and, without waiting for an answer, said, turning to a customer: ‘‘I hereby inform you, papa, that I am marrying such and such a girl. But as for asking the father’s blessing or advice, that’s no longer the rule. They keep their own counsel now. When I got married, I was over forty, but I lay at my father’s feet and asked for advice. Nowadays it’s no longer done.’’
The old man was glad to see his son but considered it improper to be affectionate with him and in any way show his joy. His voice, his manner of speaking, and the ‘‘young lady’’ cast over Laptev that bad mood he experienced each time in the warehouse. Here every trifle reminded him of the past, when he was whipped and kept on lenten fare; he knew that now, too, boys were whipped and given bloody noses, and that when they grew up, they themselves would do the beating. And it was enough to spend five minutes in the warehouse for him to begin to fancy that he was about to be yelled at or punched in the nose.
Fyodor patted the customer on the shoulder and said to his brother:
‘‘Here, Alyosha, I’d like to introduce you to our Tambov benefactor, Grigory Timofeich. He can serve as an example to contemporary youth: he’s past fifty, yet he has nursing babies.’’
The salesclerks laughed, and the customer, a skinny old man with a pale face, also laughed.
‘‘Nature exceeding its usual activity,’’ observed the senior salesclerk, who was standing behind the counter. ‘‘Where it goes in is where it comes out.’’
The senior salesclerk, a tall man of about fifty, with a dark beard, spectacles, and a pencil behind his ear, usually expressed his thoughts vaguely, in remote hints, and accompanied his words with a sly smile, showing that he had put some especially subtle meaning into them. He liked to obscure his speech with bookish words, which he understood in his own way, and there were many ordinary words that he often employed in a sense other than the one they had. For instance, the word ‘‘except.’’ Whenever he expressed some thought categorically and did not want to be contradicted, he would extend his right arm and pronounce:
‘‘Except!’’
And most surprising of all was that the other salesclerks and the customers understood him perfectly well. His name was Ivan Vassilyich Pochatkin, and he was from Kashira. Now, congratulating Laptev, he expressed himself thus:
‘‘On your side the merit of courage, for a woman’s heart is Shamil.’’ 7
Another important person in the warehouse was the salesclerk Makeichev, a stout, staid blond man with side- whiskers and a completely bald pate. He came up to Laptev and congratulated him respectfully, in a low voice:
‘‘My respects, sir... The Lord has heard the prayers of your parent, sir. Thank God, sir.’’
Then the other salesclerks began to come up to him and congratulate him on his lawful marriage. They were all fashionably dressed and had the look of quite respectable, well-bred people. They stressed their O’s, pronounced their Gh’s like the hard Latin G, and because their every third word was sir, their congratulations, pronounced in a
