Meanwhile, downstairs Alexei Fyodorych was teaching Sasha and Lida their catechism. They had been living in Moscow for a month and a half, on the ground floor of the wing, with their governess. Three times a week, a teacher from the city school and a priest came. Sasha was studying the New Testament, and Lida had recently started the Old. Lida’s homework from the last time was to repeat everything before Abraham.
‘‘And so, Adam and Eve had two sons,’’ said Laptev. ‘‘Splendid. But what were their names? Try to remember!’’
Lida, stern as ever, said nothing, stared at the table, and only moved her lips; and the older Sasha looked into her face and suffered.
‘‘You know perfectly well, only don’t be nervous,’’ said Laptev. ‘‘Well, what were the names of Adam’s sons?’’
‘‘Abel and Cabel,’’ Lida whispered.
‘‘Cain and Abel,’’ Laptev corrected.
A big tear crept down Lida’s cheek and fell onto the book. Sasha also lowered her eyes and blushed, ready to weep. Laptev could not speak from pity, a lump rose in his throat; he got up from the table and lit a cigarette. Just then Kochevoy came downstairs with a newspaper in his hand. The girls stood up and curtseyed without looking at him.
‘‘For God’s sake, Kostya, work with them a little,’’ Laptev turned to him. ‘‘I’m afraid I’ll start crying myself, and I have to get to the warehouse before dinner.’’
‘‘All right.’’
Alexei Fyodorych left. Kostya, with a very serious face, frowning, sat down at the table and drew the Catechism towards him.
‘‘Well, missies?’’ he asked. ‘‘How far did you get?’’
‘‘She knows about the flood,’’ said Sasha.
‘‘About the flood? All right, let’s whiz through the flood. Go ahead.’’ Kostya skimmed through the brief description of the flood in the book and said: ‘‘I must point out to you that such a flood as they describe here never actually happened. And there wasn’t any Noah. Several thousand years before the birth of Christ, there was an unusual flood on earth, and it’s mentioned not only in the Jewish Bible but in the books of other ancient people as well, such as the Greeks, the Chaldeans, the Hindus. But whatever this flood was, it couldn’t have covered the whole earth. Well, the plains were flooded, but not the mountains. You can go ahead and read this book, but don’t believe it especially.’’
Lida’s tears flowed again; she turned away and suddenly sobbed so loudly that Kostya gave a start and got up from his place in great confusion.
‘‘I want to go home,’’ she said. ‘‘To papa and nanny.’’
Sasha also began to cry. Kostya went upstairs to his rooms and said to Yulia Sergeevna on the telephone:
‘‘Dearest, the girls are crying again. It’s simply impossible.’’
Yulia Sergeevna came running from the big house in nothing but a dress and a knitted shawl, chilled through, and began comforting the girls.
‘‘Believe me, believe me,’’ she said in a pleading voice, pressing one of the girls to her, then the other, ‘‘your papa will come today, he sent a telegram. You’re sorry for your mama, and I’m sorry for her, too, it breaks my heart, but what’s to be done? We can’t go against God!’’
When they stopped crying, she wrapped them up and took them for a drive. First they went down Malaya Dmitrovka, then past Strastnoy Boulevard to Tverskaya; they stopped at the Iverskaya Chapel,16 lit candles, knelt down, and prayed. On the way back, they stopped at Filippov’s and bought some lenten rolls with poppyseed.
The Laptevs dined between two and three. Pyotr served the courses. During the day this Pyotr ran to the post office, to the warehouse, to the district court for Kostya, served; in the evenings he rolled cigarettes, during the night he ran to open the door, and by five o’clock in the morning was already stoking the stoves, and nobody knew when he slept. He very much enjoyed uncorking seltzer water, and did it easily, noiselessly, without spilling a drop.
‘‘God bless!’’ said Kostya, drinking a glass of vodka before dinner.
At first Yulia Sergeevna did not like Kostya; his bass voice, his little phrases like ‘‘stood me a bottle,’’ ‘‘socked him in the mug,’’ ‘‘scum,’’ ‘‘portray us the samovar,’’ his habit of clinking and mumbling over the glass seemed trivial to her. But when she got to know him better, she began to feel very easy in his presence. He was frank with her, in the evenings he liked to discuss things with her in a low voice, and he even let her read the novels he wrote, something that so far was a secret even from such friends as Laptev and Yartsev. She read these novels and praised them, so as not to upset him, and he was glad, because he hoped to become a famous writer sooner or later. In his novels he described only the country and landowners’ estates, though he had seen the country very rarely, only when visiting his acquaintances in their dachas, and had been on a landowner’s estate once in his life, when he went to Volokolamsk on a lawsuit. He avoided the amorous element, as if he was ashamed of it, he frequently described nature, and in his descriptions liked to use such expressions as ‘‘the whimsical contours of the mountains,’’ ‘‘the fantastic shapes of the clouds,’’ or ‘‘the accord of mysterious harmonies’...His novels were never published, and he explained that by the conditions of censorship.
He liked his activity as a lawyer, but even so, he considered these novels and not the legal profession his chief occupation. It seemed to him that he had a subtle, artistic constitution, and he had always been drawn to the arts. He did not sing or play any instrument himself, and was totally without a musical ear, but he attended all the symphonic and philharmonic gatherings, organized concerts for charitable purposes, met with singers...
During dinner they talked.
‘‘An amazing thing,’’ said Laptev, ‘‘again my Fyodor has nonplussed me! He says we must find out when is the hundredth anniversary of our firm, so as to petition for nobility, and he says it in the most serious way. What’s happened to him? Frankly speaking, I’m beginning to worry.’’
They talked about Fyodor, about the fact that it was now the fashion to affect something or other. Fyodor, for instance, tried to look like a simple merchant, though he was no longer a merchant, and when a teacher from the
