possible!’’; or a slow, mournful ringing would resound over our heads, and the painters would remark that it must be some rich man’s burial...
I spent my days in this silence, in this churchly dimness, and during the long evenings played billiards or went to the gallery of the theater in my new tricot suit, which I had bought with the money I earned. At the Azhogins’, theatricals and concerts had already begun; the sets were now painted by Radish alone. He told me the contents of the plays and tableaux vivants he saw at the Azhogins’, and I listened to him with envy. I had a strong yearning to attend the rehearsals, but I couldn’t bring myself to go to the Azhogins’.
A week before Christmas, Dr. Blagovo arrived. Again we argued and in the evenings played billiards. When he played, he took off his frock coat and unbuttoned his shirt on his chest, and generally tried to make himself look like a desperate carouser. He drank little but noisily and, in such a poor, cheap tavern as the Volga, managed to leave twenty roubles an evening.
Again my sister began to frequent me; the two of them, seeing each other, were surprised each time, but from her joyful, guilty face it was evident that these meetings were not accidental. One evening while we were playing billiards, the doctor said to me:
‘‘Listen, why don’t you ever call on Miss Dolzhikov? You don’t know Marya Viktorovna, she’s intelligent, lovely, a simple, kind soul.’’
I told him how the engineer had received me in the spring.
‘‘Trifles!’’ the doctor laughed. ‘‘The engineer’s one thing, and she’s another. Really, dear heart, don’t offend her, go and see her one day. For instance, we could go and see her tomorrow evening. Do you want to?’’
He persuaded me. The next evening, donning my new tricot suit and feeling worried, I went to see Miss Dolzhikov. The footman no longer seemed so arrogant and fearsome, nor the furniture so luxurious, as on that morning when I went there as a petitioner. Marya Viktorovna was expecting me and greeted me like an old acquaintance, and gave my hand a firm, friendly shake. She was wearing a gray flannel dress with full sleeves, and a hairstyle which, when it became fashionable in our town a year later, was known as ‘‘dog’s ears.’’ The hair was combed down from the temples and over the ears, and it made Marya Viktorovna’s face seem broader, and this time she looked to me very much like her father, whose face was broad, ruddy, and had something of the coachman in its expression. She was beautiful and graceful but not young, around thirty by the look of it, though in reality she was no more than twenty-five.
‘‘The dear doctor, how grateful I am to him!’’ she said as she was seating me. ‘‘If it weren’t for him, you wouldn’t have come to see me. I’m bored to death! Father went away and left me alone, and I don’t know what to do in this town.’’
Then she began asking me where I was working now, how much I earned, where I lived.
‘‘You spend on yourself only what you earn?’’ she asked.
‘‘Yes.’’
‘‘Lucky man!’’ she sighed. ‘‘All the evil in life, it seems to me, comes from idleness, from boredom, from inner emptiness, and that is all inevitable when one is used to living at the expense of others. Don’t think I’m showing off, I tell you sincerely: it’s uninteresting and unpleasant to be rich. Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness 11—so it says, because generally there is not and cannot be a mammon of righteousness.’’
She looked the furniture over with a serious, cold expression, as if she was taking an inventory, and went on:
‘‘Comfort and conveniences possess a magic power; they gradually suck in even strong-willed people. My father and I once lived moderately and simply, but now you see how. Who ever heard of it,’’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘‘we go through twenty thousand a year! In the provinces!’’
‘‘Comfort and conveniences are to be regarded as the inevitable privilege of capital and education,’’ I said, ‘‘and it seems to me that life’s conveniences can be combined with any sort of labor, even the heaviest and dirtiest. Your father is rich, yet, as he says, he had to work as an engine driver and a simple oiler.’’
She smiled and shook her head doubtfully.
‘‘Papa sometimes eats bread soaked in kvass,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s a whim, for fun!’’
Just then the bell rang, and she got up.
‘‘The educated and the rich should work like everyone else,’’ she went on, ‘‘and if there’s comfort, it should be the same for everyone. There should be no privileges. Well, God help philosophy! Tell me something merry. Tell me about housepainters. What are they like? Funny?’’
The doctor came in. I began telling about housepainters but was abashed, being unaccustomed, and spoke like an ethnographer, gravely and ploddingly. The doctor also told a few anecdotes from the workmanly life. He staggered, wept, fell on his knees, and, in portraying a drunkard, even lay on the floor. It was a real actor’s performance, and Marya Viktorovna, as she watched him, laughed to the point of tears. Then he played the piano and sang in his pleasant, thin tenor, and Marya Viktorovna stood beside him, choosing what he should sing and correcting him when he made mistakes.
‘‘I hear that you also sing?’’ I asked.
‘‘Also!’’ The doctor was horrified. ‘‘She’s a wonderful singer, an artist, and you say ‘also’! That’s a bit much!’’
‘‘I once studied seriously,’’ she said in answer to my question, ‘‘but now I’ve dropped it.’’
Sitting on a low stool, she told us about her life in Petersburg and impersonated well-known singers, mimicking their voices and manners of singing; she drew the doctor in her album, then me; she drew badly, but we both came out looking like ourselves. She laughed, was mischievous, grimaced sweetly, and this suited her more than talking about the mammon of unrighteousness, and it seemed to me that what she had said to me earlier about riches and comfort wasn’t serious but was an imitation of someone. She was a superb comic actress. I mentally placed her beside our young ladies, and even the beautiful, grave Anyuta Blagovo could not bear comparison with her; the difference was enormous, as between a fine cultivated rose and a wild brier.
The three of us had dinner. The doctor and Marya Viktorovna drank red wine, champagne, and coffee with cognac; they clinked glasses and toasted friendship, reason, progress, freedom, and they didn’t get drunk, but only turned red and often laughed loudly for no reason, to the point of tears. So as not to seem dull, I also drank red wine.
