before morning, and to while away the time till nine o’clock, I went with him. We walked with a lantern, and his boy, Nikolka, about thirteen years old, with blue spots on his face from the cold and the look of a perfect robber, drove after us with the sledge, urging the horse on in a husky voice.
‘‘Must be they’re going to punish you at the governor’s,’’ Prokofy said to me on the way. ‘‘There’s governor’s learning, there’s archimandrite’s learning, there’s officer’s learning, there’s doctor’s learning, for every title there’s its learning. But you don’t keep to your learning, and you shouldn’t be allowed.’’
The slaughterhouse was beyond the cemetery, and I had previously seen it only from a distance. It was three dismal sheds surrounded by a gray fence, and on hot summer days, when the wind blew from that direction, it gave off a choking stench. Now, going into the yard, I couldn’t see the sheds in the darkness, I kept running into horses and sledges, empty or already loaded with meat; people with lanterns walked about cursing repulsively. Prokofy and Nikolka cursed as vilely, and a constant noise of cursing, coughing, and the whinnying of horses hung in the air.
It smelled of corpses and dung. The melting snow was mixed with mud, and it seemed to me in the darkness that I was walking on pools of blood.
Having filled the sledges with meat, we went to the butcher shop at the market. Dawn was breaking. Cooks with baskets and elderly ladies in overcoats walked by one after the other. Prokofy, with a meat axe in his hand, in a blood-spattered white apron, swore terribly, crossed himself towards the church, shouted loudly enough for the whole marketplace to hear, claiming that he was giving the meat away at cost and was even losing on it. He short-weighed, short-changed, the cooks saw it, but, deafened by his shouting, did not protest but only called him a hangman. As he raised and lowered his terrible meat axe, he assumed picturesque poses and, with a ferocious look, emitted a loud ‘‘Hack!’’ each time, and I was afraid he would indeed cut off somebody’s head or arm.
I stayed in the butcher shop all morning, and when I finally went to the governor’s, my coat smelled of meat and blood. I was in such a mental state as if, on somebody’s orders, I was going for bear with a spear. I remember a high stairway with a striped runner, and a young official in a tailcoat with bright buttons, who silently pointed me to the door with both hands and ran to announce me. I entered a reception hall in which the furnishings were luxurious but cold and tasteless, and the tall, narrow mirrors between the windows and the bright yellow curtains struck the eye especially unpleasantly; one could see that the governors changed but the furnishings remained the same. The young official again pointed me to the door with both hands, and I went to a big green desk behind which stood an army general with a Vladimir on his neck.15
‘‘Mr. Poloznev, I have asked you to appear,’’ he began, holding some letter in his hand and opening his mouth round and wide like an O, ‘‘I have asked you to appear in order to announce to you the following. Your esteemed father has addressed the provincial marshal of the nobility in writing and verbally, asking him to summon you and bring to your attention all the incompatibility of your behavior with the rank of a nobleman, which you have the honor of bearing. His Excellency Alexander Pavlovich, correctly supposing that your behavior may be a temptation, and finding that on his part, persuasion alone would be insufficient here, and that serious administrative intervention was necessary, has presented me in this letter with his considerations concerning you, which I share.’’
He said this quietly, respectfully, standing at attention as if I was his superior, and looking at me without any severity. His face was flabby, worn, all wrinkled, there were bags hanging under his eyes, his hair was dyed, and generally it was impossible to tell by his appearance how old he was— forty or sixty.
‘‘I hope,’’ he went on, ‘‘that you will appreciate the delicacy of the esteemed Alexander Pavlovich, who has addressed me not officially but in a private manner. I have also summoned you unofficially, and I am speaking to you not as a governor but as a sincere admirer of your parent. And so I ask you either to change your behavior and return to the duties proper to your rank, or, to avoid temptation, to relocate in another place, where people do not know you and where you can occupy yourself with whatever you like. Otherwise I shall have to take extreme measures.’’
He stood silently for about half a minute, with his mouth open, looking at me.
‘‘Are you a vegetarian?’’ he asked.
‘‘No, Your Excellency, I eat meat.’’
He sat down and drew some paper towards him; I bowed and left.
It wasn’t worth going to work before dinner. I went home to sleep, but could not fall asleep because of the unpleasant, morbid feeling brought upon me by the slaughterhouse and the talk with the governor, and, waiting till evening, upset, gloomy, I went to see Marya Viktorovna. I told her about my visit to the governor, and she looked at me in perplexity, as if she didn’t believe me, and suddenly laughed merrily, loudly, impetuously, as only good- natured, easily amused people know how to laugh.
‘‘If I were to tell that in Petersburg!’’ she said, nearly dropping with laughter and leaning on her desk. ‘‘If I were to tell that in Petersburg!’’
IX
WE NOW SAW each other often, about twice a day. Almost every day after dinner she came to the cemetery and, while waiting for me, read the inscriptions on the crosses and tombstones; sometimes she went into the church and, standing beside me, watched me work. The silence, the naive work of the artists and gilders, Radish’s reasonings, and the fact that externally I was no different from the other craftsmen and worked, like them, only in a vest and old shoes, and that they addressed me familiarly—all this was new to her and moved her. Once, in her presence, the artist who was painting the dove up top shouted to me:
‘‘Misail, bring me some whiting!’’
I fetched him some whiting, and as I came down the flimsy scaffolding afterwards, she watched me, moved to tears and smiling.
‘‘How nice you are!’’ she said.
The memory had stayed with me since childhood of how a green parrot belonging to one of our wealthy people escaped its cage, and how after that the beautiful bird wandered about town for a whole month, lazily flying from one garden to another, lonely, shelterless. And Marya Viktorovna reminded me of that bird.
‘‘I now have positively nowhere to go except the cemetery,’’ she said to me, laughing. ‘‘This town bores me to the point of loathing. At the Azhogins’ they read, sing, lisp, I can’t bear them lately; your sister is unsociable, Mlle. Blagovo hates me for some reason, I don’t like the theater. What do you suggest I do?’’
When I called on her, I smelled of paint and turpentine, my hands were dark—and she liked that; she also wanted me to come to her not otherwise than in my ordinary working clothes; but those clothes hampered me in the drawing room, I was embarrassed, as if I was wearing a uniform, and therefore, when I went to her, I always put on my new tricot suit. And she didn’t like it.
