Dr. Sergei Borisych was at home; stout, red-faced, in a long frock coat below his knees, which made him seem short-legged, he paced up and down his study, his hands in his pockets, and hummed in a low voice: ‘‘Roo-roo- rooroo.’’ His gray side-whiskers were disheveled, his hair uncombed, as if he had just gotten out of bed. And his study, with pillows on the sofas, heaps of old papers in the corners, and a sick, dirty poodle under the desk, made the same disheveled and rough impression as the man himself.
‘‘M’sieur Laptev wishes to see you,’’ said the daughter, going into the study.
‘‘Roo-roo-roo-roo,’’ he sang louder and, veering into the drawing room, gave his hand to Laptev and said: ‘‘What’s the good news?’’
It was dark in the drawing room. Laptev, not sitting down, and holding his hat in his hand, began to apologize for the disturbance; he asked what to do so that his sister could sleep at night, and why she was becoming so terribly thin, and he was embarrassed by the thought that he seemed to have asked the doctor these same questions that day during his morning visit.
‘‘Tell me,’’ he asked, ‘‘shouldn’t we invite some specialist in internal diseases from Moscow? What do you think?’’
The doctor sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and made an indefinite gesture with both hands.
It was obvious that he was offended. He was an extremely touchy doctor, very quick to take offense, and always imagined that he was not believed, that he was not recognized and not sufficiently respected, that the public exploited him and his colleagues treated him with ill will. He always laughed at himself, saying such fools as he were created only so that the public could ride on them.
Yulia Sergeevna lighted the lamp. She had gotten tired in church, and that could be noticed by her pale, weary face, by her sluggish gait. She wanted to rest. She sat on the sofa, leaned her arms on her knees, and lapsed into thought. Laptev knew that he was unattractive, and now it seemed to him that he even felt this unattractiveness on his body. He was of small stature, thin, with ruddy cheeks, and his hair was already quite sparse, so that his head got chilled. His expression was totally deprived of that graceful simplicity which makes even coarse, unattractive faces sympathetic; in the company of women, he was awkward, excessively garrulous, affected. And now he almost despised himself for that. To keep Yulia Sergeevna from getting bored in his company, it was necessary to talk. But what about? Again about his sister’s illness?
And he began saying what is usually said about medicine, praised hygiene, and mentioned that he had long wished to set up a night shelter in Moscow and that he even had an estimate. According to his plan, a worker coming to the night shelter in the evening would, for five or six kopecks, get a portion of hot cabbage soup with bread, a warm, dry bed with a blanket, and a place to dry his clothes and shoes.
Yulia Sergeevna was usually silent in his presence, and in a strange way, perhaps with the intuition of a man in love, he could guess her thoughts and intentions. And now he realized that if she did not go to her room to change her clothes and have tea after vespers, it meant she was invited somewhere else that evening.
‘‘But I’m in no rush with this night shelter,’’ he went on, now with annoyance and vexation, addressing the doctor, who gazed at him somehow dully and with perplexity, evidently not understanding why on earth he had turned the conversation to medicine and hygiene. ‘‘And most likely I won’t soon make use of our estimate. I’m afraid our night shelter will fall into the hands of our Moscow hypocrites and philanthropic ladies, who ruin every undertaking.’’
Yulia Sergeevna got up and gave Laptev her hand.
‘‘Sorry,’’ she said, ‘‘it’s time for me to go. Please give my greetings to your sister.’’
‘‘Roo-roo-roo-roo,’’ sang the doctor. ‘‘Roo-roo-rooroo.’’
Yulia Sergeevna left, and a little later, Laptev took his leave of the doctor and went home. When a man is dissatisfied and feels unhappy, how banal seem to him all these lindens, shadows, clouds, all these self-satisfied and indifferent beauties of nature! The moon was already high, and clouds raced swiftly under it. ‘‘But what a naive, provincial moon, what skimpy, pathetic clouds!’’ thought Laptev. He was ashamed that he had just spoken of medicine and the night shelter, and he was terrified that tomorrow, too, he would not have character enough, and he would again try to see her and speak with her, and once more be convinced that he was a stranger to her. The day after tomorrow—again the same thing. What for? And when and how would all this end?
At home he went to his sister’s room. Nina Fyodorovna still looked sturdy and gave the impression of a well- built, strong woman, but a marked pallor made her look like a dead person, especially when, as now, she lay on her back with her eyes closed. Near her sat her elder daughter, Sasha, ten years old, reading something to her from her school reader.
‘‘Alyosha’s come,’’ the sick woman said softly to herself. Between Sasha and her uncle a silent agreement had long been established: they took turns. Now Sasha closed her reader and, without saying a word, quietly left the room; Laptev took a historical novel from the chest of drawers and, finding the page he needed, sat down and started reading aloud.
Nina Fyodorovna was a native Muscovite. She and her two brothers had spent their childhood and youth on Pyatnitskaya Street, in a family of merchants. It was a long, boring childhood; her father treated her severely and even punished her with a birching three times or so, and her mother was sick with something for a long time and died; the servants were dirty, coarse, hypocritical; priests and monks often came to the house, also coarse and hypocritical; they drank and ate and crudely flattered her father, whom they did not like. The boys had the luck to be sent to school, but Nina remained uneducated, wrote in a scrawl all her life, and read only historical novels. Seventeen years ago, when she was twenty-two, at their dacha in Khimki, she made the acquaintance of her present husband, Panaurov, a landowner, fell in love with him, and married him secretly, against her father’s will. Panaurov, handsome, slightly insolent, given to lighting cigarettes from the icon lamp and whistling, seemed utterly worthless to her father, and when, in letters afterward, the son-in-law started demanding a dowry, the old man wrote to his daughter that he would send to her on the estate fur coats, silverware, and various objects left by her mother, and thirty thousand in cash, but without his parental blessing; then he sent another twenty thousand. This money and the dowry were run through, the estate was sold, and Panaurov moved to town with his family and took a job with the provincial government. In town he acquired another family for himself, and that caused much talk every day, since his illegitimate family lived quite openly.
Nina Fyodorovna adored her husband. And now, listening to the historical novel, she was thinking about how she had lived through so much, had suffered so greatly in all that time, and that if someone were to describe her life, it would come out as very pitiful. Since the tumor was in her breast, she was certain that she had fallen ill from love, from her family life, and that it was jealousy and tears that had brought her to bed.
But here Alexei Fyodorovich closed his book and said:
‘‘The end, and God be praised. Tomorrow we’ll start another.’’
