casualness.
“See, Nadenka and Sashenka, dear little children—hee, hee, hee!”
He was beside himself with spite. There came another loud clap of thunder; lightning flashed blindingly, and the rain poured down in buckets. Pavel Pavlovich got up and closed the open window.
“And him asking you: ‘You’re not afraid of thunder?’—hee, hee! Velchaninov afraid of thunder! Kobylnikov has a—how is it—Kobylnikov has… And about being fifty years old—eh? Remember, sir?” Pavel Pavlovich went on sarcastically.
“You, incidentally, have settled in nicely here,” Velchaninov observed, barely able to utter the words from pain. “I’ll lie down… you do as you like.”
“One wouldn’t put a dog out in such weather!” Pavel Pavlovich picked up touchily, though almost glad that he had the right to be touchy.
“Well, so sit, drink… spend the night even!” Velchaninov mumbled, stretched out on the sofa, and groaned slightly.
“Spend the night, sir? Aren’t you… afraid, sir?”
“Of what?” Velchaninov suddenly raised his head.
“Never mind, sir, just so. Last time you were as if afraid, or else I only imagined it…”
“You’re stupid!” Velchaninov burst out and turned angrily to the wall.
“Never mind, sir,” Pavel Pavlovich responded.
The sick man somehow suddenly fell asleep, a moment after lying down. All the unnatural tension of this day, not to mention the great disorder of his health recently, somehow suddenly snapped, and he became as strengthless as a child. But the pain got its own back and overcame weariness and sleep; an hour later he awoke and with suffering got up from the sofa. The thunderstorm had abated; the room was filled with smoke, the bottle stood empty, and Pavel Pavlovich was sleeping on the other sofa. He was lying on his back, his head on a sofa pillow, fully dressed, with his boots on. His lorgnette, having slipped from his pocket, hung on its string almost to the floor. His hat lay near him, also on the floor. Velchaninov looked at him sullenly and decided not to wake him up. Bending over and pacing the room, because he was no longer able to lie down, he moaned and reflected on his pain.
He feared this pain in his chest not without reason. He had begun having these attacks long ago, but they visited him very rarely—once in a year or two. He knew it was from his liver. It began as if with a still dull, not strong, but bothersome pressure gathering at some point in his chest, in the pit of his stomach or higher up. Growing constantly, sometimes over the course of ten hours, the pain would finally reach such intensity, the pressure would become so unbearable, that the sick man would begin imagining death. During the last attack, which had come a year before, when the pain finally subsided after the tenth hour, he suddenly felt so strengthless that he could barely move his hand as he lay in bed, and for the whole day the doctor allowed him only a few teaspoons of weak tea and a little pinch of bread soaked in bouillon, like a nursing infant. This pain appeared on different occasions, but always with upset nerves to begin with. It would also pass strangely: sometimes, when caught at the very beginning, in the first half hour, everything would go away at once with simple poultices; but sometimes, as during the last attack, nothing would help, and the pain would subside only after a repeated and progressive taking of emetics. The doctor confessed afterward that he had been convinced it was poisoning. Now it was still a long time till morning, he did not want to send for a doctor during the night, and besides he did not like doctors. Finally, he could not help himself and started moaning loudly. The moans awakened Pavel Pavlovich: he sat up on the sofa and listened with fear for some time, his perplexed eyes following Velchaninov, who was nearly running all around the two rooms. The bottle he had drunk also affected him strongly, not in the usual way, and for a long time he could not collect himself; finally he understood and rushed to Velchaninov; the latter mumbled something in response.
“It’s from your liver, sir, I know this!” Pavel Pavlovich suddenly became terribly animated. “Pyotr Kuzmich had it, Polosukhin, he had it in exactly the same way, from the liver, sir. It’s a case for poultices, sir. Pyotr Kuzmich always used poultices… You can die of it, sir! I’ll run and fetch Mavra—eh?”
“No need, no need,” Velchaninov waved him away vexedly, “no need for anything.”
But Pavel Pavlovich, God knows why, was almost beside himself, as if it were a matter of saving his own son. He would not listen, he insisted as hard as he could on the necessity for poultices and, on top of that, two or three cups of weak tea, drunk all at once—“not simply hot, sir, but boiling hot!” He did run to Mavra, without waiting for permission, made a fire with her in the kitchen, which had always stood empty, started the samovar; meanwhile he managed to put the sick man to bed, took his street clothes off, wrapped him in a blanket, and in no more than twenty minutes had cooked up some tea and the first poultice.
“It’s heated plates, sir, burning hot!” he said almost in ecstasy, placing the heated plate wrapped in a towel on Velchaninov’s pained chest. “There aren’t any other poultices, sir, and it would take too long to get them, and plates, I swear on my honor, sir, will even be best of all; it’s been tested on Pyotr Kuzmich, sir, with my own eyes and hands. You can die of it, sir. Drink the tea, swallow it—never mind if it burns you; life’s dearer… than foppery, sir…”
He got the half-asleep Mavra to bustle about; the plates were changed every three or four minutes. After the third plate and the second cup of boiling hot tea drunk at one gulp, Velchaninov suddenly felt relief.
“Once you’ve dislodged the pain, thank God for that, sir, it’s a good sign!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out and ran to fetch a fresh plate and fresh tea.
“Only to break the pain! If we can only turn the pain back!” he kept saying every moment.
After half an hour, the pain was quite weakened, but the patient was so worn out that, however Pavel Pavlovich begged, he would not agree to endure “one more little plate, sir.” His eyes were closing from weakness.
“Sleep, sleep,” he repeated in a weak voice.
“Right you are!” Pavel Pavlovich agreed.
“You spend the night… what time is it?”
“A quarter to two, sir.”
“Spend the night.”
