Yes, it was he; there were his inflamed eyes, his full lips, his soft, overhanging nose. He had, in fact, changed little during the last seven years; his face was a little flabbier, perhaps.
'Nikander Vavilitch!' I cried. 'Don't you know me?' Punin started, opened his mouth, stared at me….
'I haven't the honour,' he was beginning—and all at once he piped out shrilly: 'The little master of Troïtsky (my grandmother's property was called Troïtsky)! Can it be the little master of Troïtsky?'
The pound of raisins tumbled out of his hands.
'It really is,' I answered, and, picking up Punin's purchase from the ground, I kissed him.
He was breathless with delight and excitement; he almost cried, removed his cap—which enabled me to satisfy myself that the last traces of hair had vanished from his 'egg'—took a handkerchief out of it, blew his nose, poked the cap into his bosom with the raisins, put it on again, again dropped the raisins…. I don't know how Musa was behaving all this time, I tried not to look at her. I don't imagine Punin's agitation proceeded from any extreme attachment to my person; it was simply that his nature could not stand the slightest unexpected shock. The nervous excitability of these poor devils!
'Come and see us, my dear boy,' he faltered at last; 'you won't be too proud to visit our humble nest? You're a student, I see …'
'On the contrary, I shall be delighted, really.'
'Are you independent now?'
'Perfectly independent.'
'That's capital! How pleased Paramon Semyonitch will be! To-day he'll be home earlier than usual, and madame lets her, too, off for Saturdays. But, stop, excuse me, I am quite forgetting myself. Of course, you don't know our niece!'
I hastened to slip in that I had not yet had the pleasure.
'Of course, of course! How could you know her! Musotchka … Take note, my dear sir, this girl's name is Musa—and it's not a nickname, but her real name … Isn't that a predestination? Musotchka, I want to introduce you to Mr. … Mr. …'
'B.,' I prompted.
'B.,' he repeated. 'Musotchka, listen! You see before you the most excellent, most delightful of young men. Fate threw us together when he was still in years of boyhood! I beg you to look on him as a friend!'
I swung off a low bow. Musa, red as a poppy, flashed a look on me from under her eyelids, and dropped them immediately.
'Ah!' thought I, 'you 're one of those who in difficult moments don't turn pale, but red; that must be made a note of.'
'You must be indulgent, she's not a fine lady,' observed Punin, and he went out of the shop into the street; Musa and I followed him.
* * * * *
The house in which Punin lodged was a considerable distance from the Gostinny Dvor, being, in fact, in Sadovoy Street. On the way my former preceptor in poetry had time to communicate a good many details of his mode of existence. Since the time of our parting, both he and Baburin had been tossed about holy Russia pretty thoroughly, and had not long—only a year and a half before—found a permanent home in Moscow. Baburin had succeeded in becoming head-clerk in the office of a rich merchant and manufacturer. 'Not a lucrative berth,' Punin observed with a sigh,—'a lot of work, and not much profit … but what's one to do? One must be thankful to get that! I, too, am trying to earn something by copying and lessons; only my efforts have so far not been crowned with success. My writing, you perhaps recollect, is old-fashioned, not in accordance with the tastes of the day; and as regards lessons—what has been a great obstacle is the absence of befitting attire; moreover, I greatly fear that in the matter of instruction—in the subject of Russian literature—I am also not in harmony with the tastes of the day; and so it comes about that I am turned away.' (Punin laughed his sleepy, subdued laugh. He had retained his old, somewhat high-flown manner of speech, and his old weakness for falling into rhyme.) 'All run after novelties, nothing but innovations! I dare say you, too, do not honour the old divinities, and fall down before new idols?'
'And you, Nikander Vavilitch, do you really still esteem Heraskov?'
Punin stood still and waved both hands at once. 'In the highest degree, sir! in the high … est de … gree, I do!'
'And you don't read Pushkin? You don't like Pushkin?'
Punin again flung his hands up higher than his head.
'Pushkin? Pushkin is the snake, lying hid in the grass, who is endowed with the note of the nightingale!'
While Punin and I talked like this, cautiously picking our way over the unevenly laid brick pavement of so-called 'white-stoned' Moscow—in which there is not one stone, and which is not white at all—Musa walked silently beside us on the side further from me. In speaking of her, I called her 'your niece.' Punin was silent for a little, scratched his head, and informed me in an undertone that he had called her so … merely as a manner of speaking; that she was really no relation; that she was an orphan picked up and cared for by Baburin in the town of Voronezh; but that he, Punin, might well call her daughter, as he loved her no less than a real daughter. I had no doubt that, though Punin intentionally dropped his voice, Musa could hear all he said very well; and she was at once angry, and shy, and embarrassed; and the lights and shades chased each other over her face, and everything in it was slightly quivering, the eyelids and brows and lips and narrow nostrils. All this was very charming, and amusing, and queer.
* * * * *
But at last we reached the 'modest nest.' And modest it certainly was, the nest. It consisted of a small, one-storied house, that seemed almost sunk into the ground, with a slanting wooden roof, and four dingy windows in the front. The furniture of the rooms was of the poorest, and not over tidy, indeed. Between the windows and on the walls hung about a dozen tiny wooden cages containing larks, canaries, and siskins. 'My subjects!' Punin pronounced triumphantly, pointing his finger at them. We had hardly time to get in and look about us, Punin had hardly sent Musa for the samovar, when Baburin himself came in. He seemed to me to have aged much more than Punin, though his step was as firm as ever, and the expression of his face altogether was unchanged; but he had grown thin and bent, his cheeks were sunken, and his thick black shock of hair was sprinkled with grey. He did not recognise me, and showed no particular pleasure when Punin mentioned my name; he did not even smile with his eyes, he barely nodded; he asked—very carelessly and drily—whether my granny were living—and that was all. 'I'm not over-delighted at a visit from a nobleman,' he seemed to say; 'I don't feel flattered by it.' The republican was a republican still.
Musa came back; a decrepit little old woman followed her, bringing in a tarnished samovar. Punin began fussing about, and pressing me to take things; Baburin sat down to the table, leaned his head on his hands, and looked with weary eyes about him. At tea, however, he began to talk. He was dissatisfied with his position. 'A screw—not a man,' so he spoke of his employer; 'people in a subordinate position are so much dirt to him, of no consequence whatever; and yet it's not so long since he was under the yoke himself. Nothing but cruelty and covetousness. It's a bondage worse than the government's! And all the trade here rests on swindling and flourishes on nothing else!'