Never before had they driven so far and long as that night. It was within arm’s reach—down Smolensky, Novinsky, and half of Sadovaya. But the brutal frost and the mist isolated the separate parts of dislocated space, as if it were not identical everywhere in the world. The shaggy, shredded smoke of the bonfires, the creak of footsteps and squeal of runners contributed to the impression that they had already been driving God knows how long and had gone somewhere terribly far away.
In front of the hotel stood a blanket-covered horse with bandaged pasterns, hitched to a narrow, jaunty sleigh. The cabby sat in the passenger seat, covering his muffled head with his mittened hands for warmth.
The vestibule was warm, and behind the rail separating the coatroom from the entrance, a doorman dozed, lulled by the sound of the ventilator, the hum of the burning stove, and the whistle of the boiling samovar, snoring loudly and waking himself up by it.
To the left in the vestibule, before a mirror, stood a made-up lady, her plump face floury with powder. She was wearing a fur jacket, too airy for such weather. The lady was waiting for someone from upstairs and, turning her back to the mirror, glanced at herself now over her right, then over her left shoulder, to see how she looked from behind.
A chilled cabby poked himself through the front door. The shape of his kaftan resembled a cruller on a signboard, and the steam that billowed around him increased the likeness.
“Will it be soon now, mamzelle?” he asked the lady at the mirror. “Mixing with your kind’ll only get my horse frozen.”
The incident in number 24 was a minor thing among the ordinary everyday vexations of the staff. Bells jangled every moment and numbers popped up in the long glass box on the wall, showing where and under which number someone had lost his mind and, not knowing what he wanted himself, gave the floor attendants no peace.
Now this foolish old Guichard woman was being pumped full in number 24, was being given an emetic and having her guts and stomach flushed out. The maid Glasha was run off her feet, mopping the floor and carrying out dirty buckets and bringing in clean ones. But the present storm in the servants’ quarters began long before that turmoil, when there was nothing to talk about yet and Tereshka had not been sent in a cab for the doctor and this wretched fiddle scraper, before Komarovsky arrived and so many unnecessary people crowded in the corridor outside the door, hindering all movement.
Today’s hullabaloo flared up in the servants’ quarters because in the afternoon someone turned awkwardly in the narrow passage from the pantry and accidentally pushed the waiter Sysoy at the very moment when he, flexing slightly, was preparing to run through the door into the corridor with a loaded tray on his raised right hand. Sysoy dropped the tray, spilled the soup, and broke the dishes—three bowls and one plate.
Sysoy insisted that it was the dishwasher, she was to blame, and she should pay for the damage. It was nighttime now, past ten o’clock, the shift was about to go off work, and they still kept exchanging fire on the subject.
“He’s got the shakes in his arms and legs, all he worries about is hugging a bottle day and night like a wife, his nose stuck in drink like a duck’s, and then—why’d they push him, smash the dishes, spill the fish soup! Who pushed you, you cross-eyed devil, you spook? Who pushed you, you Astrakhan rupture, you shameless gape?”
“I done told you, Matryona Stepanovna—watch your tongue.”
“Something else again, if it was worthwhile making noise and smashing dishes, but this fine thing, Missy Prissy, a boulevard touch-me-not, done so well she gobbled arsenic, retired innocence. We’ve lived in the Montenegro, we’ve seen these screwtails and randy old goats.”
Misha and Yura paced up and down the corridor outside the door of the room. Nothing came out as Alexander Alexandrovich had supposed. He had pictured to himself—a cellist, a tragedy, something clean and dignified. But this was devil knows what. Filth, something scandalous, and absolutely not for children.
The boys loitered about in the corridor.
“Go in to the missis, young sirs,” the floor attendant, coming up to the boys, urged them for the second time in a soft, unhurried voice. “Go in, don’t hang back. She’s all right, rest assured. She’s her whole self now. You can’t stand here. We had a disaster here today, costly dishes got smashed. See—we’re serving, running, there’s no room. Go on in.”
The boys obeyed.
In the room, the lighted kerosene lamp had been taken from the holder in which it hung over the dining table and moved behind the wooden partition, which stank of bedbugs, to the other part of the room.
There was a sleeping nook there, separated from the front part and strangers’ eyes by a dusty curtain. Now, in the turmoil, they had forgotten to lower it. Its bottom end was thrown over the upper edge of the partition. The lamp stood on a bench in the alcove. This corner was lit up harshly from below, as if by theater footlights.
The poisoning was from iodine, not arsenic, as the dishwasher had mistakenly jibed. The room was filled with the sharp, astringent smell of young walnuts in unhardened green husks, which turn black at the touch.
Behind the partition, a maid was mopping the floor and a half-naked woman, wet with water, tears, and sweat, was lying on the bed, sobbing loudly, her head with strands of hair stuck together hanging over a basin. The boys at once averted their eyes, so embarrassing and indecent it was to look. But Yura had time to notice how, in certain uncomfortable, hunched-up poses, under the influence of strain and effort, a woman ceases to be the way she is portrayed in sculpture and comes to resemble a naked wrestler, with bulging muscles, in shorts for the match.
It finally occurred to someone behind the partition to lower the curtain.
“Fadei Kazimirovich, dear, where is your hand? Give me your hand,” the woman said, choking with tears and nausea. “Ah, I’ve been through such horror! I had such suspicions! Fadei Kazimirovich … I imagined … But fortunately it all turned out to be foolishness, my disturbed imagination, Fadei Kazimirovich, just think, such a relief! And as a result … And so … And so I’m alive.”
“Calm yourself, Amalia Karlovna, I beg you to calm yourself. How awkward this all is, my word, how awkward.”
“We’ll go home now,” Alexander Alexandrovich grunted, turning to the children.
Perishing with embarrassment, they stood in the dark entry, on the threshold of the unpartitioned part of the room, and, having nowhere to turn their eyes, looked into the depths of it, from which the lamp had been removed. The walls were hung with photographs, there was a bookcase with music scores, a desk littered with paper and albums, and on the other side of the dining table covered with a crocheted tablecloth, a girl slept sitting in an armchair, her arms around its back and her cheek pressed to it. She must have been mortally tired, if the noise and movement around her did not keep her from sleeping.
Their arrival had been senseless, their further presence here was indecent.
“We’ll go now,” Alexander Alexandrovich repeated. “Once Fadei Kazimirovich comes out. I’ll say good-bye to him.”
But instead of Fadei Kazimirovich, someone else came from behind the partition. This was a stout, clean-shaven, imposing, and self-assured man. Above his head he carried the lamp that had been taken from the holder. He went to the table by which the girl was sleeping and put the lamp into the holder. The light woke the girl up. She smiled at the man who had come in, narrowed her eyes, and stretched.
At the sight of the stranger, Misha became all aroused and simply riveted his eyes on him. He tugged at Yura’s sleeve, trying to tell him something.
“Aren’t you ashamed to whisper in a stranger’s house? What will people think of you?” Yura stopped him and refused to listen.