And so once, on a Thursday, unable to endure my solitude, and knowing that on Thursdays Anton Antonych's door was closed, I remembered about Simonov. On the way up to his fourth-floor apartment, I was precisely thinking that I was a burden to this gentleman and that I shouldn't be going to him. But since in the end such considerations, as if by design, always egged me on further into some ambiguous situation, I did go in. It was almost a year since I had last seen Simonov.
III
I found two more of my schoolfellows with him. They were apparently discussing an important matter. None of them paid more than the slightest attention to my coming, which was even strange, because I hadn't seen them for years. Obviously they regarded me as something like a quite ordinary fly. I had not been treated that way even at school, though everyone there hated me. Of course, I understood that they must scorn me now for the unsuccess of my career in the service and for my having gone too much to seed, walking around badly dressed, and so on - which in their eyes constituted a signboard of my incapacity and slight significance. But all the same I did not expect such a degree of scorn. Simonov was even surprised at my coming. Before, too, he had always seemed surprised at my coming. All this took me aback; I sat down in some anguish and began to listen to what they were talking about.
The conversation, a serious and even heated one, was about a farewell dinner which these gentlemen wanted to organize jointly on the very next day for their schoolfellow Zverkov, an officer in the army, who was leaving for a province far away. M'sieur Zverkov had also been my schoolfellow all the while. I had begun especially to hate him starting in the higher grades. In the lower grades he had been just a pretty, frisky boy whom everybody liked. I, however, had hated him in the lower grades as well, precisely for being a pretty and frisky boy. He was always a bad student, and got worse as he went on. Nevertheless, he graduated successfully, because he had his protectors. In his last year at school he received an inheritance, two hundred souls, 13 and since we were almost all of us poor, he even began to swagger before us. He was a vulgarian in the highest degree, but a nice fellow nonetheless, even while swaggering. And despite the external, fantastic, and highfalutin forms of honor and glory in our school, everyone, apart from a very few, minced around Zverkov, the more so the more he swaggered. They minced not for the sake of some sort of profit, but just so, because he was a man favored with the gifts of nature. Besides, it was somehow an accepted thing among us to regard Zverkov as an expert in the line of adroitness and good manners. This last particularly infuriated me. I hated the sharp, un-self-doubting tone of his voice, his admiration of his own witticisms, which came out terribly stupid, though he did have a bold tongue; I hated his handsome but silly face (for which, by the way, I'd gladly have traded my intelligent one) and his free and easy officer-of-the-forties airs. I hated the things he used to say about his future successes with women (he hadn't ventured to start up with women, not having his officer's epaulettes yet, and was looking forward to them impatiently) and about how he'd be fighting duels all the time. I remember myself, always taciturn, suddenly lighting into Zverkov when he was talking with some friends about his future gallantries once during a recess, got quite playful in the end, like a puppy in the sun, and suddenly declared that he wouldn't leave a single village maiden on his estate without his attentions, that this was his droit de seigneur, 14 and if the peasants dared to protest, he'd give them all a whipping and heap a double quitrent on the bearded canaille. Our oafs applauded, but I lit into him, and not at all out of pity for maidens or their fathers, but simply because such a little snot was being so applauded. I got the best of him that time, but Zverkov, though stupid, was gay and impudent, and therefore laughed it off, and even in such a way that, in truth, I did not quite get the best of him: the laughter remained on his side. Later he got the best of me several more times, though not with spite, but just somehow jokingly, in passing, with a laugh. I spitefully and contemptuously refused to reply. Upon graduation he tried to make a step towards me, I did not resist too much, because it flattered me, but we quickly and naturally parted ways. Later I heard about his barracksy lieutenanty successes, about his carousing. Later other rumors went around - that he was succeeding in the service. Now he no longer greeted me in the street, and I suspected he was afraid of compromising himself by greeting a person as insignificant as I was. I also saw him in the theater once, in the third circle, now wearing aiguillettes. He was mincing and twining around the daughters of some ancient general. In three short years he had gone very much to seed, though he was still quite handsome and adroit; he had become somehow puffy and was beginning to grow fat; one could see that by the age of thirty he would be completely flabby. It was for this finally departing Zverkov that our fellows wanted to give a dinner. They had constantly associated with him all those three years, though inwardly they did not consider themselves on an equal footing with him, I'm sure of that.
Of Simonov's two guests, one was Ferfichkin, from Russian-German stock - short, monkey-faced, a fool who comically mimicked everyone, my bitterest enemy even in the lower grades - a mean, impudent little fanfaron who played at being most ticklishly ambitious, though of course he was a coward at heart. He was one of those admirers of Zverkov who flirted with him for his own ends, and often borrowed money from him. Simonov's other guest, Trudolyubov, was an unremarkable person, a military type, tall, with a cold physiognomy, honest enough, but worshiping any success, and capable only of discussing promotions. He was some sort of distant relation of Zverkov's, and that, silly though it was, endowed him with a certain significance among us. He had always regarded me as nothing, but treated me, if not quite politely, at least passably.
"Well, so, if it's seven roubles each," Trudolyubov said, "that makes twenty-one for the three of us - we can have a nice dinner. Zverkov doesn't pay, of course."
"Naturally not, since we're inviting him," Simonov decided.
"Do you really think," Ferfichkin broke in presumptuously and fervently, like an impudent lackey boasting of his master's, the general's, decorations, "do you really think Zverkov will let us pay for it all? He'll accept out of delicacy, but he'll stand us to a half-dozen himself."
"And what are the four of us going to do with a half-dozen," Trudolyubov remarked, having paid attention only to the half-dozen.
"So, it's the three of us, four with Zverkov, twenty-one roubles, the Hotel de Paris, tomorrow at five o'clock," Simonov, who had been elected manager, finally concluded.
"Why twenty-one?" I said, somewhat agitated, apparently even offended. "If you count me, it's twenty-eight roubles, not twenty-one."
It seemed to me that to offer myself suddenly and so unexpectedly would even be a most handsome thing, and they would all be won over at once and look upon me with respect.
"You want to come, too?" Simonov remarked with displeasure, somehow avoiding my eyes. He knew me by heart.
It infuriated me that he knew me by heart.
"What of it, sir? I would seem to be a schoolfellow, too, and I confess I'm even offended at being left out," I began seething again.
"And where does one go looking for you?" Ferfichkin rudely butted in.
"You were never on good terms with Zverkov," Trudolyubov added, frowning. But once I had fastened on, I would not let go.
"It seems to me that no one has any right to judge about that," I retorted, in a trembling voice, as if God knows what had happened. "Maybe that's precisely why I want to now, because we weren't on good terms before."
"Well, who can understand you… and these sublimities…" Trudolyubov smirked.