There was a dark, deep, evil-smelling archway under Gushchin’s Buildings; there was a sound of men coughing near the walls. Leaving the sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna went in at the gate and there inquired how to get to No. 46 to see a clerk called Chalikov. She was directed to the furthest door on the right in the third story. And in the courtyard and near the outer door, and even on the stairs, there was still the same loathsome smell as under the archway. In Anna Akimovna’s childhood, when her father was a simple workman, she used to live in a building like that, and afterwards, when their circumstances were different, she had often visited them in the character of a Lady Bountiful. The narrow stone staircase with its steep dirty steps, with landings at every story; the greasy swinging lanterns; the stench; the troughs, pots, and rags on the landings near the doors—all this had been familiar to her long ago. . . . One door was open, and within could be seen Jewish tailors in caps, sewing. Anna Akimovna met people on the stairs, but it never entered her head that people might be rude to her. She was no more afraid of peasants or workpeople, drunk or sober, than of her acquaintances of the educated class.
There was no entry at No. 46; the door opened straight into the kitchen. As a rule, the dwellings of workmen and mechanics smell of varnish, tar, hides, smoke, according to the occupation of the tenant; the dwellings of persons of noble or official class who have come to poverty may be known by a peculiar rancid, sour smell. This disgusting smell enveloped Anna Akimovna on all sides, and as yet she was only on the threshold. A man in a black coat, no doubt Chalikov himself, was sitting in a corner at the table with his back to the door, and with him were five little girls. The eldest, a broad-faced thin girl with a comb in her hair, looked about fifteen, while the youngest, a chubby child with hair that stood up like a hedgehog, was not more than three. All the six were eating. Near the stove stood a very thin little woman with a yellow face, far gone in pregnancy. She was wearing a skirt and a white blouse, and had an oven fork in her hand.
“I did not expect you to be so disobedient, Liza,” the man was saying reproachfully. “Fie, fie, for shame! Do you want Papa to whip you—eh?”
Seeing an unknown lady in the doorway, the thin woman started and put down the fork.
“Vassily Nikitich!” she cried, after a pause, in a hollow voice, as though she could not believe her eyes.
The man looked round and jumped up. He was a flat-chested, bony man with narrow shoulders and sunken temples. His eyes were small and hollow, with dark rings round them; he had a wide mouth and a long nose like a bird’s beak—a little bit bent to the right. His beard was parted in the middle; his mustache was shaven, and this made him look more like a hired footman than a government clerk.
“Does Mr. Chalikov live here?” asked Anna Akimovna.
“Yes, madam,” Chalikov answered severely, but immediately recognizing Anna Akimovna, he cried: “Anna Akimovna!” And all at once he gasped and clasped his hands as though in terrible alarm. “Benefactress!”
With a moan he ran to her, grunting inarticulately as though he were paralyzed—there was cabbage on his beard and he smelled of vodka—pressed his forehead to her muff, and seemed as though he were in a swoon.
“Your hand, your holy hand!” he brought out breathlessly. “It’s a dream, a glorious dream! Children, awaken me!”
He turned towards the table and said in a sobbing voice, shaking his fists:
“Providence has heard us! Our savior, our angel, has come! We are saved! Children, down on your knees! On your knees!”
Madam Chalikov and the little girls, except the youngest one, began for some reason rapidly clearing the table.
“You wrote that your wife was very ill,” said Anna Akimovna, and she felt ashamed and annoyed. “I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred,” she thought.
“Here she is, my wife,” said Chalikov in a thin feminine voice, as though his tears had gone to his head. “Here she is, unhappy creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam. Better death than such a life. Better die, unhappy woman!”
“Why is he playing these antics?” thought Anna Akimovna with annoyance. “One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants.”
“Speak to me like a human being,” she said. “I don’t care for farces.”
“Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother’s coffin with funeral candles—that’s a farce? Eh?” said Chalikov bitterly, and turned away.
“Hold your tongue,” whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve. “The place has not been tidied up, madam,” she said, addressing Anna Akimovna; “please excuse it . . . You know what it is where there are children. A crowded hearth, but harmony.”
“I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred,” Anna Akimovna thought again.
And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave them twenty-five rubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.
“If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who is a friend of mine to come and see you,” she said, flushing red. “He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for medicine.”
Madam Chalikov was hastening to wipe the table.
“It’s messy here! What are you doing?” hissed Chalikov, looking at her wrathfully. “Take her to the lodger’s room! I make bold to ask you, madam, to step into the lodger’s room,” he said, addressing Anna Akimovna. “It’s clean there.”
“Osip Ilyich told us not to go into his room!” said one of the little girls sternly.
But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it was evident from the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and in the other three slept across the bed. In the lodger’s room, which came next, it really was clean. A neat-looking bed with a red woolen quilt, a pillow in a white pillowcase, even a slipper for the watch, a table covered with a hempen cloth and, on it, an inkstand of milky-looking glass, pens, paper, photographs in frames—everything as it ought to be; and another table for rough work, on which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker’s tools and watches taken to pieces. On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers, and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking; one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees in eating-houses.