Mikhail Averyanych also considered it his duty to visit his friend and divert him. He always entered Andrei Yefimych’s with affected nonchalance and a forced guffaw and began assuring him that he looked very well today and, thank God, things were improving, from which it could be concluded that he considered his friend’s condition hopeless. He had not yet paid back his Warsaw debt and was weighed down by heavy shame, felt tense, and therefore tried to guffaw more loudly and talk more amusingly. His jokes and stories now seemed endless and were a torment both to Andrei Yefimych and for himself.
In his presence Andrei Yefimych usually lay on the sofa with his face to the wall and listened with clenched teeth; layers of scum settled on his soul, and after each visit from his friend he felt this scum rising higher, as if reaching to his throat.
To stifle his petty feelings, he hastened to reflect that he himself, and Khobotov, and Mikhail Averyanych, must die sooner or later, without leaving even a trace on nature. If one should imagine some spirit, a million years from now, flying through space past the earth, that spirit would see only clay and bare cliffs. Everything—including culture and moral law—would have perished, and no burdock would even be growing.17 What, then, was this shame before the shopkeeper, the worthless Khobotov, the painful friendship of Mikhail Averyanych? It was all nonsense and trifles.
But such reasoning no longer helped. As soon as he imagined the earth a million years from now, Khobotov appeared in high boots from behind a bare cliff, or else the forcedly laughing Mikhail Averyanych, and he even heard his shamefaced whisper: “I’ll pay back the Warsaw debt one of these days, my dear … Without fail.”
XVI
Once Mikhail Averyanych came after dinner, when Andrei Yefimych was lying on the sofa. It so happened that Khobotov also arrived at the same time with the potassium bromide. Andrei Yefimych got up heavily, sat on the sofa, and propped himself with both hands.
“And today, my dear,” Mikhail Averyanych began, “your color has much improved over yesterday. Well done, by God! Well done!”
“It’s high time, high time you got better, colleague,” Khobotov said, yawning. “You must be tired of this flim-flam yourself.”
“We’ll get better,” Mikhail Averyanych said cheerfully. “We’ll live another hundred years! Yes, sir!”
“Hundred or no hundred, there’s enough in him for twenty,” Khobotov reassured. “Never mind, never mind, colleague, don’t be so glum … Stop blowing smoke.”
“We’ll still show ourselves!” Mikhail Averyanych guffawed and patted his friend’s knee. “We’ll show ourselves! Next summer, God willing, we’ll take a swing through the Caucasus and cover it all on horseback—hup! hup! hup! And when we come back from the Caucasus, for all I know, we’ll dance at a wedding.” Mikhail Averyanych winked slyly. “We’ll get you married, dear friend … married …”
Andrei Yefimych suddenly felt the scum rise to his throat; his heart was pounding terribly.
“This is all so banal!” he said, getting up quickly and going to the window. “Don’t you understand that you’re speaking in banalities?”
He wanted to go on gently and politely, but against his will suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head.
“Leave me alone!” he shouted in a voice not his own, turning purple and trembling all over. “Get out! Get out, both of you!”
Mikhail Averyanych and Khobotov stood up and stared at him first in bewilderment, then in fear.
“Get out, both of you!” Andrei Yefimych went on shouting. “Obtuse people! Stupid people! I need neither your friendship nor your medicine, obtuse man! Banality! Filth!”
Khobotov and Mikhail Averyanych, exchanging perplexed looks, backed their way to the door and went out into the front hall. Andrei Yefimych seized the bottle of potassium bromide and hurled it after them; the bottle smashed jingling on the threshold.
“Go to the devil!” he shouted in a tearful voice, running out to the front hall. “To the devil!”
After his visitors left, Andrei Yefimych, trembling as in a fever, lay down on the sofa and for a long time went on repeating:
“Obtuse people! Stupid people!”
When he calmed down, it occurred to him first of all that poor Mikhail Averyanych must now be terribly ashamed and dispirited and that all this was terrible. Nothing like it had ever happened before. Where were his intelligence and tact? Where were his comprehension of things and his philosophical indifference?
The doctor was unable to sleep all night from shame and vexation with himself, and in the morning, around ten o’clock, he went to the post office and apologized to the postmaster.
“We’ll forget what happened,” the moved Mikhail Averyanych said with a sigh, firmly pressing his hand. “Let bygones be bygones. Lyubavkin!” he suddenly shouted so loudly that all the postal clerks and clients jumped. “Fetch a chair! And you wait!” he shouted at a peasant woman who was passing him a certified letter through the grille. “Can’t you see I’m busy? We’ll forget the bygones,” he went on tenderly, addressing Andrei Yefimych. “Sit down, my dear, I humbly beg you.”
He patted his knees in silence for a moment and then said:
“It never occurred to me to be offended with you. Illness is nobody’s friend, I realize. Your fit yesterday frightened me and the doctor, and we talked about you for a long time afterwards. My dear friend, why don’t you want to attend seriously to your illness? This can’t go on! Excuse my friendly candor,” Mikhail Averyanych whispered, “but you live in the most unfavorable circumstances: it’s crowded, dirty, nobody looks after you, there’s no money for treatment … My dear friend, the doctor and I beg you with all our hearts to heed our advice: go to the hospital! The food there is wholesome, they’ll look after you and treat you. Evgeny Fyodorovich may be in mauvais ton,18 just between us, but he’s well-informed and totally reliable. He gave me his word he’d look after you.”
Andrei Yefimych was touched by this genuine concern and by the tears that suddenly glistened on the postmaster’s cheeks.
“My esteemed friend, don’t believe it!” he whispered, placing his hand on his heart. “Don’t believe them! It’s not true! My only illness is that in twenty years I’ve found only one intelligent man in the whole town, and he’s mad. There is no illness at all, I simply got into a magic circle that I can’t get out of. It makes no difference to me, I’m ready for everything.”
“Go to the hospital, my dear.”
“Or to the pit—it makes no difference to me.”
“Give me your word, my dearest friend, that you’ll obey Evgeny Fyodorych in all things.”
“If you please, I give my word. But I repeat, my esteemed friend, I got into a magic circle. Now everything, even the genuine sympathy of my friends, leads to one thing—my perdition. I’m perishing, and I have enough courage to realize it.”
“You’ll get well, my friend.”
“Why say that?” Andrei Yefimych said vexedly “It’s a rare man who doesn’t experience the same thing towards the end of his life as I am experiencing now. When you’re told that you have something like a bad kidney or an enlarged heart, and you start getting treated, or that you’re a madman or a criminal, that is, in short, when people suddenly pay attention to you, then you should know that you’ve gotten into a magic circle and you’ll never get out of it. If you try to get out, you’ll get more lost. Give up, because no human effort can save you. So it seems to me.”