“Hm… you mustn’t stand on ceremony, brother Porfiry,” he turned to Pseldonymov. “Perhaps you have something there… to tend to… or whatever… please, don’t be embarrassed.—Is he keeping watch on me, or what?” he added to himself.
He was beginning to find Pseldonymov unbearable, with his long neck and eyes fixed intently on him. In short, all this was not it, not it at all, but Ivan Ilyich was still far from wanting to admit it.
The quadrille began.
“Shall I, Your Excellency?” Akim Petrovich asked, deferentially holding the bottle in his hands and preparing to fill His Excellency’s glass.
“I… I don’t really know if…”
But Akim Petrovich, with a reverently beaming face, was already pouring the champagne. Having filled his glass, he also, as if on the sly, as if thievishly, shrinking and cringing, filled his own, with the difference that he filled it one whole finger less, which was somehow more deferential. He was like a woman in childbirth sitting next to his immediate superior. What indeed was he to talk about? Yet he had to entertain His Excellency even out of duty, since he had the honor of keeping him company. The champagne served as a way out, and it was even pleasing to His Excellency to have his glass filled—not for the sake of the champagne, which was warm and the most natural swill, but just so, morally pleasing.
“The old boy wants a drink himself,” thought Ivan Ilyich, “and he doesn’t dare without me. I mustn’t hinder… And it’s ridiculous if the bottle just stands between us.”
He took a sip, which in any case seemed better than just sitting there.
“I’m here,” he began, with pauses and emphases, “I’m here, so to speak, by chance, and, of course, it may be that the others find… that it’s… so to speak, in-ap-propriate for me to be at such a… gathering.”
Akim Petrovich was silent and listened with timid curiosity.
“But I hope you understand why I’m here… It’s not really that I came to drink wine. Heh, heh!”
Akim Petrovich was about to chuckle along with His Excellency, but somehow stopped short and again did not respond with anything reassuring.
“I’m here… in order, so to speak, to encourage… to show, so to speak, a moral, so to speak, goal,” Ivan Ilyich went on, vexed at Akim Petrovich’s obtuseness, but suddenly fell silent himself. He saw that poor Akim Petrovich had even lowered his eyes, as if he were guilty of something. The general, in some perplexity, hastened to take another sip from his glass, while Akim Petrovich, as if his whole salvation lay in it, seized the bottle and poured more.
“It’s not that you have so many resources,” thought Ivan Ilyich, looking sternly at poor Akim Petrovich. The latter, sensing this stern general’s glance on him, resolved now to be definitively silent and not raise his eyes. So they sat facing each other for two minutes or so, a painful two minutes for Akim Petrovich.
A couple of words about this Akim Petrovich. He was a placid man, like a hen, of the oldest cast, nurtured on obsequiousness, and yet a kind man and even a noble one. He came from Petersburg Russians—that is, both his father and his father’s father were born, grew up, and served in Petersburg and never once left Petersburg. These are a totally special type of Russian people. They have scarcely the faintest notion of Russia, and that does not trouble them at all. Their whole interest is confined to Petersburg and, above all, to the place where they serve. All their cares are concentrated around penny preference, grocery shop, and monthly salary. They do not know even a single Russian custom, nor a single Russian song, except “Luchinushka,”24 and that only because barrel organs play it. However, there are two essential and unshakable tokens by which you may instantly distinguish a true Russian from a Petersburg Russian. The first is that all Petersburg Russians, all, without exception, always say Academic Bulletin and never Petersburg Bulletin.25 The second, equally essential token is that a Petersburg Russian never uses the word “breakfast,” but always says “Frühstück,”26 putting special emphasis on the Früh. By these basic and distinctive tokens you can always distinguish them: in short, this is a humble type and was formed definitively over the last thirty-five years. However, Akim Petrovich was by no means a fool. Had the general asked him something appropriate for him, he would have replied and kept up the conversation, whereas it was quite unfitting for a subordinate to answer such questions, though Akim Petrovich was dying of curiosity to learn something more specific about His Excellency’s real intentions …
And meanwhile Ivan Ilyich was falling more and more into reverie and into a certain round of ideas; distracted, he imperceptibly but ceaselessly sipped from his glass. Akim Petrovich at once and most diligently poured more. Both were silent. Ivan Ilyich was beginning to watch the dancing, and soon it attracted his attention somewhat. Suddenly one circumstance even surprised him…
The dancing was indeed merry. Here people danced precisely in simplicity of heart, to make merry and even get wild. Among the dancers very few were adroit; but the non-adroit stomped so hard that they might have been taken for adroit. The officer distinguished himself above alclass="underline" he especially liked the figures where he remained alone, as in a solo. Then he would bend himself amazingly—namely, standing straight as a milepost, he would suddenly lean to one side so that you would think he was about to fall over, but at the next step he would suddenly lean to the opposite side, at the same sharp angle to the floor. He maintained a most serious expression and danced with the full conviction that everyone was amazed at him. Another gentleman, after getting potted beforehand, prior to the quadrille, fell asleep beside his partner at the second figure, so that his lady had to dance alone. A young registrar, who was dancing away with the lady in the blue scarf, in all the figures and all five quadrilles that had been danced that evening, kept pulling one and the same stunt—namely, he would lag behind his partner a little, pick up the end of her scarf, and, in air, at the changing of partners, would manage to plant about twenty kisses on it. The lady would go sailing on ahead of him as if she noticed nothing. The medical student indeed performed a solo upside down and provoked furious rapture, stomping, and squeals of pleasure. In short, there was unconstraint in the extreme. Ivan Ilyich, in whom the wine was also having its effect, was beginning to smile, but gradually some bitter doubt began to creep into his souclass="underline" of course, he very much liked casualness and unconstraint; he had desired, his soul had even called for this casualness, as they were all backing away, but now this casualness was beginning to go beyond limits. One lady, for instance, wearing a shabby blue velvet dress, bought at fourth hand, pinned her skirt up for the sixth figure in such a way that it was as if she were wearing trousers. This was that same Kleopatra Semyonovna with whom one could risk anything, as her partner, the medical student, had put it. Of the medical student there was nothing else to say: simply Fokine.27 How could it be? First they backed away, and then suddenly they got so quickly emancipated! It seemed like nothing, yet this transition was somehow strange: it foreboded something. As if they had totally forgotten there was any Ivan Ilyich in the world. Naturally, he was the first to laugh and he even risked applauding. Akim Petrovich deferentially chuckled in unison with him, though, by the way, with obvious pleasure and not suspecting that His Excellency was already beginning to nurse a new worm in his heart.
“You dance nicely, young man,” Ivan Ilyich felt forced to say to the student as he was passing by: the quadrille had just ended.
The student turned sharply to him, pulled some sort of grimace, and, bringing his face indecently close to His Excellency’s, gave a loud cock-crow. This was too much. Ivan Ilyich got up from the table. In spite of that, there followed a burst of irrepressible laughter, because the cock-crow was astonishingly natural, and the whole grimace was completely unexpected. Ivan Ilyich was still standing in perplexity when Pseldonymov himself suddenly came and, bowing, began inviting him to supper. After him came his mother.