The visitor was reciting as if by rote, but all the while he spoke, he looked at the ground, though, of course, he could see everything above as well. But the host, too, had managed to collect himself a little.
With a certain quite strange impression, which was growing more and more, he listened to and observed Pavel Pavlovich, and suddenly, when the man paused—the most motley and unexpected thoughts unexpectedly flooded his head.
“But why did I keep not recognizing you till now?” he cried out, becoming animated. “We ran into each other some five times in the street!”
“Yes, I also remember that; you kept coming toward me, sir—twice, maybe even three times…”
“That is—it was you who kept coming toward me, not I toward you!”
Velchaninov got up and suddenly laughed loudly and quite unexpectedly. Pavel Pavlovich paused, looked attentively, but at once began to go on:
“And you didn’t recognize me because, first of all, you might have forgotten, sir, and, finally, I even had smallpox during this time, which left some traces on my face.”
“Smallpox? Why, he did in fact have smallpox! but how on earth did you…”
“Manage that? All sorts of things happen, Alexei Ivanovich; every now and then one manages!”
“Only it’s terribly funny all the same. Well, go on, go on—my dear friend!”
“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir…”
“Wait! Why did you just say ‘manage that’? I was going to put it much more politely. Well, go on, go on!”
For some reason he was feeling merrier and merrier. The staggering impression was replaced by something quite different.
He paced up and down the room with quick steps.
“And I, though I also kept meeting you, sir, and as I was coming here to Petersburg I was even intending to look you up without fail, but, I repeat, I’m now in such a state of mind… and so mentally broken since that same month of March…”
“Ah, yes! broken since the month of March… Wait, you don’t smoke?”
“You know, I, while Natalia Vassilievna…”
“Ah, yes, yes; but since the month of March?”
“Maybe a little cigarette.”
“Here’s a cigarette; light up and—go on! go on, I’m terribly…”
And, lighting a cigar, Velchaninov quickly sat down on his bed again. Pavel Pavlovich paused.
“But you yourself, however, are somehow quite agitated—are you well, sir?”
“Ah, to the devil with my health!” Velchaninov suddenly got angry. “Go on!”
The visitor, for his part, seeing the host’s agitation, was growing more pleased and self-confident.
“What’s the point of going on, sir?” he began again. “Imagine to yourself, Alexei Ivanovich, first of all, a man who is crushed—that is, not simply but, so to speak, radically crushed; a man who, after twenty years of marriage, changes his life and hangs about in dusty streets without any suitable purpose, as if in the steppes, all but forgetting himself, and even reveling somewhat in this self-forgetting. After that it’s natural if sometimes, meeting an acquaintance or even a true friend, I may avoid him on purpose, so as not to approach him at such a moment—of self-forgetting, that is. And at another moment, one remembers everything so well and thirsts so much to see at least some witness and partaker of that recent but irretrievable past, and one’s heart starts pounding so, that not only in the daytime but even at night one risks throwing oneself into a friend’s arms, even if one has to wake him up especially for that purpose past three in the morning, sir. I only got the hour wrong, but not the friendship; for at the present moment I’m only too well rewarded, sir. And concerning the hour, really, I thought it wasn’t twelve yet, being in that mood. One drinks one’s own sorrow and is as if intoxicated by it. And not even sorrow, but precisely this novi-condition is what keeps hitting me…”
“What a way to put it, though!” Velchaninov, having suddenly become terribly serious again, observed somehow gloomily.
“Yes, sir, I put it strangely…”
“And you’re… not joking?”
“Joking!” exclaimed Pavel Pavlovich in mournful perplexity, “at the very moment when I announce…”
“Ah, keep quiet about that, I beg you!”
Velchaninov got up and again began pacing the room.
And in this way about five minutes went by. The visitor, too, made as if to get up, but Velchaninov cried out: “Sit, sit!”—and the man at once obediently lowered himself into the armchair.
“How changed you are, though!” Velchaninov began talking again, suddenly stopping in front of him—just as if suddenly struck by the thought. “Terribly changed! Extremely! Quite a different man!”
“No wonder, sir: it’s nine years.”
“No, no, no, it’s not a matter of years! You haven’t changed in appearance, God knows: you’ve changed in something else!”
“Also, maybe, these nine years, sir.”
“Or since the month of March!”
“Heh, heh,” Pavel Pavlovich chuckled slyly, “you’ve got some playful thought… But, if I dare ask—what essentially is this change?”
“What indeed! Before there was such a solid and decent Pavel Pavlovich, such a smarty of a Pavel Pavlovich, and now—a perfect vaurien2 of a Pavel Pavlovich.”
He was in that degree of vexation in which the most restrained people sometimes start saying unnecessary things.
“Vaurien! You think so? And no longer a ‘smarty’? Not a smarty?” Pavel Pavlovich tittered delightedly.
“The devil you’re a ‘smarty’! Now, maybe, you’re thoroughly smart.
“I’m impudent,” Velchaninov went on thinking, “but this rascal is more impudent still. And… and what’s his purpose?”
“Ah, my dearest, ah, my most priceless Alexei Ivanovich!” The visitor suddenly became extremely agitated and started fidgeting in his armchair. “But what’s that to us? We’re not in society now, not in brilliant, high-society company! We’re—two most sincere and ancient former friends, and, so to speak, have come together in the fullest sincerity to mutually recall that precious connection, in which the deceased woman constituted so precious a link in our friendship!”
And he was as if so carried away by the rapture of his feelings that he again bowed his head, as earlier, but now he covered his face with his hat. Velchaninov studied him with loathing and uneasiness.
“And what if he’s simply a buffoon?” flashed in his head. “But n-no, n-no! it seems he’s not drunk—however, maybe he is; his face is red. Though even if he is drunk—it comes out the same. What has he got up his sleeve? What does the rascal want?”
“Remember, remember,” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, uncovering his face little by little and as if getting more and more carried away by his memories, “remember our excursions outside of town, our evenings and evening parties with dances and innocent games at His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s? And our evening readings, just the three of us? And our first acquaintance with you, when you came to me one morning to get information about your lawsuit, and even started shouting, sir, and suddenly Natalia Vassilievna came out and ten minutes later you were already a true friend of our house, for precisely one whole year, sir—just as in The Provincial Lady, Mr. Turgenev’s play…”3
Velchaninov was pacing slowly, looking at the ground, listening with impatience and loathing, but—listening hard.
“The Provincial Lady never entered my head,” he interrupted, somewhat at a loss, “and you never spoke in such a squeaky voice before, or in this… not your own style. Why are you doing it?”
“Indeed, I was mostly silent before, sir—that is, I was more silent,” Pavel Pavlovich picked up hastily. “You know, before I preferred to listen when my late wife spoke. You remember how she spoke, with what wit, sir… And concerning The Provincial Lady and in particular concerning Stupendiev—you’re right there, too, because it was later that we ourselves, I and my priceless late wife, remembering you, sir, in some quiet moments, after you’d already left, compared our first meeting to this theater piece… because there was in fact a resemblance, sir. And particularly concerning Stupendiev…”