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 Ladynever 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 Ladyand 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…”
“What’s this Stupendiev, devil take it!” Velchaninov shouted and even stamped his foot, being completely put out at the word Stupendiev, owing to a certain uneasy remembrance that flashed in him at this word.
“Stupendievis a role, sir, a theatrical role, the role of ‘the husband’ in the play The Provincial Lady,”Pavel Pavlovich squeaked in the sweetest little voice, “but that belongs to another category of our dear and beautiful memories, already after your departure, when Stepan Mikhailovich Bagautov graced us with his friendship, just as you did, sir, and for a whole five years.”
“Bagautov? What’s that? Which Bagautov?” Velchaninov suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
“Bagautov, Stepan Mikhailovich, who graced us with his friendship precisely a year after you and… like you, sir.”
“Ah, my God, but that I know!” Velchaninov cried, finally figuring it out. “Bagautov! but he served with you…”
“He did, he did! at the governor’s! From Petersburg, a most elegant young man of the highest society!” Pavel Pavlovich cried out, decidedly enraptured.
“Yes, yes, yes! How could I! And so he, too…”
“And he, too! And he, too!” Pavel Pavlovich, having picked up his host’s imprudent phrase, echoed with the same rapture. “And he, too! It was then that we produced The Provincial Ladyin His Excellency the most hospitable Semyon Semyonovich’s home theater—Stepan Mikhailovich was ‘the count,’ I was ‘the husband,’ and my late wife was ‘the provincial lady’—only the role of ‘the husband,’ was taken from me at the insistence of my late wife, so I didn’t play ‘the husband,’ being supposedly unable to, sir…”
“No, the devil you’re Stupendiev! You’re Pavel Pavlovich Trusotsky first of all, and not Stupendiev!” Velchaninov said rudely, unceremoniously, and all but trembling with vexation. “Only, excuse me, this Bagautov is here in Petersburg; I saw him myself, in the spring! Why don’t you go to him, too?”
“I’ve called on him every blessed day for three weeks now, sir. He won’t receive me! He’s ill, he can’t receive me! And, imagine, I found out from the foremost sources that he really is extremely dangerously ill! Such a friend for six years! Ah, Alexei Ivanovich, I’m telling you and I repeat that in this mood one sometimes wishes simply to fall through the earth, even in reality, sir; and at other moments it seems I could just up and embrace precisely some one of these former, so to speak, witnesses and partakers, and with the sole purpose of weeping—that is, absolutely for no other purpose than weeping!…”
“Well, anyhow, you’ve had enough for today, right?” Velchaninov said sharply.
“More, more than enough!” Pavel Pavlovich rose at once from his place. “It’s four o’clock and, above all, I’ve disturbed you so egoistically…”
“Listen, now: I’ll call on you myself, without fail, and then I do hope… Tell me directly, frankly tell me: you’re not drunk today?”
“Drunk? Not a whit…”
“You didn’t drink before coming, or earlier?”
“You know, Alexei Ivanovich, you’re completely feverish, sir.”
“I’ll call on you by tomorrow, in the morning, before one…”
“And I’ve long been noticing that you’re as if delirious, sir.” Pavel Pavlovich interfered delightedly, pressing the point. “I really am so ashamed that I, in my awkwardness… but I’m leaving, I’m leaving! And you go to bed and sleep!”
“And why didn’t you tell me where you live?” Velchaninov, recollecting himself, shouted after him.
“Didn’t I, sir? In the Pokrovsky Hotel…”
“What Pokrovsky Hotel?”
“Why, right next to the Pokrov church, there in the lane, sir—only I forget which lane, and the number as well, but it’s right next to the Pokrov church…”
“I’ll find it!”
“You’ll be a most welcome guest.”
He was already going out to the stairs.
“Wait!” Velchaninov cried again, “you’re not going to give me the slip?”
“How do you mean, ‘give you the slip’?” Pavel Pavlovich goggled his eyes at him, turning and smiling from the third step.
Instead of an answer, Velchaninov noisily slammed the door, locked it carefully, and put the hook into the eye. Going back to his room, he spat as if he had been befouled by something.
After standing motionlessly for five minutes in the middle of the room, he threw himself down on the bed, without undressing at all, and instantly fell asleep. The forgotten candle burned all the way down on the table.
IV
WIFE, HUSBAND, AND LOVER
He slept very soundly and woke up at exactly half past nine; rose instantly, sat on his bed, and at once began thinking about the death of “that woman.”
Yesterday’s staggering impression from the unexpected news of this death had left him in some bewilderment and even pain. This bewilderment and pain had only been stifled in him for a time yesterday, in Pavel Pavlovich’s presence, by one strange idea. But now, on awakening, all that had happened nine years earlier suddenly stood before him with extreme vividness.