"Where am I ?"
The first thing of which he was clearly conscious on com- ing to himself was the pronounced smell of paraffin.
"Holy saints," he thought in horror, "it's paraffin I have drunk instead of vodka."
The thought that he had pqisoned himself threw him into a cold shiver, then into a fever. That it was really poison that he had taken was proved not only by the smell in the room but also by the burning taste in his mouth, the flashes before his eyes, the ringing in his head, and the colicky pain in his stomach. Feeling the approach of death and not buoying himself up with false hopes, he wanted to say good-bye to those nearest to him, and made his way to Dashenka's bed- room (being a widower he had his sister-in-law called Dashenka, an old maid, living in the flat to keep house for him).
"Dashenka," he said in a tearful voice as he went into the bedroom, "dear Dashenka! ''
Something grumbled in the darkness and uttered a deep sigh.
"Dashenka."
"Eh? What?" A woman's voice articulated rapidly. "Is that you, Pyotr Petrovitch? Are you back already? Well, what is it? What has the baby been christened? Who was godmother?"
"The godmother was Natalya Andreyevna Velikosvyetsky, and the godfather Pavel Ivanitch Bezsonnitsin. . . . I. . . . 1 believe, Dashenka, I am dying. And the baby has been
christened Olimpiada, in honour of their kind patroness. I . . . I have just drunk paraffin, Dashenka!"
"What next! You don't say they gave you paraffin there?"
"I must own I wanted to get a drink of vodka without ask- ing you, and . . . and the Lord chastised me: by accident in the dark I took paraffin. . . . What am I to do?"
Dashenka, hearing that the cupboard had been opened without her permission, grew more wideawake. . . . She quickly lighted a candle, jumped out of bed, and in her night- gown, a freckled, bony figure in curl-papers, padded with bare feet to the cupboard.
"Who told you you might?" she asked sternly, as she scrutinised the inside of the cupboard. "Was the vodka put there for you?"
"I ... I haven't drunk vodka but paraffin, Dashenka . . ." muttered Strizhin, mopping the cold sweat on his brow.
"And what did you want to touch the paraffin for? That's nothing to do with you, is it? Is it put there for you? Or do you suppose paraffin costs nothing? Eh? Do you know what paraffin is now? Do you know?"
"Dear Dashenka," moaned Strizhin, "it's a question of life and death, and you talk about money!"
"He's drunk himself tipsy and now he pokes his nose into thc cupboard!" cried Dashenka, angrily slamming the cup- board door. "Oh, the monsters, the tormentors! I'm a martyr, a miserable woman, no peace day or night! Vipers, basilisks, accursed Herods, may you suffer the same in the world to come! I am going to-morrow! I am a maiden lady and I won't allow you to stand before me in your underclothes! How dare you look at me when I am not dressed!"
And she went on and on. . . . Knowing that when Dashenka was enraged there was no moving her with prayers or vows or even by firing a cannon, Strizhin waved his hand in despair, dressed, and made up his mind to go to the doc- tor. But a doctor is only readily found when he is not wanted. After running through three streets and ringing five times at Dr. Tchepharyants's, and seven times at Dr. Bultyhin's, Strizhin raced off to a chemist's shop, thinking possibly the chemist could help him. There, after a long interval, a little dark and curly-headed chemist came out to him in his dressing gown, with drowsy eyes, and such a wise and serious face that it was positively terrifying.
"What do you want?" he asked in a tone in which only very wise and dignified chemists of Jewish persuasion can speak.
"For God's sake. ... I entreat you . . ." said Strizhin breathlessly, "give me something. I have just accidentally drunk paraffin, I am dying! "
"I beg you not to excite yourself and to answer the ques- tions I am about to put to you. The very fact that you are excited prevents me from understanding you. You have drunk paraffin. Yes?"
"Yes, paraffin! Please save me!"
The chemist went coolly and gravely to the desk, opened a book, became absorbed in reading it. After reading a couple of pages he shrugged one shoulder and then the other, made a contemptuous grimace and, after thinking for a minute, went into the adjoining room. The clock struck four, and when it pointed to ten minutes past the chemist came back with another book and again plunged into reading.
"H'm," he said as though puzzled, "the very fact that you feel unwell shows you ought to apply to a doctor, not a chemist."
"But I have been to the doctors already. I could not ring them up."
"H'm . . . you don't regard us chemists as human beings, and disturb our rest even at four o'clock at night, though every dog, every cat, can rest in peace. . . . You don't try to understand anything, and to your thinking we are not people and our nerves are like cords."
Strizhin listened to the chemist, heaved a sigh, and went home.
"So I am fated to die," he thought.
And in his mouth was a burning and a taste of paraffin, there were twinges in his stomach, and a sound of boom, boom, boom in his ears. Every moment it seemed to him that his end was near, that his heart was no longer beating.
Returning home he made haste to write: "Let no one be blamed for my death," then he said his prayers, lay down and pulled the bedclothes over his head. He lay awake till morning expecting death, and all the time he kept fancying how his grave would be covered with fresh green grass and how the birds would twitter over it. . . .
And in the morning he was sitting on his bed, saying with a smile to Dashenka:
"One who leads a steady and regular life, dear sister, is unaffected by any poison. Take me, for example. I have been on the verge of death. I was dying and in agony, yet now I am all right. There is only a burning in my mouth and a sore- ness in my throat, but I am all right all over, thank God. • . . And why? It's because of my regular life."
"No, it's because it's inferior paraffin!" sighed Dashenka, thinking of the household expenses and gazing into space. •'The man at the shop could not have given me the best qual- ity, but that at three farthings. I am a martyr, I am a miser- able woman. You monsters! May you suffer the same, in the world to come, accursed Herods. . . ."
And she went on and on. . . •
THE BLACK MONK
i
Andrey Vasilyevich Kovrin, Magister, had woro him- self out, and unsettled his nerves. He made no effort to undergo regular treatment; but only incidentally, over a bottle of wine, spoke to his friend the doctor; and his friend the doctor advised him to spend all the spring and summer in the country. And in the nick of time came a long letter from Tanya Pesotzky, asking him to come and stay with her father at Borisovka. He decided to go.
But first (it was in April) he travelled to his own estate, to his native Kovrinka, and spent three weeks in solitude; and only when the fine weather came drove across the coun- try to his former guardian and second parent, Pesotzky, the celebrated Russian horticulturist. From Kovrinka to Boris- ovka, the home of the Pesotzkys, was a distance of some seventy versts, and in the easy, springed caleche the drive along the roads, soft in springtime, promised real enjoy- ment.
The house at Borisovka was large, faced with a colonnade, and adorned with figures of lions with the plaster falling off. At the door stood a servant in livery. The old park, gloomy and severe, laid out in English fashion, stretched for nearly a verst from the house down to the river, and ended there in a steep clay bank covered with pines wnose bare roots resembled shaggy paws. Below sparkled a deserted stream; overhead the snipe circled about with melancholy cries— all, in short, seemed to invite a visitor to sit down and write a ballad. But the gardens and orchards, which together with the seed-plots i\ccupied some eighty acres, inspired very dif-
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ferent feelings. Even in the worst of weather they were bright and joy-inspiring. Such wonderful roses, lilies, camellias, such tulips, such a host of flowering plants of every possible kind and colour, from staring white to sooty black,—such a wealth of blossoms Kovrin had never seen before. The spring was only beginning, and the greatest rarities were hidden under glass; but already enough bloomed in the alleys and beds to make up an empire of delicate shades. And most charming of all was it in the early hours of morning, when dewdrops glistened on every petal and leaf.