“Fine!” she said sharply. “Wait for me here, and I’ll send
word to the store to see if I can borrow some money. I’ll pay you.”
Nadyezhda Petrovna went into the living room and sat down to write a note to the storekeeper. The doctor took off his coat, went into the living room, and slumped down on a chair. They both sat silendy, waiting for a response from the storekeeper. About five minutes later the answer came. Nadyezhda Petrovna took a ruble out of the envelope and gave it to the doctor. The doctors eyes bulged.
“Surely you are joking, madam!” he said, laying the ruble on the table. “My manservant might accept a ruble, but I... no, I’m sorry!”
“But how much would you need?”
“Normally I would take ten. From you, however, five would be fine.”
“You’ll have to wait quite a long time before you’ll get a fiver from me! I don’t have the money.”
“Send another note to the storekeeper. If he could give you a ruble, why shouldn’t he be able to give you five? Does it matter? I beg you, madam, not to keep me any longer! I am a busy man!”
“Doctor, you are being unkind! You are being impertinent... rude... inhuman! You are... loathsome!”
Nadyezhda Petrovna turned to the window and bit her lip. Big tears fell from her eyes.
“Scoundrel! Bastard!” she thought. “Animal! How dare he, how dare he! Can’t he understand my horrible, impossible situation! Just you wait, you swine!”
After a few seconds of thought, she turned to face the doctor. This time her face expressed suffering.
“Doctor!” she said in a low, imploring voice. “Doctor! If you had a heart, if you tried to understand, you wouldn’t torture me this way for the money. As it is, my life is full of trials and tribulations!”
Nadyezhda Petrovna squeezed her temples as if she were squeezing a spring. Her hair spilled onto her shoulders.
“One suffers as it is being married to a lout of a husband... one is forced to bear these horrendous surroundings, and then on top of it all one is reproached by the only educated person around! My God! I can’t bear it any longer!”
“But madam, please understand, the special conditions of our profession...”
But the doctor was forced to cut his sentence short. Nadyezhda Petrovna staggered and fainted into his outstretched arms. Her head fell onto his shoulder.
“Here, near the fireplace, yes,” she whispered after a few moments. “Come closer... I will tell you everything... everything!”
An hour later the doctor left the Chelobitev apartment. He felt annoyed, ashamed, and happy all in one.
“Damn it!” he thought, as he sat down in his sleigh. “It’s never a good idea to take too much money with you when you leave the house. You never know what you’ll run up against!”
O
WOMEN
WOMEN!
SERGEI KUZMITCH Pochitayev, editor-in-chief of the provincial newspaper Flypaper, came home from the office tired and worn out, and slumped down on the sofa.
“Thank God I’m finally home! Here I can rest my soul... by our warm hearth, with my wife, my darling, the only person in this world who understands me, who can truly sympathize with me!”
“Why are you so pale today?” his wife, Marya Denisovna, asked.
“My soul was in torment, but now—the moment I’m with you, I’m hilly relaxed!”
“What happened?”
“So many problems, especially today! Petrov is no longer willing to extend credit to the paper. The secretary has taken to drink... I can somehow deal with all these things, but here’s the real problem, Marya. There I am, sitting in my office going over something one of my reporters wrote, when suddenly the door opens and my dear old friend Prince Prochukhantsev comes in. You know, the one who always plays the beau in amateur theatricals—he’s the one who gave his white horse to that actress, Zryakina, for a single kiss. The moment I saw him I thought: what the hell brings him here, he must want something! But I reckoned he’d probably come to promote Zryakina. So we start chatting about this and that. Finally it turns out that he hadn’t come to push Zryakina—he brought some poems for me to print! ‘I felt,’ he tells me, a fiery flame and... a flaming fire! I wanted to taste the sweetness of authorship!’
“So he takes a perfumed pink piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.
‘“In my verse,’ he continues, ‘I am, in actual fact, somewhat subjective, but anyway... after all, our national poet Nekrassov was deeply subjective, too.’
“I picked up these subjective poems and read them through. It was the most impossible drivel I have ever seen! Reading these poems, you feel your eyes beginning to pop and your stomach about to burst, as if you’d swallowed a millstone! And he dedicated the poems to Zryakina! I would drag him to court if he dared dedicate such drivel to me! In one poem he uses the word ‘headlong’ five times! And the rhythm! ‘Lilee- white’ instead of‘lily-white!’ He rhymes ‘horse’ with ‘of course!’
‘“I’m sorry!’ I tell him, ‘You are a very dear friend, but there is no way I can print your poems!’
“‘And why, may I ask?’
“‘Because... well, for reasons beyond the control of the editorial office, these poems do not fit into the scheme of the newspaper.’
“I went completely red. I started rubbing my eyes, and claimed I had a pounding headache. How could I tell him that his poems were utterly worthless! He saw my embarrassment, and puffed up like a turkey.
“‘You,’ he tells me, ‘are angry with Zryakina, and that’s why you’re refusing to print my poems! I understand! I fully understand, my dear sir!’
“He accused me of prejudice, called me a Philistine, an ecclesiastical bigot, and God knows what else. He went at me for a full two hours. In the end he swore he would get even with me. Then he left without saying another word. That’s the long and short of it, darling! And today’s the fourth of December, no less—Saint Barbaras day—Zryakina’s name day! He wanted those poems printed, come wind, come rain! As far as printing them goes, that’s impossible! My paper would become a laughingstock throughout Russia. But not to print them is impossible too: Prochukhantsev will start plotting against me—and that’ll be that! I have to figure out now how to get myself out of this impossible mess!”
“What kind of poems are they? What are they about?” Marya Denisovna asked.
“They’re useless, pure twaddle! Do you want to hear one? It starts like this:
Through dreamily wafting cigar smoke,
You came scampering into my dreams,
Your love hitting me with one sharp stroke,
Your sweet lips smiling with fiery beams.
“And then straightaway:
Forgive me, O angel pure as a summer song!
Eternal friend, O ideal so very bright!
Forgetting love, I threw myself headlong
Into the jaws of death—O woe, O fright!
“And on and on. Pure twaddle!”
“What do you mean? These poems are really sweet!” Marya Denisovna exclaimed, clasping her hands together.
“They are extremely sweet! You’re just being churlish, Sergei!... ‘Through dreamily wafting cigar smoke... sweet lips smiling with fiery beams,’ you simply don’t understand, do you? You don’t!”
“It is you who don’t understand, not I!”
“No, I’m sorry! I may be at sea when it comes to prose, but when it comes to poetry, I’m in my element! You just hate him, and that’s why you don’t want to print his poems!”
The editor sighed and banged his hand first on the table, and then against his forehead.
“Experts!” he muttered, smiling scornfully.
Snatching up his top hat, he shook his head bitterly and went out.