“One ruble and she kopecks?” he mumbled, embarrassed. “All I have is one ruble... I thought a ruble would be enough... what am I going to do?”
“I have no idea!” the pharmacist said, picking up his newspaper again.
“Under the circumstances... I would be grateful if you would let me bring you, or maybe send you, the six kopecks tomorrow...”
“I’m sorry, we don’t give credit here.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Go home, get the six kopecks, and then you can have your medicine.”
“But... I’m having difficulty walking, and I don’t have anyone I can send...”
“That’s your problem.”
“Well,” Svoykin thought. “Fine, I’ll go home.”
He left the pharmacy and set off home. To reach his apartment he had to sit down five or six times. He went inside, found some change on the table, and sat down on his bed to rest. A strange power pulled his head toward the pillow. He lay down for a few minutes. The foggy images, like clouds and shrouded figures, blurred his consciousness. For a long time he kept thinking he had to go back to the pharmacy, and for a long time he intended to get up. But the illness prevailed. The copper coins fell out of his hand, and the sick man dreamed that he had gone back to the pharmacy and was again chatting with the pharmacist.
ON
MORTALITY:
A
CERNIVAL
TALE
TOURT COUNSELOR Semyon Petrovitch Podtikin sat down at the table, spread a napkin across his chest, and quivering with impatience, await-ed the moment the bliny would appear. Before him, as before a general surveying a batdefield, a vista unfolded: rank upon rank of botdes, from the middle of the table right up to the front line—three types of vodka, Kiev brandy, Château La Rose, Rhine wine, and even a big-bellied flask of priesdy Benedictine. Crowding around the liquors in artful disarray were platters of sprats, sardines in hot sauce, sour cream, caviar (at three rubles forty kopecks a pound), fresh salmon, and so on. Podtikin greedily ran his eyes over the food. His eyes melted like butter; his face oozed with lust.
Frowning, he turned to his wife.
“What’s taking so long? Katya!” he called to the cook. “Hurry up!”
Finally, the cook arrived with the bliny. At the risk of scorching his fingers, Semyon Petrovitch snatched up two of the hottest from the top of the pile and slapped them onto his plate with gusto. The bliny were crisp, lacy, and as plump as the shoulders of a merchants daughter. Podtikin smiled affably, hiccupped with pleasure, and doused the bliny in hot butter. Then, as if to tease his appetite, luxuriating in anticipation, he slowly, deliberately heaped them with caviar. He poured sour cream over the places the caviar left bare. Now he had only to eat, right? Wrong! Contemplating his creation, Podtikin was not quite satisfied. After a moments thought, he topped the bliny with the oiliest slice of salmon he could find, and a sprat, and a sardine; then, no longer able to hold back, trembling with delight and gasping, he rolled up the two bliny, downed a shot of vodka, wheezed, opened his mouth— and was struck by an apoplectic fit.
A
SERIOUS
STEP
ALEKSEI BORISITCH HAS just a risen from a deep after-lunch slumber. He is sitting by the window with his wife, Martha Afanasevna, and is grumbling. He is not pleased that his daughter Lidochka has gone for a walk in the garden with young Fyodor Petrovitch.
“I can’t stand it,” the old man mutters, “when young girls get so carried away that they lose all sense of bashfulness! Loafing about in the garden like this, wandering down dark paths! Depravity and dissipation, that’s what it is! You, Mother, are completely blind to it all!... And anyway, as far as you’re concerned, it’s perfecdy fine for the girl to act like a fool... as far as you’re concerned, the two of them can go ahead and flirt all they want down there! Why, given half a chance you too, old as you are, would gladly throw all shame to the winds and rush off for a secret rendezvous of your own!”
“Stop bothering me!” the old woman says angrily. “Look at him, he’s rambling on, and doesn’t even know what he’s rambling about! Bald numskull!”
“Ha! Fine! Have it your way then! Let them kiss and hug all they want! Fine! Let them! I won’t be the one called to answer before the Lord Almighty once the girl’s head has been turned! Go ahead my children, kiss—court away all you want!”
“Stop gloating! Maybe nothing will come of it!”
“Let us pray that nothing will come of it!” Aleksei Borisitch sighs.
“You have always been your own daughter’s worst enemy! Ill will, that’s all she’s ever had from you! You should pray, Aleksei, that the Lord will not punish you for your cruelty! I fear for you! And we do not have all that long to live!”
“That’s all fine and good, but I still can’t allow this! He’s not a good enough match for her, and besides, what’s the rush? With our social status and her looks, she can find herself much better fiancés. And anyway, why am I even talking to you? Ha! That’s all I need now, a talk with you! We have to throw him out and lock Lidochka in her room, it’s as simple as that! And that’s exacdy what I’m going to do!”
The old man yawns, and his words stretch like rubber. It is clear that he is only grumbling because he feels a weight in the pit of his stomach, and that he’s wagging his tongue just to wag it. But the old woman takes each of his words to heart. She wrings her hands and snaps back at him, clucking like a hen. Tyrant, monster, Mohammedan, effigy, and a string of other special curses fly from her mouth straight at Aleksei Borisitch’s ugly mug. The matter would have ended as always with a momentous spit, and tears, but suddenly their eye catches something unusuaclass="underline" Lidochka, their daughter, her hair disheveled, comes rushing up the garden path toward the house. At the same instant, far down in the garden where the path bends, Fyodor Petrovitch’s straw hat bobs up from behind the bushes. The young man is strikingly pale. Hesitating, he takes two steps forward, waves, and quickly walks off. Then they hear Lidochka running into the house, rushing through the halls, and noisily locking herself in her room.
The old man and the old woman stare at each other with stunned surprise, cast down their eyes, and turn slightly pale. Both remain silent, not knowing what to say. To them, the meaning behind the fray is as clear as rain. Without a word, both of them understand and feel that while they were busy hissing and growling at each other, their daughters fate had been decided. The plainest human sensibility, not to mention a parent s heart, can comprehend what minutes of agony Lidochka, locked in her room, was living through, and what an important, fateful role the retreating straw hat played in her life.
Aleksei Borisitch gets up with a grunt and starts marching up and down the room. The old woman follows his every move, waiting with bated breath for him to say something.
“What strange weather we’ve been having these past few days,” the old man suddenly says. “At night it’s cold, then during the day the heat’s unbearable.”
The cook brings in the samovar. Martha Afanasevna warms the cups with hot water and then pours the tea. But no one touches it.
“We should... we should call her... Lidochka... so she can drink her tea...” Aleksei Borisitch mumbles. “Otherwise we’ll have to put a fresh samovar on for her... I can’t stand disorder!”
Martha Afanasevna wants to say something but cannot. Her lips twitch, her tongue does not obey, and her eyes cloud over. A few moments pass, and she bursts into tears. Aleksei Borisitch, himself teetering on the verge of tears, badly wants to pat the sobbing old woman on the back, but he is too proud. He must stand firm.