“This is all nice and fine,” he grumbles. “It’s just that he should have spoken to us first... yes... first of all he should have, properly, asked for Lidochka’s hand!... After all, we might not want to give it to him!”
The old woman waves her hands in the air, moans loud-ly, and rushes off to her room.
“This is a serious step...” Aleksei Borisitch thinks to himself. “One can’t just decide willy-nilly... one has to seriously... from all sides... I’ll go question her... find out all the whys and wherefores! I’ll talk to her, and then I’ll decide... This won’t do!”
The old man wraps his dressing gown tighdy around himself and slinks to Lidochka’s door.
“Lidochka!” he calls, timidly tugging at the doorknob. “Um, are you... um? Are you feeling ill or something?”
No answer. Aleksei Borisitch sighs, shrugs his shoulders for some reason, and walks away from the door.
“This won’t do!” he thinks to himself, shuffling in his slippers through the halls. “One has to look at it... from all sides, to chat, discuss... the holy sacrament of marriage, one can’t just approach it with frivolity... I’ll go and talk to the old woman...”
He shuffles into his wife’s room. Martha Afanasevna is standing before an open trunk, rummaging through heaps of linen with trembling hands.
“There’s not a single nightshirt here...,” she mumbles. “Good, serious parents will even throw in some baby clothes for the dowry! And us, we’re not even doing handkerchiefs and towels... you’d think she wasn’t our flesh and blood, but some orphan...”
“We have to talk about serious matters, and you’re nattering on about bits of cloth... I can’t even bear to look at this... our daughter’s future is at stake, and she’s standing here like some market woman, counting bits of cloth!... This won’t do!”
“And what are we supposed to do?”
“We have to think, we have to look at it from all sides... have a serious talk...”
They hear Lidochka unlock her door, tell the maid to take a letter to Fyodor Petrovitch, and then lock the door again.
“She is sending him a definite answer,” Aleksei Borisitch whispers. “Ha, the simpleminded fools! They don’t have the wherewithal to turn to their elders for advice! So this is what the world has come to!”
“Oh! I suddenly realized, Aleksei!” the old woman gasps, wringing her hands. “We’re going to have to look for a new apartment in town! If Lidochka will not be living with us, then what do we need eight rooms for?”
“This is all foolish... balderdash... what we have to do now is to seriously...”
Until dinnertime they scurry about the house like shad-ows, unable to find a place for themselves. Martha Afana- sevna rummages aimlessly through the linen, whispers things to the cook, and suddenly breaks into sobs, while Aleksei Borisitch grumbles, wants to discuss serious matters, and talks nonsense. Lidochka appears at dinnertime. Her face is pink and her eyes slightly swollen.
“So here she is!” the old man says, without looking at her.
They sit down to eat silendy for the first two courses. Their faces, their movements, the cooks walk—everything is touched by a kind of shy solemnity.
“We should, Lidochka, you know,” the old man begins, “have a serious talk... from all sides... Well, yes!... Um, shall we have some liqueur, huh? Glafira! Bring over the liqueur! Champagne wouldn’t be bad either, though, well, if we don’t have any... well, forget it... well, yes... this won’t do!”
The liqueur arrives. The old man drinks one glass after another.
“Um, so let’s discuss things,” he says. “This is a serious matter... your future... This won’t do!”
“It’s simply awful, Daddy, how you just love to talk nonstop!” Lidochka sighs.
“Well, yes,” the old man says, startled. “No, you see, I was just... pour se twaddler... don’t be angry....”
After dinner, the mother has a long whispered conversa-tion with her daughter.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re talking pure balderdash!” the old man thinks, pacing through the house. They don’t realize, the silly things, that this is serious... important... This won’t do! No!”
Night falls. Lidochka is lying on her bed awake. The old couple is not sleeping either, whispering to each other till dawn.
“Those damn flies don’t let one sleep!” Aleksei Borisitch grumbles. Yet it is not the flies that keep him awake, but happiness.
THE
GOOD
GERMAN
IVAN KARLOVITCH SCHWEI, the senior foreman at the Funk & Co. steel mill, had been sent by his boss to the town of Tver to carry out a project. After working on it for some four months, he became so bored without his young wife that he lost his appetite, and on two occasions even burst into tears. During the trip back to Moscow he closed his eyes, imagining how he would arrive home, how Marya the cook would open the door, and how his wife Natasha, with a cry of joy, would throw her arms around his neck.
“She’s not expecting me,” he thought. “So much the better—unexpected joy is best!”
He arrived in Moscow in the evening. While the porter went to get his luggage, Ivan Karlovitch had time enough to empty two bottles of beer in the station buffet. The beer made him feel very good, and as the cabman drove him from the station to Presnia he kept muttering: “Cabman, you good cabman! I love Russian peoples! You are a Russian man, my wife is a Russian man, and I am a Russian man. My father is German, but I am a Russian man. I wish to secede from Germany!”
Marya the cook opened the door just as he had imagined she would.
“You’re a Russian man and I’m a Russian man,” he muttered, handing over his luggage to her. “We’re all Russian peoples, and we have Russian languages! Where is Natasha?”
“She’s asleep.”
“In that case, don’t wake her... shhh... I’ll wake her myself. I want to frighten her, I’ll be a surprise! Shhh...”
Sleepy Marya took the luggage and went into the kitchen.
Smiling to himself, blinking, rubbing his hands together, Ivan Karlovitch tiptoed to the bedroom door and opened it carefully, fearing it would creak. It was dark and quiet inside.
“I’m going to starde her,” he thought to himself, and lit a match.
But poor German! As the blue sulfur flame of his match flared up, this was the picture he saw: in the bed nearest to the wall, his wife was sleeping, her head covered and only her bare feet showing. In the other bed lay a red-haired giant with long whiskers.
Ivan Karlovitch did not believe his eyes, and lit another match. He lit five matches, one after the other, but the picture remained just as unbelievable, horrifying, and shocking. The Germans feet started shaking, and a chill ran down his spine. The beer cloud suddenly lifted, and he felt as if his soul was fluttering up and down his legs. His first thought, his first urge, was to seize a chair and smash it over the sleeping man’s red head with all his might, and then grab his unfaithful wife by her bare feet and fling her through the window with such force that she would go crashing down onto the pavement.
“Oh, no! That’s not enough!” he decided after some reflection. “First I’ll disgrace them! I’ll go calling the police and her family, and then I’ll be killing them!”
He flung on his coat, and a minute later was out in the street again. He started crying bitterly. He wept and thought of human ingratitude. That barefoot woman had once been a poor seamstress, and he had brought her happiness, turning her into the wife of an educated foreman with a yearly salary of750 rubles at Funk & Co.! She had been a nobody! She had run around in cotton dresses like some parlor maid, and now, thanks to him, she wore a hat and gloves, and even Funk &c Co. called her “Madam.”