On the following days Ragin said he was ill and did not leave his hotel room. He lay facing the back of the sofa, suffering while his friend entertained him with conversation or resting during his friend's absence. He was angry with hirnselffor making the trip, and angry with his friend who became more garrulous and hail-fellow-well-met every day. Ragin simply could not pitch his thoughts in a serious and elevated key.
'I am suffering from the very environment that Ivan Gromov spoke of,' he thought, incensed at his o^n pettiness. 'Anyway, that's all nonsense. When I'm back home everything will be the same as ever.'
St. Petersburg was no different. He stayed in his hotel room for days on end, lying on the sofa, and only got up for a glass of beer.
Michael Averyanovich kept urging him on to Warsaw.
'What do I want there, old man?' pleaded Ragin. 'You go by yourself and let me go home, I beg you.'
'Most certainly not!' Michael Averyanovich protested. 'It's a staggering city. It was there that I spent the five happiest years of my life.'
Lacking the strength of character to get his own way, Ragin went to Warsaw much against his will. There he stayed in his hotel room and lay on the sofa, furious with himself, with his friend and with the servants who stubbornly refused to understand Russian, while Michael Averyanovich—hale, hearty and jolly as ever—scoured the city from morning till evening looking up his old pals. Sometimes he didn't come home at all. After one such night, spent heaven knows where, he returned in the early morning, greatly agitated, red-faced, with hair awry. He spent some time pacing the room muttering to himself, then stood still and said:
'Honour above everything!'
After a little more pacing he clutched his head.
'Yes, honour above everything!' he pronounced tragically. 'I curse the moment when I first thought of corning to this hell-hole.
'Despise me, dear friend,' he told the doctor. 'I have lost all my money gambling. You must lend me five hundred roubles!'
Counting out five hundred roubles, Ragin silently handed them to his friend, who, still crimson with shame and rage, mumbled some superfluous oath, put his cap on and went out. Returning two hours later, he flopped in an arm-chair and gave a loud sigh.
'Honour is saved,' said he. 'So let us be on our way, my friend. I won't stay one minute longer in this bloody city. Swindlers! Austrian spies!'
It was November when the friends returned to their to^n and snow lay deep in the streets. Dr. Khobotov was doing Ragin's job, but was still living in his old lodgings, waiting for Ragin to come back and move out of his hospital rooms. The ugly woman whom he called his cook was already established in one of the out-buildings.
In to^n new rumours were circulating about the hospital. The ugly woman was said to have quarrelled with the manager, and he was alleged to have gone do^n on his knees and asked her forgiveness.
Ragin had to find himself new lodgings on the day after his arrival.
'Excuse an indiscreet question, my friend,' said the postmaster timidly, 'but what are your means?'
Ragin silently counted his money.
'Eighty-six roubles,' he replied.
'I didn't mean that.' Michael Averyanovich was embarrassed, not grasping the doctor's purport. I meant how much money do you have altogether.'
'I've just told you, eighty-six roubles. I have no more.'
Michael Averyanovich had thought the doctor a man ofhonour and integrity, but he still suspected him of having tucked away at least twenty thousand. Now that he knew Ragin for a pauper with nothing to live on, he suddenly burst into tears for some reason and embraced his friend.
XV
Dr. Ragin was now living in a three-windowed cottage belonging to a Mrs. Belov, a to^nswoman of the lower sort. This cottage had only three rooms apart from the kitchen. Two of them, with windows on the street, were occupied by the doctor while Dar^^hka,
Mrs. Belov and her three children lived in the third and the kitchen. The landlady's lover, a rowdy, drunken yokel who terrified the children and Daryushka, sometimes stayed the night. When he turned up and installed himself in the kitchen, clamouring for vodka, everyone felt uncomfortable. Taking pity on the crying children, the doctor took them into his room and laid them to rest on the floor, which gave him great pleasure.
He still rose at eight in the morning, had tea and then sat down to read his old books and magazines—he couldn't afford new ones. Whether because the books were old, or perhaps because ofhis changed circumstances, reading no longer held his attention, but tired him. For the sake of something to do, he was making a detailed catalogue of his books, gluing labels to the spines and finding this meticulous, mechanical work more interesting than reading. In some mysterious way the monotonous fiddling relieved his brain, his mind would go blank and time passed quickly. Peeling potatoes in the kitchen with Daryushka or picking dirt out ofthe buckwheat ... even that he found interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to church. Standing by the wall and screwing up his eyes, he listened to the choir and thought about his father, his mother, his university and about different religions. He felt relaxed and sad. Leaving the church later, he would find himself regretting that the service had ended so soon.
He twice went to the hospital to talk to Gromov, but on each occasion Gromov was unusually agitated and angry. He asked to be left in peace, saying that he was utterly sick of trivial tittle-tattle and required of these damn blackguards only one recompense for his sufferings: solitary confinement. Would they deny him even that? As Ragin was taking farewell and wishing him good night each time, Gromov snarled and told him to go to hell.
Now Ragin didn't know whether to go and sec Gromov a third time. He wanted to, though.
Ragin had been accustomed to patrolling his rooms in the afternoons and thinking, but now he would lie facing the back of his sofa between lunch and afternoon tea, indulging in niggling reflections which he was quite unable to repress. He was hurt at receiving neither a pension nor a lump sum in return for more than twenty years' service. He hadn't done an honest job, admittedly, but all functionaries receive pensions without distinction, don't they, honest or dishonest ? It's just the way things are done nowadays, to be fair to every one—it isn't your moral qualities or competence, it's just doing your job, however you do it, that earns you your rank, medals and pension. So why should Ragin be the one exception? He had absolutely no money. He was ashamed to pass the local shop and see the woman who kept it. There were thirty-two roubles owing for beer already and Mrs. Belov was owed money too. Daryushka was selling old clothes and books on the side, and she lied to the landlady: said the doctor was expecting a large sum of money shortly.
He was angry with himself for spending a thousand roubles' savings on his holiday. How useful that sum would be now! He was also annoyed at not being left in peace. Khobotov thought himself in duty bound to visit his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about the mandisgusted Ragin: his smug face, his bad m^^ers, his patronizing air, his use of the word 'colleague', his jack-boots. Most odious of all, Khobotov felt obliged to give Ragin medical treatment and believed that he was actually doing so. He brought a phial ofpotassium bromide on each visit, and some rhubarb pills.
Michael Averyanovich also felt obliged to visit his friend and amuse him. He always entered Ragin's room with an air ofbogus nonchalance, uttering an affected guffaw, and assuring his friend that he looked splendid today and that matters were on the mend, thank God—from which it might be deduced that he thought his friend's situation desperate. He still hadn't paid back the money borrowed in Warsaw and was weighed do^ by a burden of guilt. Being on edge, he tried to guffaw the more uproariously and to tell funnier stories. Now apparently never-ending, his anecdotes and tales were excruciating both to Ragin and himself.