Ragin usually lay on the sofa during these visits, listening with his face to the wall and his teeth clenched. Layers of scum seemed to be forming inside him, and after each of his friend's visits he felt as if these deposits were mounting higher and higher until they seemed to be clutching at his throat.
Trying to suppress trivial worries, he quickly thought about himself, Khobotov and Michael Averyanovich all being bound to die and vanish without trace sooner or later. If one imagined a ghost flashing through space past the earth in a million years' time, it would sec nothing but clay and naked crags. Culture, moral laws ... it will all disappear, it won't even have burdocks growing on it. So what if you are ashamed to face a shopkeeper? What о/the wretched Khobotov? Or Michael Averyanovich's irksome friendship? These things were mere insubstantial trifles.
Such arguments no longer helped, though. Barely had he pictured the earth's globe in a million years' time beforejack-booted Khobotov popped up behind anaked crag—or MichaelAveryanovich, forced guffawand all. One could even hear his mortified whisper about that Warsaw loan.
'I'll pay you back in a day or two, old man. You rely on me.'
XVI
One afternoon Michael Averyanovich arrived when Ragin was lying on the sofa and Khobotov chanced to turn up with his potassium bromide at the same time. Ragin rose ponderously to a sitting position and braced both hands on the sofa.
'Well, old man, you're a far better colour than you were yesterday,' began Michael Averyanovich. 'You look no end of a lad—by golly, so you do!'
'It's high time you were on the mend, dear colleague,' yawned Khobotov. 'You must be sick of all this rigmarole.'
'Oh, we're on the mend all right,' said jolly Michael Averyanovich. 'We shall live another hundred years, shan't we now?'
'I won't say a hundred, but we'll hold out for another twenty,' Khobotov consoled him. 'Don't worry, dear colleague, don't despair. And don't cloud the issue, now.'
'We'll show what stuff we're made of,' guffawed Michael Averyanovich, slapping his friend on the knee. 'We'll show them a thing or two. We'll be off to the Caucasus next summer with a bit of Iuck, and we'll ride all over it on horseback—clip-<lop, clip-<lop, clip-<lop! And when we get back from the Caucasus it'll be wedding bells for us, I shouldn't wonder.'
Michael Averyanovich gave a crafty wink.
'We'll marry you, my dear old pal, we'll marry you off.'
Ragin suddenly felt the deposit of scum reach the level ofhis throat. His heart pounded violently.
'That's pretty cheap,' he said, quickly rising to his feet and going over to the window. 'Can't you see you're talking vulgar nonsense?'
He wanted to continue gently and politely, but suddenly clenched his fists in spite of himself, lifting them above his head.
'Leave me alone!' he shouted in a strange voice, turning crimson and trembling all over. 'Clear out of here! Both of you, clear out!'
Michael Averyanovich and Khobotov stood up aid stared at him: first with amazement, then in fear.
'Get out, both ofyou!' Ragin kept shouting. 'Imbeciles! Half-wits! I don't need your friendship, you oaf, or your medicines. Oh, what a rotten, dirty business!'
Exchanging frantic glances, Khobotov and Michael Averyanovich backed towards the door and debouched into the lobby. Ragin seized the bottle ofpotassium bromide. He hurled it after them and it crashed, ringing, on the threshold.
'You go to hell!' Ragin bellowed tearfully, rushing into the lobby. 'To blazes with you!'
After his visitors had left Ragin lay on the sofa, trembling as if with a fever.
'Imbeciles! Half-wits!' he kept repeating for some time.
His first thought on calming downwn was how terribly embarrassed and depressed poor Michael Averyanovich must feel, and how horrible all this was. Nothing like it had ever happened before. Where were his intellect and tact ? What of his search for the meaning of things, his philosophical detachment ?
Ashamed and annoyed with himself, the doctor lay awake al night and went to the post office at ten o'clock next morning to apologize to Michael Averyanovich.
The postmaster was deeply moved.
'We'll forget the whole thing,' sighed he, firmly shaking Ragin's hand. 'Let bygones be bygones.
'Bring a chair, Lyubavkin!' he suddenly yeUed, so loudly that the postal staff and customers all started.
'And you can wait!' he yelled at a peasant woman who was thrusting a registered letter towards him through the griUe. 'Can't you see I'm busy?
'We'll forget al about it,' he continued, addressing Ragin affectionately. 'Now, sit downwn, my dear chap, I do implore you.'
He stroked his knees in silence for a minute.
'I never even dreamt of taking offence,' he said. 'One must make allowances for illness, I know that. Yesterday's attack alarmed the doctor and myself, and we had a long talk about you afterwards. Why won'tyou take your health seriously, old man ? You can't go on like this.
'Excuse an old friend's bluntness,' Michael Averyanovich whispered, 'but you do live under most unsuitable conditions: cramped and dirty, with no one to nurse you and no money for treatment. My dear friend, the doctor and I do beg you most earnestly to heed our advice and go into hospital. You will be properly fed there, you'll be nursed and you'll receive treatment. Eugene Khobotov may be a bit uncouth, between ourselves. Still, he does know his stuff and he is completely reliable. He has promised to attend to you.'
Ragin was moved by the postmaster's sincere sympathy and by the tears which suddenly glistened on his cheeks.
'Don't believe a word of it, my good sir,' he whispered, laying his hand on his heart. 'Don't believe them, it's al a trick. There's only one thing wrong with me: it has taken me twenty years to find a single intelligent man in the whole townwn, and he is insane. I'm not ill at all, I'm just trapped in a vicious circle from which there is no way out. But I don't mind, I'm ready for anything.'
'Then go into hospital, my dear fellow.'
'It can be a hole in the ground for all I care.'
'Promise me you'll do everything Dr. Khobotov says, old man.'
'All right, I promise. But I repeat, sir, I am caught up in a vicious circle. Everything, even my friends' sincere sympathy, tends the same way now: to my ruin. I'm finished and I'm man enough to recognize it.'
'You'll get better, old chap.'
'Why talk like that?' asked Ragin irritably. 'What I am now experiencing ... most people go through it at the end of their lives. When you are told you have something like bad kidneys or an enlarged heart and you take treatment, when you're called a lunatic or a criminal— when people suddenly take notice of you, in other words—then you can be sure you are trapped in a vicious circle from which you wiU never escape. The more you try to get away the more you are enmeshed in the toils. You may as well give in becauso no human effort will save you now, or that's what I think.'
Meanwhile a crowd was gathering by the grille. Not wanting to be a nuisance, Ragin stood up and began saying good-bye. Michael Averyanovich made him repeat his promise and saw him to the outside door.
Late that afternoon Khobotov unexpectedly presented himself to Dr. Ragin in his short fur coat and jack-boots.
'I have some business with you, dear colleague,' he said in a tone which seemed to dismiss the previous day's happenings. 'Now, how about corning along to a little consultation, eh ?'
Believing that Khobotov wanted to take him for a stroll or really would help him to earn some money, Ragin put his hat and coat on, and they went into the street together. Ragin was glad ofthe chance to redress the wrong which he had done on the previous day and to make peace, so he felt grateful to Khobotov for not breathing a hint about the matter: evidently, to spare his feelings. Such delicacy was hardly to be expected from a being so uncivilized.