'Illness is neither here nor there,' Katya breaks in. 'Your eyes have been opened, that's all, and you've seen what, for some reason, you once preferred to ignore. The main thing is, you must make a clean break with your family and get away—that's what I think.'
'Nonsense.'
'You don't love them, so why pretend? Call that a family! Nonentities! If they dropped dead today, not a soul would miss them tomorrow. '
Katya despises my wife and daughter as much as they hate her. Nowadays one can hardly talk about the right to despise other people. But put yourself in Katya's place, and admit such a right—then she's clearly as entitled to scorn my wife and Liza as they are to hate her.
'Nonentities!' she repeats. 'Did you get any lunch today? Don't tell me they remembered to tell you it was ready! Or that they haven't forgotten your existence!'
'Please be quiet, Katya,' I say sternly.
'Think I enjoy talking about them? I wish I'd never set eyes on them! Now, listen, my dear. Throw everything up and leave—go abroad, and the sooner the better.'
'Oh, rubbish! What about the university?'
'Leave the university as well—what do you want with it? It makes no sense, anyway. You've been lecturing for thirty years, and where are your pupils? Are there many distinguished scholars among them? Just try counting them! As for breeding the sort of doctor who exploits ignorance and earns his hundred thousand roubles—it doesn't need a good man or a brilliant intellect for that! You're not needed.'
I am aghast. 'My God, you're so harsh, so very harsh! Now, be quiet, or I'll leave—1 don't know how to answer such rudeness.'
The maid comes in to announce tea, and over the samovar we change the subject, thank God. Having had my grouse, I now wish to indulge another senile weakness—reminiscences. I tell Katya about my past—informing her, to my o^n amazement, of details that have survived all unsuspected in my memory, while she listens with bated breath, delighted and proud. I particularly like telling her how I was once at a school for clergy's sons, and dreamt of going on to the university.
'I used to walk in our school garden,' I tell her. 'A song or an accordion's grinding floats on the breeze from some faraway tavern, or a troika with bells careers past the school fence—and that's quite enough to fill my heart, and even my stomach, legs and arms, with a sudden happy glow.
'Listening to an accordion, or a dying peal of bells, I'd imagine myself a doctor, and paint pictures of the scene—each better than the last. Now my dreams have come true, as you see. I've received more than I dared to hope. For thirty years I've been a well-loved professor, I've had excellent colleagues, I've enjoyed honours and distinction. I've loved, I've married for love, I've had children. When I look back, in fact, my whole life seems a beautiful and accomplished composition. Now it only remains not to spoil the finale, for which purpose I have to die like a man. If death really is a menace, I have to meet it as befits a teacher, a scholar and the citizen of a Christian country—confidently and with equanimity. But I'm spoiling the finale. I feel I'm drowning, I run off to you, I ask for help, and—"Drown away,'' say you, "that's just what you should be doing".'
Then a bell sounds in the hall. Katya and I recognize the ring.
'It must be Michael Fyodorovich,' we say.
A minute later my colleague, the literary specialist Michael Fyodorovich, comes in—a tall, well-built, clean-shaven man of fifty with thick grey hair and black eyebrows. He's a good-natured man, an excellent colleague, and comes of an old, rather successful and accomplished family of gentry which has played a prominent part in our literary and educational history. He himself is intelligent, accomplished, highly educated—but he has his foibles. We're all peculiar, we're all freaks in some degree, but his quirks are somewhat extreme, and they're rather a menace to his friends. I know quite a few of them whom his eccentricities have blinded to his many virtues.
He enters and slowly peels off" his gloves.
'Hallo,' says he in a deep, velvety voice. 'Having tea? How convenient. It's hellishly cold.'
Then he sits down at table, takes a glass and starts speaking immediately. Nothing is more typical of his delivery than his unfailing jocularity—a sort of cross between philosophy and buffoonery reminiscent of Shakespeare's grave-diggers. He always treats of serious topics—but never treats them seriously. Though his judgements are always harsh and acrimonious, the soft, level, jocular tone somehow prevents the harshness and acrimony fromjarring, and one soon grows used to them. Each evening he brings along five or six items of university gossip With which he leads off when he sits down at table.
'Oh Lord,' he sighs with a sardonic twitch of his black eyebrows. 'There are some clowns in this world, I must say!'
'Meaning what?' asks Katya.
'I'm leaving a lecture this morning when I meet friend So-and-so on the stairs, the old fool. He walks along with that horsy chin jutting out as usual, looking for someone to hear him moan about his migraine, his wife and the students who won't go to his lectures. Well, think I, he's spotted me, and I'm lost, the game's up '
And so it goes on, all in that style. Or else he leads off like this.
'I went to dear old Such-and-such's public lecture yesterday. The less said about this, the better—but I'm astonished that the dear old alma mater dares put such numskulls as this creature, such certified boobies, on public display. Why, the man's an imbecile in the international class—oh yes he is, European champion! He lectures, believe it or not, as ifhe was sucking a boiled sweet—champ, champ, champ! He panics, he can't keep track of his notes, while his wretched thoughts crawl along about as fast as an abbot on a bicycle, and above all you can't make head or tail of what he's driving at. It's so fiendishly dull, the very flies drop dead. The only comparable bore is the annpal ceremony in the university hall, the day of our traditional oration, da^ftation take it!'
Then he makes an abrupt transition.
'About three years ago, as Nicholas here will remember, I had to give that oration. It was hot and stuffy, my uniform was too tight under the arms—sheer hell it was! I lecture for half an hour, one hour, an hour and a half, two hours. "Well," think I, "I've only ten pages left, praise the Lord!" And there are four pages at the end that I needn't bring in at all—I'd reckoned on leaving them out. So I reckon I've only six pages left. But then I glance in front of me, see? And I notice some general with a medal ribbon, and a bishop—sitting together in the front row. The poor creatures are bored rigid, their eyes are popping out of their heads in their efforts to stay awake, yet they try to look as if they're attending, they make out that they understand and appreciate my lecture. "Very well," think I, "if you like it so much you can da^A well have it, and serve you right!" So I go ahead and give them the last four pages too.'
As is the way of these sardonic people, only his eyes and eyebrows smile when he speaks. His eyes then express neither hatred nor malice, but a great deal of wit, and the peculiar foxy cunning only seen in very observant people. And talking of eyes, I've spotted another peculiarity in his. When he takes a glass from Katya, listens to her speak or glances after her as she leaves the room on some brief errand, I notice something tender, supplicatory and innocent in his look.