I read French books and look out of the open window. I see the sharp points of my garden fence, two or three wizened little trees, and then—beyond the fence—a road, the fields, a broad belt of pine-wood. I often enjoy watching a little boy and girl, both with fair hair and torn clothes, as they climb the fence and laugh at my hairless pate. In their gleaming little eyes I read the words: 'Go up, thou bald head.' They must be pretty well the only people who care nothing for my fame and rank.
Out here I don't have callers every day, and I'll mention only the visits of Nicholas and Peter Ignatyevich. Nicholas usually comes on a Sunday or saint's day—supposedly on business, but really to see me. He arrives quite tipsy—which he never is in winter.
'What news?' I ask, going to meet him in the hall.
'Sir!' says he, pressing a hand to his heart and looking at me with the fervour of a lover. 'Sir! May God punish me, may lightning strike me where I stand! Gaudeamus igitur juvenes tra-la-la!'
He kisses me eagerly on shoulders, sleeves and buttons.
'Is all well ?' I ask.
'Sir, I swear by Almighty '
He keeps on swearing to no purpose and soon grows tedious, so I send him to the kitchen where they give him a meal.
Peter Ignatyevich also comes out on holidays, especially to look me up and share his thoughts. He usually sits at my table. Modest, dapper, judicious, not venturing to cross his legs or lean his elbows on the table, he recounts in a soft, level, smooth, pedantic little voice sundry supposedly fascinating and spicy novelties culled from journals and pamphlets. All these items are alike, all add up to something like this. A Frenchman has made a discovery. Someone else, a German, has caught him out by proving that this discovery was made back in 1870 by some American. Now someone else again, another German, has out^na:uvred both—proving that they slipped up by taking air bubbles for dark pigment under the microscope. Even when trying to amuse me, Peter Ignatyevich discourses in long-winded, circumstantial fashion like one defending his dissertation—giving a detailed catalogue ofhis bibliographical sources, endeavo^ъg not to misquote his names or the dates and issues of his jou^^s, and never calling someone plain 'Petit', but always 'Jean-Jacques Petit'. Sometimes he stays for a meal, and spends the whole time telling these same pithy anecdotes which depress the whole table. Should Gnekker and Liza mention fugue and counterpoint, or Brahms and Bach, in his presence, he modestly drops his eyes and betrays embarrassment, ashamed for such trivialities to be invoked before two serious people like him and me.
In my present mood five minutes of him is enough to bore me as if I'd been seeing and hearing him from time immemorial. I loathe the poor fellow. His quiet, level voice and pedantic speech shrivel me up, his stories numb my brain.
He has the greatest good will for me, he only talks to me to give me pleasure, and I repay him by goggling back as if trying to hypnotize him.
'Go!' I think. 'Go, go, go!'
But not being susceptible to telepathy hejust stays on and on and on.
When he's with me, I'm obsessed by the thought that he'll very likely be appointed to succeed me when I die, and my poor lecture- room seems to me like an oasis with a dried-up spring. I'm surly with Peter Ignatyevich—tacitum and gloomy, as if these thoughts were his fault, not mine. When he praises German scholars in his usual fashion, I no longer make fun of him good-humouredly, as once I did.
'Your Germans are asses,' I mutter gloomily.
It reminds me of when Professor Nikita Krylov was alive. He was once bathing with Pirogov in Revel, and lost his temper because the water was so cold. 'These Germans are scoundrels!' he cursed. I treat Peter Ignatyevich badly. Only when he's leaving—when I look through the window and glimpse his grey hat flickering behind the garden fence—do I want to call him back and say: 'Forgive me, dear fellow!'
Lunch is more boring than in winter. That same Gnekker, whom I now loathe and despise, eats with me almost daily. Where once I endured his presence in silence, I now make cutting remarks at his expense, causing my wife and Liza to blush. Yielding to malice, I often utter complete imbecilities without knowing why. For instance, I once gave Gnekker a long, contemptuous stare. Then I suddenly barked out, apropos of nothing:
'An eagle on occasion may swoop lower than a hen,
But the clouds the eagle soars through are beyond that chicken's ken.'
Most aggravating of all, Hen Gnekker turns out far cleverer than the professorial eagle. Knowing that he has my wife and daughter on his side, he pursues the tactic of answering my cutting remarks with condescending silence.
'The old boy has a screw loose,' he implies. 'So why talk to him?'
Or else he teases me good-humouredly. It's astonishing how petty one can be—I can spend the whole meal brooding on the day when Gnekker will turn out an impostor, Liza and my wife will realize their mistake, and I shall make fun of them. But fancy conceiving such inane ideas with one foot in the grave!
Nowadays we also have disagreements such as I could once conceive only through hearsay. Shameful as it is, I'll describe one which occurred the other afternoon.
I'm sitting in my room smoking a pipe. In comes my wife as usual, sits downwn and says what a good idea it would be to pop over to Kharkov now that the weather's warm and we're free, and find out what sort of man this Gnekker really is.
'All right, I'll go,' I agree.
Pleased with me, my wife gets up and goes to the door, but comes back at once.
'By the way, I've another request,' says she. 'I know you'll be angry, but it's my duty to warn you—. I'm sorry, Nicholas, but there's talk among our friends and neighbours about your visiting Katya so much. She's a clever, educated girl, I'm not denying that, and she's good company. But for someone at your time of life, and in your social position, to enjoy her society—well, it is rather odd, you know—. What's more, her reputation is hardly '
I have a rush of blood to the head. My eyes flash, I jump up, I clutch my head, I stamp my feet.
'Leave me alone!' I shout ina voice unlike my o^n. 'Leave me alone! Leave me!'
My face must look terrible, and my voice must be strange indeed, for my wife suddenly blenches and shrieks, also in a desperate voice unlike her ownwn. At our shouts Liza and Gnekker run in, followed by Yegor.
'Leave me alone!' I shout. 'Get out! Leave me!'
My legs are numb and bereft of sensation, I feel myself fall into someone's arms. Then I briefly hear the sound of weeping, and plunge into a swoon which lasts for two or three hours.
As for Katya, she visits me daily in the late afternoon, and neither our neighbours nor our friends can fail to notice that, of course. She comes in for a minute, then takes me out for a drive. She keeps her own horse, and a new chaise bought this summer. By and large she lives pretty lavishly—having taken an expensive detached villa with a big garden, she has moved all her belongings there from town, and keeps two maids and a coachman.
'Katya,' I often ask her, 'what will you live on when you've spent all your father's money?'
'We'll see about that,' answers she.
'That money deserves to be taken more seriously, my dear. It was earned by a good man's honest labour.'