I was beginning, however, to feel bored, when suddenly I was joined by a young man, one Voinitsin by name, a student without a degree, who resided in the house of Alexandr Mihalitch in the capacity of...it would be hard to say precisely, of what. He was a first-rate shot, and could train dogs. I had known him before in Moscow. He was one of those young men who at every examination "played at dumb-show," that is to say, did not answer a single word to the professor"s questions. Such persons were also designated "the bearded students." (You will gather that this was in long past days.) This was how it used to be: they would call Voinitsin, for example. Voinitsin, who had sat upright and motionless in his place, bathed in a hot perspiration from head to foot, slowly and aimlessly looked about him, got up, hurriedly b.u.t.toned up his undergraduate"s uniform, and edged up to the examiner"s table. "Take a paper, please," the professor would say to him pleasantly. Voinitsin would stretch out his hand, and with trembling fingers fumble at the pile of papers. "No selecting, if you please," observed, in a jarring voice, an a.s.sistant-examiner, an irritable old gentleman, a professor in some other faculty, conceiving a sudden hatred for the unlucky bearded one. Voinitsin resigned himself to his fate, took a paper, showed the number on it, and went and sat down by the window, while his predecessor was answering his question. At the window Voinitsin never took his eyes off his paper, except that at times he looked slowly round as before, though he did not move a muscle. But his predecessor would finish at last, and would be dismissed with, "Good! you can go," or even "Good indeed, very good!" according to his abilities. Then they call Voinitsin: Voinitsin gets up, and with resolute step approaches the table. "Read your question," they tell him. Voinitsin raises the paper in both hands up to his very nose, slowly reads it, and slowly drops his hands. "Well, now, your answer, please," the same professor remarks languidly, throwing himself backwards, and crossing his arms over his breast.
There reigns the silence of the tomb. "Why are you silent?" Voinitsin is mute. The a.s.sistant-examiner begins to be restive. "Well, say something!" Voinitsin is as still as if he were dead. All his companions gaze inquisitively at the back of his thick, close-cropped, motionless head. The a.s.sistant-examiner"s eyes are almost starting out of his head; he positively hates Voinitsin. "Well, this is strange, really," observes the other examiner. "Why do you stand as if you were dumb? Come, don"t you know it? if so, say so." "Let me take another question," the luckless youth articulates thickly. The professors look at one another."
Well, take one," the head-examiner answers, with a wave of the hand.
Voinitsin again takes a paper, again goes to the window, again returns to the table, and again is silent as the grave. The a.s.sistant-examiner is capable of devouring him alive. At last they send him away and mark him a nought. You would think, "Now, at least, he will go." Not a bit of it! He goes back to his place, sits just as immovably to the end of the examination, and, as he goes out, exclaims: "I"ve been on the rack! what ill-luck!" and the whole of that day he wanders about Moscow, clutching every now and then at his head, and bitterly cursing his luckless fate.
He never, of course, touched a book, and the next day the same story was repeated.
So this was the Voinitsin who joined me. We talked about Moscow, about sport.
"Would you like me," he whispered to me suddenly, "to introduce you to the first wit of these parts?"
"If you will be so kind."
Voinitsin led me up to a little man, with a high tuft of hair on his forehead and moustaches, in a cinnamon-coloured frock-coat and striped cravat. His yellow, mobile features were certainly full of cleverness and sarcasm. His lips were perpetually curved in a flitting ironical smile; little black eyes, screwed up with an impudent expression, looked out from under uneven lashes. Beside him stood a country gentleman, broad, soft, and sweet--a veritable sugar-and-honey mixture--with one eye. He laughed in antic.i.p.ation at the witticisms of the little man, and seemed positively melting with delight. Voinitsin presented me to the wit, whose name was Piotr Petrovitch Lupihin. We were introduced and exchanged the preliminary civilities.
"Allow me to present to you my best friend," said Lupihin suddenly in a strident voice, seizing the sugary gentleman by the arm.
"Come, don"t resist, Kirila Selifanitch," he added; "we"re not going to bite you. I commend him to you," he went on, while the embarra.s.sed Kirila Selifanitch bowed with about as much grace as if he were undergoing a surgical operation; "he"s a most superior gentleman. He enjoyed excellent health up to the age of fifty, then suddenly conceived the idea of doctoring his eyes, in consequence of which he has lost one.
Since then he doctors his peasants with similar success.... They, to be sure, repay with similar devotion..."
"What a fellow it is!" muttered Kirila Selifanitch. And he laughed.
"Speak out, my friend; eh, speak out!" Lupihin rejoined. "Why, they may elect you a judge; I shouldn"t wonder, and they will, too, you see.
Well, to be sure, the secretaries will do the thinking for you, we may a.s.sume; but you know you"ll have to be able to speak, anyhow, even if only to express the ideas of others. Suppose the governor comes and asks, "Why is it the judge stammers?" And they"d say, let"s a.s.sume, "It"s a paralytic stroke." "Then bleed him," he"d say. And it would be highly indecorous, in your position, you"ll admit."
The sugary gentleman was positively rolling with mirth.
"You see he laughs," Lupihin pursued with a malignant glance at Kirila Selifanitch"s heaving stomach. "And why shouldn"t he laugh?" he added, turning to me: "he has enough to eat, good health, and no children; his peasants aren"t mortgaged--to be sure, he doctors them--and his wife is cracked." (Kirila Selifanitch turned a little away as though he were not listening, but he still continued to chuckle.) "I laugh too, while my wife has eloped with a land-surveyor." (He grinned.) "Didn"t you know that? What! Why, one fine day she ran away with him and left me a letter.
"Dear Piotr Petrovitch," she said, "forgive me: carried away by pa.s.sion, I am leaving with the friend of my heart."... And the land-surveyor only took her fancy through not cutting his nails and wearing tight trousers.
You"re surprised at that? "Why, this," she said, "is a man with no dissimulation about him."... But mercy on us! Rustic fellows like us speak the truth too plainly. But let us move away a bit.... It"s not for us to stand beside a future judge."...
He took me by the arm, and we moved away to a window.
"I"ve the reputation of a wit here," he said to me, in the course of conversation. "You need not believe that. I"m simply an embittered man, and I do my railing aloud: that"s how it is I"m so free and easy in my speech. And why should I mince matters, if you come to that; I don"t care a straw for anyone"s opinion, and I"ve nothing to gain; I"m spiteful--what of that? A spiteful man, at least, needs no wit. And, however enlightening it may be, you won"t believe it.... I say, now, I say, look at our host! There! what is he running to and fro like that for? Upon my word, he keeps looking at his watch, smiling, perspiring, putting on a solemn face, keeping us all starving for our dinner! Such a prodigy! a real court grandee! Look, look, he"s running again--bounding, positively, look!"
And Lupihin laughed shrilly.
"The only pity is, there are no ladies," he resumed with a deep sigh; "it"s a bachelor party, else that"s when your humble servant gets on.
Look, look," he cried suddenly: "Prince Kozelsky"s come--that tall man there, with a beard, in yellow gloves. You can see at once he"s been abroad... and he always arrives as late. He"s as heavy, I tell you, by himself, as a pair of merchant"s horses, and you should see how condescendingly he talks with your humble servant, how graciously he deigns to smile at the civilities of our starving mothers and daughters!... And he sometimes sets up for a wit, but he is only here for a little time; and oh, his witticisms! It"s for all the world like hacking at a ship"s cable with a blunt knife. He can"t bear me.... I"m going to bow to him."
And Lupihin ran off to meet the prince.
"And here comes my special enemy," he observed, turning all at once to me. "Do you see that fat man with the brown face and the bristles on his head, over there, that"s got his cap clutched in his hand, and is creeping along by the wall and glaring in all directions like a wolf? I sold him for 400 roubles a horse worth 1000, and that stupid animal has a perfect right now to despise me; though all the while he is so dest.i.tute of all faculty of imagination, especially in the morning before his tea, or after dinner, that if you say "Good morning!" to him, he"ll answer, "Is it?" "And here comes the general," pursued Lupihin, "the civilian general, a retired, dest.i.tute general. He has a daughter of beetroot-sugar, and a manufactory with scrofula.... Beg pardon, I"ve got it wrong... but there, you understand. Ah! and the architect"s turned up here! A German, and wears moustaches, and does not understand his business--a natural phenomenon!... though what need for him to understand his business so long as he takes bribes and sticks in pillars everywhere to suit the tastes of our pillars of society!"
Lupihin chuckled again.... But suddenly a wave of excitement pa.s.sed over the whole house. The grandee had arrived. The host positively rushed into the hall. After him ran a few devoted members of the household and eager guests.... The noisy talk was transformed into a subdued pleasant chat, like the buzzing of bees in spring within their hives. Only the turbulent wasp, Lupihin, and the splendid drone, Kozelsky, did not subdue their voices.... And behold, at last, the queen!--the great dignitary entered. Hearts bounded to meet him, sitting bodies rose; even the gentleman who had bought a horse from Lupihin poked his chin into his chest. The great personage kept up his dignity in an inimitable manner; throwing his head back, as though he were bowing, he uttered a few words of approbation, of which each was prefaced by the syllable _er_, drawled through his nose; with a sort of devouring indignation he looked at Prince Kozelsky"s democratic beard, and gave the dest.i.tute general with the factory and the daughter the forefinger of his right hand. After a few minutes, in the course of which the dignitary had had time to observe twice that he was very glad he was not late for dinner, the whole company trooped into the dining-room, the swells first.
There is no need to describe to the reader how they put the great man in the most important place, between the civilian general and the marshal of the province, a man of an independent and dignified expression of face, in perfect keeping with his starched shirt-front, his expanse of waistcoat, and his round snuff-box full of French snuff; how our host bustled about, and ran up and down, fussing and pressing the guests to eat, smiling at the great man"s back in pa.s.sing, and hurriedly s.n.a.t.c.hing a plate of soup or a bit of bread in a corner like a schoolboy; how the butler brought in a fish more than a yard long, with a nosegay in its mouth; how the surly-looking foot-men in livery sullenly plied every gentleman, now with Malaga, now dry Madeira; and how almost all the gentlemen, particularly the more elderly ones, drank off gla.s.s after gla.s.s with an air of reluctantly resigning themselves to a sense of duty; and finally, how they began popping champagne bottles and proposing toasts: all that is probably only too well known to the reader. But what struck me as especially noteworthy was the anecdote told us by the great man himself amid a general delighted silence.
Someone--I fancy it was the dest.i.tute general, a man familiar with modern literature--referred to the influence of women in general, and especially on young men. "Yes, yes," chimed in the great man, "that"s true; but young men ought to be kept in strict subjection, or else, very likely, they"ll go out of their senses over every petticoat." (A smile of child-like delight flitted over the faces of all the guests; positive grat.i.tude could be seen in one gentleman"s eyes.) "For young men are idiots." (The great man, I suppose for the sake of greater impressiveness, sometimes changed the accepted accentuation of words.)
"My son, Ivan, for instance," he went on; "the fool"s only just twenty--and all at once he comes to me and says: "Let me be married, father." I told him he was a fool; told him he must go into the service first.... Well, there was despair--tears... but with me... no nonsense." (The words "no nonsense" the great man seemed to enunciate more with his stomach than his lips; he paused and glanced majestically at his neighbour, the general, while he raised his eyebrows higher than any one could have expected. The civilian general nodded agreeably a little on one side, and with extraordinary rapidity winked with the eye turned to the great man.) "And what do you think?" the great man began again: "now he writes to me himself, and thanks me for looking after him when he was a fool.... So that"s the way to act." All the guests, of course, were in complete agreement with the speaker, and seemed quite cheered up by the pleasure and instruction they derived from him....
After dinner, the whole party rose and moved into the drawing-room with a great deal of noise--decorous, however; and, as it were, licensed for the occasion.... They sat down to cards.
I got through the evening somehow, and charging my coachman to have my carriage ready at five o"clock next morning, I went to my room. But I was destined, in the course of that same day, to make the acquaintance of a remarkable man.
In consequence of the great number of guests staying in the house, no one had a bedroom to himself. In the small, greenish, damp room to which I was conducted by Alexandr Mihalitch"s butler, there was already another guest, quite undressed. On seeing me, he quickly ducked under the bed-clothes, covered himself up to the nose, turned a little on the soft feather-bed, and lay quiet, keeping a sharp look-out from under the round frill of his cotton night-cap. I went up to the other bed (there were only two in the room), undressed, and lay down in the damp sheets.
My neighbour turned over in bed.... I wished him good-night.
Half-an-hour went by. In spite of all my efforts, I could not get to sleep: aimless and vague thoughts kept persistently and monotonously dragging one after another on an endless chain, like the buckets of a hydraulic machine.
"You"re not asleep, I fancy?" observed my neighbour.
"No, as you see," I answered. "And you"re not sleepy either, are you?"
"I"m never sleepy."
"How"s that?"
"Oh! I go to sleep--I don"t know what for. I lie in bed, and lie in bed, and so get to sleep."
"Why do you go to bed before you feel sleepy?"
"Why, what would you have me do?"
I made no answer to my neighbour"s question.
"I wonder," he went on, after a brief silence, "how it is there are no fleas here? Where should there be fleas if not here, one wonders?"
"You seem to regret them," I remarked.
"No, I don"t regret them; but I like everything to be consecutive."
"O-ho!" thought I; "what words he uses."
My neighbour was silent again.
"Would you like to make a bet with me?" he said again, rather loudly.
"What about?"
I began to be amused by him.
"Hm... what about? Why, about this: I"m certain you take me for a fool."
"Really," I muttered, astounded.
"For an ignoramus, for a rustic of the steppes.... Confess...."
"I haven"t the pleasure of knowing you," I responded. "What can make you infer?..."