“Here, Pavel, Pavel!” Pelagia Ivanovna cried, rousing her husband from a
nap. “Do go and help Stepa! He is sitting there crying again over his
lessons. It must be something he can’t understand.”
Pavel Vasilitch got up, made the sign of the cross over his yawning
mouth, and said meekly:
“Very well, dear.”
The cat sleeping beside him also jumped up, stretched its tail in the
air, arched its back, and half-closed its eyes. The mice could be heard
scuttling behind the hangings. Having put on his slippers and
dressing-gown, Pavel Vasilitch passed into the dining-room all ruffled
and heavy with sleep. A second cat that had been sniffing at a plate of
cold fish on the window-sill jumped to the floor as he entered, and hid
in the cupboard.
“Who told you to go smelling that?” Pavel Vasilitch cried with vexation,
covering the fish with a newspaper. “You’re more of a pig than a cat!”
A door led from the dining-room into the nursery. There, at a table
disfigured with deep gouges and stains, sat Stepa, a schoolboy of ten
with tearful eyes and a petulant face. He was hugging his knees to his
chin and swaying backward and forward like a Chinese idol with his eyes
fixed angrily on the schoolbook before him.
“So you’re learning your lessons, eh?” asked Pavel Vasilitch, yawning
and taking his seat at the table beside him. “That’s the way, sonny.
You’ve had your play and your nap, and you’ve eaten your pancakes, and
to-morrow will be Lent, a time of repentance; so now you’re at work. The
happiest day must have an end. What do those tears mean? Are your
lessons getting the better of you? It’s hard to do lessons after eating
pancakes! That’s what ails you, little sonny!”
“Why do you laugh at the child?” calls Pelagia Ivanovna from the next
room. “Show him how to do his lessons, instead of making fun of him! Oh,
what a trial he is! He’ll be sure to get a bad mark to-morrow!”
“What is it you don’t understand?” asked Pavel Vasilitch of Stepa.
“This here, how to divide these fractions,” the boy answered crossly.
“The division of fractions by fractions.”
“H’m, you little pickle, that’s easy, there’s nothing about it to
understand. You must do the sum right, that’s all. To divide one
fraction by another you multiply the numerator of the first by the
denominator of the second in order to get the numerator of the quotient.
Very well. Now the denominator of the first——”
“I know that already!” Stepa interrupted him, flicking a nutshell off
the table. “Show me an example.”
“An example? Very well, let me have a pencil. Now, then, listen to me.
Supposing that we want to divide seven-eighths by two-fifths. Very well,
then the proposition is this: we want to divide these two fractions by
one another—Is the samovar boiling?”
“I don’t know.”
“Because it’s eight o’clock and time for tea. Very well, now listen to
me. Supposing that we divide seven-eighths not by two-fifths, but by
two, that is by the numerator only. What is the answer?”
“Seven-sixteenths.”
“Splendid! Good boy! Now, then, sonny, the trick is this: as we have
divided—let me see—as we have divided it by two, of course—wait a
minute, I’m getting muddled myself. I remember when I was a boy at
school we had a Polish arithmetic master named Sigismund Urbanitch, who
used to get muddled over every lesson. He would suddenly lose his wits
while he was in the midst of demonstrating a proposition, blush to the
roots of his hair, and rush about the classroom as if the devil were
after him. Then he would blow his nose four or five times and burst into
tears. But we were generous to him, we used to pretend not to notice it,
and would ask him whether he had the toothache. And yet we were a class
of pirates, of cutthroats, I can tell you, but, as you see, we were
generous. We boys weren’t puny like you when I was a youngster; we were
great big chaps, you never saw such great strapping fellows! There was
Mamakin, for instance, in the third grade. Lord! What a giant he was!
Why, that colossus was seven feet high! The whole house shook when he
walked across the floor and he would knock the breath out of your body
if he laid his hand on your shoulder. Not only we boys, but even the
masters feared him. Why Mamakin would sometimes——”
Pelagia Ivanovna’s footsteps resounded in the next room. Pavel Vasilitch
winked at the door and whispered:
“Mother’s coming, let’s get to work! Very well, then, sonny,” he
continued, raising his voice. “We want to divide this fraction by that
one. All right. To do that we must multiply the numerator of the first
by——”
“Come in to tea!” called Pelagia Ivanovna.
Father and son left their arithmetic and went in to tea. Pelagia
Ivanovna was already seated at the dining-table with the silent aunt and
another aunt who was deaf and dumb and old granny Markovna, who had
assisted Stepa into the world. The samovar was hissing and emitting jets
of steam that settled in large, dark shadows upon the ceiling. The cats
came in from the hall, sleepy, melancholy, their tails standing straight
up in the air.
“Do have some preserves with your tea, Markovna!” said Pelagia Ivanovna
turning to the old dame. “To-morrow will be Lent, so you must eat all
you can.”
Markovna helped herself to a large spoonful of jam, raised it to her
lips, and swallowed it with a sidelong glance at Pavel Vasilitch. Next
moment a sweet smile broke over her face, a smile almost as sweet as the
jam itself.
“These preserves are perfectly delicious!” she exclaimed. “Did you make
them yourself, Pelagia Ivanovna, dearie?”
“Yes, of course, who else could have made them? I do everything myself.
Stepa, darling, was your tea too weak for you? Mercy, you’ve finished it
already! Come, hand me your cup, sweetheart, and let me give you some
more.”
“That young Mamakin I was telling you about, sonny,” continued Pavel
Vasilitch, turning to Stepa, “couldn’t abide our French teacher. ‘I’m a
gentleman!’ he used to exclaim. ‘I won’t be lorded over by a Frenchman!’
Of course he used to be flogged for it, and badly flogged, too. When he
knew he was in for a thrashing he used to jump through the window and
take to his heels, not showing his nose in school after that for five or
six days. Then his mother would go to the head master and beg him for
pity’s sake to find her Mishka and give the scoundrel a thrashing, but
the head master used to say: ‘That’s all very well, madam, but no five
of our men can hold that fellow!’”
“My goodness, what dreadful boys there are in the world!” whispered
Pelagia Ivanovna, fixing terrified eyes on her husband. “His poor
mother!”
A silence followed—Stepa yawned loudly as he contemplated the Chinaman
on the tea-caddy whom he had seen at least a thousand times before.
Markovna and the two aunts sipped their tea primly from their saucers.
The air was close and oppressive with the heat of the stove. The
lassitude that comes to the satiated body when it is forced to continue
eating was depicted on the faces and in the movements of the family. The
samovar had been taken away and the table had been cleared, but they
still continued to sit about the board. Pelagia Ivanovna jumped up from
time to time and ran into the kitchen with a look of horror on her face
to confer with the cook about supper. The aunts both sat motionless in
the same position, dozing with their hands folded on their chests and
their lack-lustre eyes fixed on the lamp. Markovna kept hiccoughing
every minute and asked each time:
“I wonder what makes me hiccough? I don’t know what I could have eaten
or drunk—hick!”
Pavel Vasilitch and Stepa leaned over the table side by side with their
heads together, poring over the pages of the _Neva Magazine_ for the
year 1878.
“‘The monument to Leonardo da Vinci in front of the Victor Emmanuel
Museum at Milan.’ Look at that, it’s like a triumphal arch! And there
are a man and a lady, and there are some more little people——”
“That looks like one of the boys at our school,” Stepa said.
“Turn over the page—‘The Proboscis of the House Fly as Seen through the
Microscope.’ Goodness what a fly! I wonder what a bedbug would look like
under the microscope, eh? How disgusting!”
The ancient hall clock coughed rather than struck ten times, as if it
were afflicted with a cold. Into the dining-room came Anna the cook and
fell flop at her master’s feet.
“Forgive me my sins, master, for Christ’s sake!” she cried and got up
again very red in the face.
“Forgive me mine, too, for Christ’s sake!” answered Pavel Vasilitch
calmly.
Anna then fell down at the feet of every member of the family in turn
and asked forgiveness for her sins, omitting only Markovna, who, not
being high-born, was unworthy of a prostration.
Another half-hour passed in silence and peace. The _Neva_ was tossed
aside onto the sofa and Pavel Vasilitch, with one finger raised aloft,
was reciting Latin poetry he had learned in his youth. Stepa was
watching his father’s finger with its wedding-ring and dozing as he
listened to the words he could not understand. He rubbed his heavy eyes
with his fist but they kept closing tighter and tighter each time.
“I’m going to bed!” he said at last, stretching and yawning.
“What? To bed?” cried Pelagia Ivanovna. “Won’t you eat your meat for the
last time before Lent?”
“I don’t want any meat.”
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” his startled mother exclaimed.
“How can you say that? You won’t have any meat after to-night for the
whole of Lent!”
Pavel Vasilitch was startled, too.
“Yes, yes, sonny,” he cried. “Your mother will give you nothing but
Lenten fare for seven weeks after to-night. This won’t do. You must eat
your meat!”
“But I want to go to bed!” whimpered Stepa.
“Then bring in the supper quick!” cried Pavel Vasilitch in a flutter.
“Anna, what are you doing in there, you old slow-coach? Come quick and
bring in the supper!”
Pelagia Ivanovna threw up her hands and rushed into the kitchen as if
the house were afire.
“Hurry! Hurry!” rang through the house. “Stepa wants to go to bed! Anna!
Oh, heavens, what is the matter? Hurry!”
In five minutes the supper was on the table. The cats appeared once
more, stretching and arching their backs, with their tails in the air.
The family applied themselves to their meal. No one was hungry, all were
surfeited to the point of bursting, but they felt it was their duty to
eat.