Volodya’s mother began to look at him with careful and anxious eyes.
Every trifle now agitated her.
She noticed that Volodya’s head was somewhat asymmetrical: his one ear
was higher than the other, his chin slightly turned to one side. She
looked in the mirror, and further remarked that Volodya had inherited
this too from her.
“It may be,” she thought, “one of the characteristics of unfortunate
heredity—degeneration; in which case where is the root of the evil? Is
it my fault or his father’s?”
Eugenia Stepanovna recalled her dead husband. He was a most
kind-hearted and most lovable man, somewhat weak-willed, with rash
impulses. He was by nature a zealot and a mystic, and he dreamt of a
social Utopia, and went among the people. He had been rather given to
tippling the last years of his life.
He died young; he was but thirty-five years old.
Volodya’s mother even took her boy to the doctor and described his
symptoms. The doctor, a cheerful young man, listened to her, then
laughed and gave counsel concerning diet and way of life, throwing in a
few witty remarks; he wrote out a prescription in a happy, off-hand
way, and he added playfully, with a slap on Volodya’s shoulder: “But
the very best medicine would be—a birch.”
Volodya’s mother felt the affront deeply, but she followed all the rest
of the instructions faithfully.