PYOTR PETROVITCH STRIZHIN, the nephew of Madame Ivanov, the colonel's
widow--the man whose new goloshes were stolen last year,--came
home from a christening party at two o'clock in the morning. To
avoid waking the household he took off his things in the lobby,
made his way on tiptoe to his room, holding his breath, and began
getting ready for bed without lighting a candle.
Strizhin leads a sober and regular life. He has a sanctimonious
expression of face, he reads nothing but religious and edifying
books, but at the christening party, in his delight that Lyubov
Spiridonovna had passed through her confinement successfully, he
had permitted himself to drink four glasses of vodka and a glass
of wine, the taste of which suggested something midway between
vinegar and castor oil. Spirituous liquors are like sea-water and
glory: the more you imbibe of them the greater your thirst. And now
as he undressed, Strizhin was aware of an overwhelming craving for
drink.
"I believe Dashenka has some vodka in the cupboard in the right-hand
corner," he thought. "If I drink one wine-glassful, she won't notice
it."
After some hesitation, overcoming his fears, Strizhin went to the
cupboard. Cautiously opening the door he felt in the right-hand
corner for a bottle and poured out a wine-glassful, put the bottle
back in its place, then, making the sign of the cross, drank it
off. And immediately something like a miracle took place. Strizhin
was flung back from the cupboard to the chest with fearful force
like a bomb. There were flashes before his eyes, he felt as though
he could not breathe, and all over his body he had a sensation as
though he had fallen into a marsh full of leeches. It seemed to him
as though, instead of vodka, he had swallowed dynamite, which blew
up his body, the house, and the whole street. . . . His head, his
arms, his legs--all seemed to be torn off and to be flying away
somewhere to the devil, into space.
For some three minutes he lay on the chest, not moving and scarcely
breathing, then he got up and asked himself:
"Where am I?"
The first thing of which he was clearly conscious on coming to
himself was the pronounced smell of paraffin.
"Holy saints," he thought in horror, "it's paraffin I have drunk
instead of vodka."
The thought that he had poisoned himself threw him into a cold
shiver, then into a fever. That it was really poison that he had
taken was proved not only by the smell in the room but also by the
burning taste in his mouth, the flashes before his eyes, the ringing
in his head, and the colicky pain in his stomach. Feeling the
approach of death and not buoying himself up with false hopes, he
wanted to say good-bye to those nearest to him, and made his way
to Dashenka's bedroom (being a widower he had his sister-in-law
called Dashenka, an old maid, living in the flat to keep house for
him).
"Dashenka," he said in a tearful voice as he went into the bedroom,
"dear Dashenka!"
Something grumbled in the darkness and uttered a deep sigh.
"Dashenka."
"Eh? What?" A woman's voice articulated rapidly. "Is that you, Pyotr
Petrovitch? Are you back already? Well, what is it? What has the
baby been christened? Who was godmother?"
"The godmother was Natalya Andreyevna Velikosvyetsky, and the
godfather Pavel Ivanitch Bezsonnitsin. . . . I . . . I believe,
Dashenka, I am dying. And the baby has been christened Olimpiada,
in honour of their kind patroness. . . . I . . . I have just drunk
paraffin, Dashenka!"
"What next! You don't say they gave you paraffin there?"
"I must own I wanted to get a drink of vodka without asking you,
and . . . and the Lord chastised me: by accident in the dark I took
paraffin. . . . What am I to do?"
Dashenka, hearing that the cupboard had been opened without her
permission, grew more wide-awake. . . . She quickly lighted a candle,
jumped out of bed, and in her nightgown, a freckled, bony figure
in curl-papers, padded with bare feet to the cupboard.
"Who told you you might?" she asked sternly, as she scrutinized the
inside of the cupboard. "Was the vodka put there for you?"
"I . . . I haven't drunk vodka but paraffin, Dashenka . . ." muttered
Strizhin, mopping the cold sweat on his brow.
"And what did you want to touch the paraffin for? That's nothing
to do with you, is it? Is it put there for you? Or do you suppose
paraffin costs nothing? Eh? Do you know what paraffin is now? Do
you know?"
"Dear Dashenka," moaned Strizhin, "it's a question of life and
death, and you talk about money!"
"He's drunk himself tipsy and now he pokes his nose into the
cupboard!" cried Dashenka, angrily slamming the cupboard door. "Oh,
the monsters, the tormentors! I'm a martyr, a miserable woman, no
peace day or night! Vipers, basilisks, accursed Herods, may you
suffer the same in the world to come! I am going to-morrow! I am a
maiden lady and I won't allow you to stand before me in your
underclothes! How dare you look at me when I am not dressed!"
And she went on and on. . . . Knowing that when Dashenka was enraged
there was no moving her with prayers or vows or even by firing a
cannon, Strizhin waved his hand in despair, dressed, and made up
his mind to go to the doctor. But a doctor is only readily found
when he is not wanted. After running through three streets and
ringing five times at Dr. Tchepharyants's, and seven times at Dr.
Bultyhin's, Strizhin raced off to a chemist's shop, thinking possibly
the chemist could help him. There, after a long interval, a little
dark and curly-headed chemist came out to him in his dressing gown,
with drowsy eyes, and such a wise and serious face that it was
positively terrifying.
"What do you want?" he asked in a tone in which only very wise and
dignified chemists of Jewish persuasion can speak.
"For God's sake . . . I entreat you . . ." said Strizhin breathlessly,
"give me something. I have just accidentally drunk paraffin, I am
dying!"
"I beg you not to excite yourself and to answer the questions I am
about to put to you. The very fact that you are excited prevents
me from understanding you. You have drunk paraffin. Yes?"
"Yes, paraffin! Please save me!"
The chemist went coolly and gravely to the desk, opened a book,
became absorbed in reading it. After reading a couple of pages he
shrugged one shoulder and then the other, made a contemptuous grimace
and, after thinking for a minute, went into the adjoining room. The
clock struck four, and when it pointed to ten minutes past the
chemist came back with another book and again plunged into reading.
"H'm," he said as though puzzled, "the very fact that you feel
unwell shows you ought to apply to a doctor, not a chemist."
"But I have been to the doctors already. I could not ring them up."
"H'm . . . you don't regard us chemists as human beings, and disturb
our rest even at four o'clock at night, though every dog, every
cat, can rest in peace. . . . You don't try to understand anything,
and to your thinking we are not people and our nerves are like
cords."
Strizhin listened to the chemist, heaved a sigh, and went home.
"So I am fated to die," he thought.
And in his mouth was a burning and a taste of paraffin, there were
twinges in his stomach, and a sound of boom, boom, boom in his ears.
Every moment it seemed to him that his end was near, that his heart
was no longer beating.
Returning home he made haste to write: "Let no one be blamed for
my death," then he said his prayers, lay down and pulled the
bedclothes over his head. He lay awake till morning expecting death,
and all the time he kept fancying how his grave would be covered
with fresh green grass and how the birds would twitter over it. . . .
And in the morning he was sitting on his bed, saying with a smile
to Dashenka:
"One who leads a steady and regular life, dear sister, is unaffected
by any poison. Take me, for example. I have been on the verge of
death. I was dying and in agony, yet now I am all right. There is
only a burning in my mouth and a soreness in my throat, but I am
all right all over, thank God. . . . And why? It's because of my
regular life."
"No, it's because it's inferior paraffin!" sighed Dashenka, thinking
of the household expenses and gazing into space. "The man at the
shop could not have given me the best quality, but that at three
farthings. I am a martyr, I am a miserable woman. You monsters! May
you suffer the same, in the world to come, accursed Herods. . . ."
And she went on and on. . . .