“The devil take it, it's long since I drank,” I said. “Shouldn't we
remember old times?”
Without further reflection, I filled five glasses and emptied them one
after another into my mouth. That was the only way I knew how to
drink. Small schoolboys learn how to smoke cigarettes from big ones:
the Count looked at me, poured out five glasses for himself, and,
bending forwards in the form of an arch, frowning and shaking his
head, he drank them off. My five glasses appeared to him to be
bravado, but I drank them not at all to display my talent for
drinking. . . . I wanted to get drunk, to get properly, thoroughly
drunk. . . . Drunk as I had not been for a long time while living in
my village. Having drunk them, I sat down to table and began to
discuss the sucking pig.
Intoxication was not long in succeeding. I soon felt a slight
giddiness. There was a pleasant feeling of coolness in my chest—and a
happy, expansive condition set in. Without any visible transition I
suddenly became very gay. The feeling of emptiness and dullness gave
place to a sensation of thorough joy and gaiety. I smiled. I suddenly
wanted chatter, laughter, people around me. As I chewed the sucking
pig I began to feel the fullness of life, almost the self-sufficiency
of life, almost happiness.
“Why don't you drink anything?” I asked the Pole.
“He never drinks,” the Count said. “Don't force him to.”
“But surely you can drink something!”
The Pole put a large bit of sturgeon into his mouth and shook his head
negatively. His silence incensed me.
“I say, Kaetan . . . what's your patronymic? . . . why are you always
silent?” I asked him. “I have not had the pleasure of hearing your
voice as yet.”
His two eyebrows that resembled the outstretched wings of a swallow
were raised and he gazed at me.
“Do you wish me to speak?” he asked with a strong Polish accent.
“Very much.”
“Why do you wish it?”
“Why, indeed! On board steamers at dinner strangers and people who are
not acquainted converse together, and here are we, who have known one
another for several hours, looking at each other and not exchanging a
single word! What does that look like?”
The Pole remained silent.
“Why are you silent?” I asked again after waiting a moment. “Answer
something, can't you?”
“I do not wish to answer you. I hear laughter in your voice, and I do
not like derision.”
“He's not laughing at all,” the Count interposed in alarm. “Where did
you fish up that notion, Kaetan? He's quite friendly. . . .”
“Counts and Princes have never spoken to me in such a tone!” Kaetan
said, frowning. “I don't like that tone.”
“Consequently, you will not honour me with your conversation?” I
continued to worry him as I emptied another glass and laughed.
“Do you know my real reason for coming here?” the Count broke in,
desirous of changing the conversation. “I haven't told you as yet? In
Petersburg I went to the doctor who has always treated me, to consult
him about my health. He auscultated, knocked and pressed me
everywhere, and said: ‘You're not a coward!’ Well, you know, though
I'm no coward, I grew pale. ‘I'm not a coward,’ I replied.”
“Cut it short, brother. . . . That's tiresome.”
“He told me I should soon die if I did not go away from Petersburg! My
liver is quite diseased from too much drink. . . . So I decided to
come here. It would have been silly to remain there. This estate is so
fine—so rich. . . . The climate alone is worth a fortune! . . . Here,
at least, I can occupy myself with my own affairs. Work is the best,
the most efficacious medicine. Kaetan, is that not true? I shall look
after the estate and chuck drink. . . . The doctor did not allow me a
single glass . . . not one!”
“Well, then, don't drink.”
“I don't drink. . . . To-day is the last time, in honour of meeting
you again”—the Count stretched towards me and gave me a smacking kiss
on the cheek—“my dear, good friend. To-morrow—not a drop! To-day,
Bacchus takes leave of me for ever. . . . Serezha, let us have a
farewell glass of cognac together?”
We drank a glass of cognac.
“I shall get well, Serezha, golabchik, and I shall look after the
estate. . . . Rational agriculture! Urbenin—is good, kind . . . he
understands everything, but is he the master? He's a routinist! We
must send for magazines, read, look into everything, take part in the
agricultural and dairy exhibitions, but he is not educated for that!
Is it possible he can be in love with Olenka? Ha-ha! I shall look into
everything and keep him as my assistant. . . . I shall take part in
the elections; I shall entertain society. . . . Eh? Even here one can
live happily! What do you think? Now there you are, laughing again!
Already laughing! One really can't talk with you about anything!”
I was gay, I was amused. The Count amused me; the candles, the bottles
amused me; the stucco hares and ducks that ornamented the walls of the
dining-room amused me. . . . The only thing that did not amuse me was
the sober face of Kaetan Kazimirovich. The presence of this man
irritated me.
“Can't you send that Polish nobleman to the devil?” I whispered to the
Count.
“What? For God's sake! . . .” the Count murmured, seizing both my
hands as if I had been about to beat his Pole. “Let him sit there!”
“I can't look at him! I say,” I continued, addressing Pshekhotsky,
“you refused to talk to me; but forgive me. I have not yet given up
hope of being more closely acquainted with your conversational
capacities.”
“Leave him alone!” the Count said, pulling me by the sleeve. “I
implore you!”
“I shall not stop worrying you until you answer me,” I continued. “Why
are you frowning? Is it possible that you still hear laughter in my
voice?”
“If I had drunk as much as you have, I would talk to you; but as it is
we are not a proper pair,” the Pole replied.
“That we are not a pair is what was to be proved. . . . That is
exactly what I wanted to say. A goose and a swine are no comrades; the
drunkard and the sober man are no kin; the drunkard disturbs the sober
man, the sober man the drunkard. In the adjoining drawing-room there
is a soft and excellent sofa. It's a good thing to lie upon it after
sturgeon with horse-radish. My voice will not be heard there. Do you
not wish to retire to that room?”
The Count clasped his hands and walked about the dining-room with
blinking eyes.
He is a coward and is always afraid of “big” talk. I, on the contrary,
when drunk, am amused by cross-purposes and discontentedness.
“I don't understand! I don't un‑der‑stand!” the Count groaned, not
knowing what to say or what to do.
He knew it was difficult to stop me.
“I am only slightly acquainted with you,” I continued. “Perhaps you
are an excellent man, and therefore I don't wish to quarrel with you
too soon. . . . I won't quarrel with you. I only invite you to
understand that there is no place for a sober man among drunken
ones. . . . The presence of a sober man has an irritating effect on
the drunken organism! . . . Take that to heart!”
“Say whatever you like!” Pshekhotsky sighed. “Nothing that you can say
will provoke me, young man.”
“So nothing will provoke you? Will you also not be offended if I call
you an obstinate swine?”
The Pole grew red in the face—but only that. The Count became pale, he
came up to me, looked imploringly at me, and spread his arms.
“Well, I beg you! Restrain your tongue!”
I had now quite entered into my drunken part, and wanted to go on, but
fortunately at that moment the Count and the Pole heard footsteps and
Urbenin entered the dining-room.
“I wish you all a good appetite!” he began. “I have come, your
Excellency, to find out if you have any orders for me?”
“I have no orders so far, but a request,” the Count replied. “I am
very glad you have come, Pëtr Egorych. . . . Sit down and have supper
with us, and let us talk about the business of the estate. . . .”
Urbenin sat down. The Count drank off a glass of cognac and began to
explain his plans for the future rational management of the estate. He
spoke very long and wearisomely, often repeating himself and changing
the subject. Urbenin listened to him lazily and attentively as serious
people listen to the prattle of children and women. He ate his
fish-soup, and looked sadly at his plate.
“I have brought some remarkable plans with me!” the Count said among
other things. “Remarkable plans! I will show them to you if you wish
it?”
Karnéev jumped up and ran into his study for the plans. Urbenin took
advantage of his absence to pour out half a tumbler of vodka, gulped
it down, and did not even take anything to eat after it.
“Disgusting stuff this vodka is!” he said, looking with abhorrence at
the decanter.
“Why didn't you drink while the Count was here, Pëtr Egorych?” I asked
him. “Is it possible that you were afraid to?”
“It is better to dissimulate, Sergei Petrovich, and drink in secret
than to drink before the Count. You know what a strange character the
Count has. . . . If I stole twenty thousand from him and he knew it,
he would say nothing owing to his carelessness; but if I forgot to
give him an account of ten kopecks that I had spent or drank vodka in
his presence, he would begin to lament that his bailiff was a robber.
You know him well.”
Urbenin half-filled the tumbler again and swigged it off.
“I think you did not drink formerly, Pëtr Egorych,” I said.
“Yes, but now I drink . . . I drink terribly!” he whispered.
“Terribly, day and night, not giving myself a moment's respite! Even
the Count never drank to such an extent as I do now. . . . It is
dreadfully hard, Sergei Petrovich! God alone knows what a weight I
have on my heart! It's just grief that makes me drink. . . . I always
liked and honoured you, Sergei Petrovich, and I can tell you quite
candidly. . . . I'd often be glad to hang myself!”
“For what reason?”
“My own stupidity. . . . Not only children are stupid. . . . There are
also fools at fifty. Don't ask the cause.”
The Count re-entered the room and put a stop to his effusions.
“A most excellent liqueur,” he said, placing a pot-bellied bottle with
the seal of the Benedictine monks on the table instead of “the
remarkable plans.” “When I passed through Moscow I got it at Depré's.
Have a glass, Sergei?”
“I thought you had gone to fetch the plans,” I said.
“I? What plans? Oh, yes! But, brother, the devil himself couldn't find
anything in my portmanteaux. . . . I rummaged and rummaged and gave it
up as a bad job. . . . The liqueur is very nice. Won't you have some,
Serezha?”
Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away.
When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I
became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the
Count's. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do
some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would
astonish people. . . . In such moments I thought I could swim across
the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman. . . .
The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the
same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him
with venomous jests and ridicule. . . . It was necessary to scoff at
the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with
biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.
“Why are you silent?” I began again. “Speak! I am listening to you!
Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces
talk childish drivel! . . . It is such mockery, such mockery of the
brains of man! . . . The face does not correspond to the brains! In
order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have
the countenances of Greek sages!”
I had not finished. . . . My tongue was entangled by the thought that
I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even
half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women,
thousands of lights. . . . I rose, took my glass and began walking
about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit
ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the
dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole
estate.
I chose a Turkish divan in the “Mosaic hall,” lay down on it and gave
myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air.
Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other,
took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full
of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.
It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.
The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan. . . . He
wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the
desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five
glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.
“What a lot I have drunk to-day!” he said to me. “This is more harmful
to me than any sort of poison. . . . But to-day it is for the last
time. . . . Upon my honour, the very last time. . . . I have strength
of will. . . .”
“All right, all right. . . .”
“For the last . . . Serezha, my dear friend, for the last time. . . .
Shouldn't we send a telegram to town for the last time?”
“Why not? Send it. . . .”
“Let's have one last spree in the proper way. . . . Well, get up and
write it.”
The Count himself did not know how to write telegrams. They always
came out too long and insufficient with him. I rose and wrote:
“S—— Restaurant London. Karpov, manager of the chorus. Leave
everything and come instantly by the two o'clock train.—The Count.”
“It is now a quarter to eleven,” the Count said. “The man will take
three-quarters of an hour to ride to the station, maximum an
hour. . . . Karpov will receive the telegram before one. . . .
Consequently they'll have time to catch the train. . . . If they don't
catch it, they can come by the goods train. Yes!”