My wife looked at me as though it cost her a great effort to hold her
tongue. Her sudden outburst, and then her inappropriate eloquence on the
subject of my desire to help the famine-stricken peasants, were, to say
the least, out of place; when I had invited her to come upstairs I had
expected quite a different attitude to me and my intentions. I cannot
say definitely what I had expected, but I had been agreeably agitated by
the expectation. Now I saw that to go on speaking about the famine would
be difficult and perhaps stupid.
“Yes...” Ivan Ivanitch muttered inappropriately. “Burov, the merchant,
must have four hundred thousand at least. I said to him: ‘Hand over one
or two thousand to the famine. You can’t take it with you when you die,
anyway.’ He was offended. But we all have to die, you know. Death is not
a potato.”
A silence followed again.
“So there’s nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to loneliness,”
I sighed. “One cannot fight single-handed. Well, I will try
single-handed. Let us hope that my campaign against the famine will be
more successful than my campaign against indifference.”
“I am expected downstairs,” said Natalya Gavrilovna.
She got up from the table and turned to Ivan Ivanitch.
“So you will look in upon me downstairs for a minute? I won’t say
good-bye to you.”
And she went away.
Ivan Ivanitch was now drinking his seventh glass of tea, choking,
smacking his lips, and sucking sometimes his moustache, sometimes the
lemon. He was muttering something drowsily and listlessly, and I did
not listen but waited for him to go. At last, with an expression that
suggested that he had only come to me to take a cup of tea, he got up
and began to take leave. As I saw him out I said:
“And so you have given me no advice.”
“Eh? I am a feeble, stupid old man,” he answered. “What use would my
advice be? You shouldn’t worry yourself.... I really don’t know why you
worry yourself. Don’t disturb yourself, my dear fellow! Upon my word,
there’s no need,” he whispered genuinely and affectionately, soothing me
as though I were a child. “Upon my word, there’s no need.”
“No need? Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their huts, and
they say there is typhus somewhere already.”
“Well, what of it? If there are good crops next year, they’ll thatch
them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after us. Anyway,
we have to die--if not now, later. Don’t worry yourself, my dear.”
“I can’t help worrying myself,” I said irritably.
We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule. Ivan Ivanitch suddenly
took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something evidently very
important, looked at me in silence for a couple of minutes.
“Pavel Andreitch!” he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set face
and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which he had once
been famous and which was truly charming. “Pavel Andreitch, I speak to
you as a friend: try to be different! One is ill at ease with you, my
dear fellow, one really is!”
He looked intently into my face; the charming expression faded away, his
eyes grew dim again, and he sniffed and muttered feebly:
“Yes, yes.... Excuse an old man.... It’s all nonsense... yes.”
As he slowly descended the staircase, spreading out his hands to balance
himself and showing me his huge, bulky back and red neck, he gave me the
unpleasant impression of a sort of crab.
“You ought to go away, your Excellency,” he muttered. “To Petersburg or
abroad.... Why should you live here and waste your golden days? You are
young, wealthy, and healthy.... Yes.... Ah, if I were younger I would
whisk away like a hare, and snap my fingers at everything.”