Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three windows.
There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the little house.
The doctor lived in two of them which looked into the street, while
Daryushka and the landlady with her three children lived in the
third room and the kitchen. Sometimes the landlady's lover, a drunken
peasant who was rowdy and reduced the children and Daryushka to
terror, would come for the night. When he arrived and established
himself in the kitchen and demanded vodka, they all felt very
uncomfortable, and the doctor would be moved by pity to take the
crying children into his room and let them lie on his floor, and
this gave him great satisfaction.
He got up as before at eight o'clock, and after his morning tea sat
down to read his old books and magazines: he had no money for new
ones. Either because the books were old, or perhaps because of the
change in his surroundings, reading exhausted him, and did not grip
his attention as before. That he might not spend his time in idleness
he made a detailed catalogue of his books and gummed little labels
on their backs, and this mechanical, tedious work seemed to him
more interesting than reading. The monotonous, tedious work lulled
his thoughts to sleep in some unaccountable way, and the time passed
quickly while he thought of nothing. Even sitting in the kitchen,
peeling potatoes with Daryushka or picking over the buckwheat grain,
seemed to him interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he went to
church. Standing near the wall and half closing his eyes, he listened
to the singing and thought of his father, of his mother, of the
university, of the religions of the world; he felt calm and melancholy,
and as he went out of the church afterwards he regretted that the
service was so soon over. He went twice to the hospital to talk to
Ivan Dmitritch. But on both occasions Ivan Dmitritch was unusually
excited and ill-humoured; he bade the doctor leave him in peace,
as he had long been sick of empty chatter, and declared, to make
up for all his sufferings, he asked from the damned scoundrels only
one favour--solitary confinement. Surely they would not refuse
him even that? On both occasions when Andrey Yefimitch was taking
leave of him and wishing him good-night, he answered rudely and
said:
"Go to hell!"
And Andrey Yefimitch did not know now whether to go to him for the
third time or not. He longed to go.
In old days Andrey Yefimitch used to walk about his rooms and think
in the interval after dinner, but now from dinner-time till evening
tea he lay on the sofa with his face to the back and gave himself
up to trivial thoughts which he could not struggle against. He was
mortified that after more than twenty years of service he had been
given neither a pension nor any assistance. It is true that he had
not done his work honestly, but, then, all who are in the Service
get a pension without distinction whether they are honest or not.
Contemporary justice lies precisely in the bestowal of grades,
orders, and pensions, not for moral qualities or capacities, but
for service whatever it may have been like. Why was he alone to be
an exception? He had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass by the
shop and look at the woman who owned it. He owed thirty-two roubles
for beer already. There was money owing to the landlady also.
Daryushka sold old clothes and books on the sly, and told lies to
the landlady, saying that the doctor was just going to receive a
large sum of money.
He was angry with himself for having wasted on travelling the
thousand roubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand roubles
would have been now! He was vexed that people would not leave him
in peace. Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on his sick colleague
from time to time. Everything about him was revolting to Andrey
Yefimitch--his well-fed face and vulgar, condescending tone, and
his use of the word "colleague," and his high top-boots; the most
revolting thing was that he thought it was his duty to treat Andrey
Yefimitch, and thought that he really was treating him. On every
visit he brought a bottle of bromide and rhubarb pills.
Mihail Averyanitch, too, thought it his duty to visit his friend
and entertain him. Every time he went in to Andrey Yefimitch with
an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly, and began assuring
him that he was looking very well to-day, and that, thank God, he
was on the highroad to recovery, and from this it might be concluded
that he looked on his friend's condition as hopeless. He had not
yet repaid his Warsaw debt, and was overwhelmed by shame; he was
constrained, and so tried to laugh louder and talk more amusingly.
His anecdotes and descriptions seemed endless now, and were an agony
both to Andrey Yefimitch and himself.
In his presence Andrey Yefimitch usually lay on the sofa with his
face to the wall, and listened with his teeth clenched; his soul
was oppressed with rankling disgust, and after every visit from his
friend he felt as though this disgust had risen higher, and was
mounting into his throat.
To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself,
and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner or later
perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some
spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he
would see nothing but clay and bare rocks. Everything--culture
and the moral law--would pass away and not even a burdock would
grow out of them. Of what consequence was shame in the presence of
a shopkeeper, of what consequence was the insignificant Hobotov or
the wearisome friendship of Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial
and nonsensical.
But such reflections did not help him now. Scarcely had he imagined
the earthly globe in a million years, when Hobotov in his high
top-boots or Mihail Averyanitch with his forced laugh would appear
from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the shamefaced whisper:
"The Warsaw debt. . . . I will repay it in a day or two, my dear
fellow, without fail. . . ."