IN the cheapest room of a big block of furnished apartments Stepan
Klotchkov, a medical student in his third year, was walking to and
fro, zealously conning his anatomy. His mouth was dry and his
forehead perspiring from the unceasing effort to learn it by heart.
In the window, covered by patterns of frost, sat on a stool the
girl who shared his room--Anyuta, a thin little brunette of
five-and-twenty, very pale with mild grey eyes. Sitting with bent
back she was busy embroidering with red thread the collar of a man's
shirt. She was working against time. . . . The clock in the passage
struck two drowsily, yet the little room had not been put to rights
for the morning. Crumpled bed-clothes, pillows thrown about, books,
clothes, a big filthy slop-pail filled with soap-suds in which
cigarette ends were swimming, and the litter on the floor--all
seemed as though purposely jumbled together in one confusion. . . .
"The right lung consists of three parts . . ." Klotchkov repeated.
"Boundaries! Upper part on anterior wall of thorax reaches the
fourth or fifth rib, on the lateral surface, the fourth rib . . .
behind to the _spina scapulæ_. . ."
Klotchkov raised his eyes to the ceiling, striving to visualise
what he had just read. Unable to form a clear picture of it, he
began feeling his upper ribs through his waistcoat.
"These ribs are like the keys of a piano," he said. "One must
familiarise oneself with them somehow, if one is not to get muddled
over them. One must study them in the skeleton and the living body
. . . . I say, Anyuta, let me pick them out."
Anyuta put down her sewing, took off her blouse, and straightened
herself up. Klotchkov sat down facing her, frowned, and began
counting her ribs.
"H'm! . . . One can't feel the first rib; it's behind the shoulder-blade
. . . . This must be the second rib. . . . Yes . . . this is the third
. . . this is the fourth. . . . H'm! . . . yes. . . . Why are you
wriggling?"
"Your fingers are cold!"
"Come, come . . . it won't kill you. Don't twist about. That must
be the third rib, then . . . this is the fourth. . . . You look
such a skinny thing, and yet one can hardly feel your ribs. That's
the second . . . that's the third. . . . Oh, this is muddling, and
one can't see it clearly. . . . I must draw it. . . . Where's my
crayon?"
Klotchkov took his crayon and drew on Anyuta's chest several parallel
lines corresponding with the ribs.
"First-rate. That's all straightforward. . . . Well, now I can sound
you. Stand up!"
Anyuta stood up and raised her chin. Klotchkov began sounding her,
and was so absorbed in this occupation that he did not notice how
Anyuta's lips, nose, and fingers turned blue with cold. Anyuta
shivered, and was afraid the student, noticing it, would leave off
drawing and sounding her, and then, perhaps, might fail in his exam.
"Now it's all clear," said Klotchkov when he had finished. "You sit
like that and don't rub off the crayon, and meanwhile I'll learn
up a little more."
And the student again began walking to and fro, repeating to himself.
Anyuta, with black stripes across her chest, looking as though she
had been tattooed, sat thinking, huddled up and shivering with cold.
She said very little as a rule; she was always silent, thinking and
thinking. . . .
In the six or seven years of her wanderings from one furnished room
to another, she had known five students like Klotchkov. Now they
had all finished their studies, had gone out into the world, and,
of course, like respectable people, had long ago forgotten her. One
of them was living in Paris, two were doctors, the fourth was an
artist, and the fifth was said to be already a professor. Klotchkov
was the sixth. . . . Soon he, too, would finish his studies and go
out into the world. There was a fine future before him, no doubt,
and Klotchkov probably would become a great man, but the present
was anything but bright; Klotchkov had no tobacco and no tea, and
there were only four lumps of sugar left. She must make haste and
finish her embroidery, take it to the woman who had ordered it, and
with the quarter rouble she would get for it, buy tea and tobacco.
"Can I come in?" asked a voice at the door.
Anyuta quickly threw a woollen shawl over her shoulders. Fetisov,
the artist, walked in.
"I have come to ask you a favour," he began, addressing Klotchkov,
and glaring like a wild beast from under the long locks that hung
over his brow. "Do me a favour; lend me your young lady just for a
couple of hours! I'm painting a picture, you see, and I can't get
on without a model."
"Oh, with pleasure," Klotchkov agreed. "Go along, Anyuta."
"The things I've had to put up with there," Anyuta murmured softly.
"Rubbish! The man's asking you for the sake of art, and not for any
sort of nonsense. Why not help him if you can?"
Anyuta began dressing.
"And what are you painting?" asked Klotchkov.
"Psyche; it's a fine subject. But it won't go, somehow. I have to
keep painting from different models. Yesterday I was painting one
with blue legs. 'Why are your legs blue?' I asked her. 'It's my
stockings stain them,' she said. And you're still grinding! Lucky
fellow! You have patience."
"Medicine's a job one can't get on with without grinding."
"H'm! . . . Excuse me, Klotchkov, but you do live like a pig! It's
awful the way you live!"
"How do you mean? I can't help it. . . . I only get twelve roubles
a month from my father, and it's hard to live decently on that."
"Yes . . . yes . . ." said the artist, frowning with an air of
disgust; "but, still, you might live better. . . . An educated man
is in duty bound to have taste, isn't he? And goodness knows what
it's like here! The bed not made, the slops, the dirt . . . yesterday's
porridge in the plates. . . Tfoo!"
"That's true," said the student in confusion; "but Anyuta has had
no time to-day to tidy up; she's been busy all the while."
When Anyuta and the artist had gone out Klotchkov lay down on the
sofa and began learning, lying down; then he accidentally dropped
asleep, and waking up an hour later, propped his head on his fists
and sank into gloomy reflection. He recalled the artist's words
that an educated man was in duty bound to have taste, and his
surroundings actually struck him now as loathsome and revolting.
He saw, as it were in his mind's eye, his own future, when he would
see his patients in his consulting-room, drink tea in a large
dining-room in the company of his wife, a real lady. And now that
slop-pail in which the cigarette ends were swimming looked incredibly
disgusting. Anyuta, too, rose before his imagination--a plain,
slovenly, pitiful figure . . . and he made up his mind to part with
her at once, at all costs.
When, on coming back from the artist's, she took off her coat, he
got up and said to her seriously:
"Look here, my good girl . . . sit down and listen. We must part!
The fact is, I don't want to live with you any longer."
Anyuta had come back from the artist's worn out and exhausted.
Standing so long as a model had made her face look thin and sunken,
and her chin sharper than ever. She said nothing in answer to the
student's words, only her lips began to tremble.
"You know we should have to part sooner or later, anyway," said the
student. "You're a nice, good girl, and not a fool; you'll
understand. . . ."
Anyuta put on her coat again, in silence wrapped up her embroidery
in paper, gathered together her needles and thread: she found the
screw of paper with the four lumps of sugar in the window, and laid
it on the table by the books.
"That's . . . your sugar . . ." she said softly, and turned away
to conceal her tears.
"Why are you crying?" asked Klotchkov.
He walked about the room in confusion, and said:
"You are a strange girl, really. . . . Why, you know we shall have
to part. We can't stay together for ever."
She had gathered together all her belongings, and turned to say
good-bye to him, and he felt sorry for her.
"Shall I let her stay on here another week?" he thought. "She really
may as well stay, and I'll tell her to go in a week;" and vexed at
his own weakness, he shouted to her roughly:
"Come, why are you standing there? If you are going, go; and if you
don't want to, take off your coat and stay! You can stay!"
Anyuta took off her coat, silently, stealthily, then blew her nose
also stealthily, sighed, and noiselessly returned to her invariable
position on her stool by the window.
The student drew his textbook to him and began again pacing from
corner to corner. "The right lung consists of three parts," he
repeated; "the upper part, on anterior wall of thorax, reaches the
fourth or fifth rib . . . ."
In the passage some one shouted at the top of his voice: "Grigory!
The samovar!"