“What are you doing? How dare you treat a poor orphan so!” I exclaimed, grabbing the harridan by her hand.
“What’s this! Who the hell are you?” she squealed, letting go of Yelena and putting her hands on her hips. “What’s your business in my house?”
“My business is that you’re merciless!” I yelled. “How dare you bully a poor child so? She’s not yours. I heard it myself, you merely took her in, the poor thing…”
“Lord Jesus!” the harridan cried. “Who the hell do you think you are! Did you come with her or what? I’ll call the constable! Andron Timofeych himself thinks the world of me! Is it you, by any chance, she keeps going to see? We’ve a right one here! A troublemaker, a trespasser! Help!”
And she went for me, fists flailing. But at that moment there was a piercing, inhuman cry. I looked around. Yelena, who had previously been standing as though insensate, suddenly let out a terrible, unnatural scream and hit the ground, writhing in fearful spasms. Her features went into spasms. It was an attack of the falling sickness. The dishevelled girl and a woman from downstairs rushed up, lifted her and took her hurriedly upstairs.
“Die, you damn wretch, for all I care!” the woman screamed after them. “That’s the third fit in a month… Get out of here, you busybody!” and she charged at me again.
“Don’t just stand there, janitor! That’s not what you’re paid for!”
“Go on! Be off with you! Unless you want a clip round your ears,” the caretaker droned lethargically as though merely for form’s sake. “Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Had your say, now clear off!”
There was nothing to be done, I walked out through the gates, convinced that my outburst had proved totally ineffectual. But I was seething with indignation. I positioned myself on the pavement opposite and kept my eyes fixed on the house gate. As soon as I left, the woman rushed upstairs, while the caretaker, having done his duty, also disappeared somewhere. Shortly the woman who had helped to carry Yelena, came down from the porch, hurrying to her place below. Catching sight of me, she stopped and looked at me curiously. Her kind, tranquil face encouraged me. I entered the yard again and went straight up to her.
“May I ask,” I began, “who is this girl and what is this awful woman up to with her? Please don’t imagine I’m asking this simply out of idle curiosity. I’ve met this girl before and have a good reason to be very concerned about her.”
“Well if you are concerned, you’d better take her with you or find her some other place, rather than let her perish here,” the woman said somehow reluctantly, preparing to continue on her way.
“But if you won’t give me any information, what am I to do? I told you, I don’t know anything. Is it true Bubnova is the landlady?”
“She is indeed.”
“So how did this girl end up with her? Is this where her mother died?”
“You may well ask… nothing to do with us.” And she again prepared to go.
“Do me a favour. I’m telling you, I’m very concerned about this. Perhaps I am in fact in a position to do something. Who is this girl anyway? Who was her mother – do you know?”
“A foreigner of some sort, not a local, that’s for sure. She lived downstairs, but was altogether poorly, if you ask me. Died of consumption, she did.”
“Must have been pretty badly off too if she had to live in the basement of a tip like this.”
“Badly off indeed! She made my heart bleed. God knows we have to struggle ourselves, but she still managed to run up a debt of six roubles with us in the five months she stayed here. We ended up burying her ourselves – my husband made her coffin too.”
“What about Bubnova saying she buried her?
“A likely story!”
“And what was her name?”
“Now you got me there, kind sir. A tongue-twister – German, very likely.”
“Smith?”
“No, that doesn’t sound right. But one way or another Anna Trifonovna took the orphan in – to make a lady of her, she says. Bad business that altogether…”
“Probably with some plans of her own up her sleeve?”
“She’s up to no good, I tell you,” the woman replied somewhat reflectively and hesitatingly, as though unsure whether to continue or not. “Nothing to do with us though, we mind our own business…”
“If only you’d learn to hold your tongue once in a while, woman!” a male voice came from the back. It was the woman’s husband, an elderly man in a dressing gown with a kaftan over it, a townsman and craftsman by the looks of him.
“Look here, sir, she’s got nothing at all to say to you. It’s none of our business…” he said, looking at me askance. “Get back in, woman! Goodbye to you, sir. We’re coffin-makers by trade. Should you ever need our professional services, we’d be most happy to oblige… That apart we’ve no other business with you…”
I left that house deep in thought and highly agitated. There was nothing I could do, but I felt I could not just leave matters be. There was something in what the coffin-maker’s wife said that disturbed me no end. A fishy business all round, I felt.
I was walking immersed in thought, my eyes to the ground, when suddenly a shrill voice hailed me by name. I looked up to see before me a man, rather the worse for drink, unsteady on his legs but dressed rather neatly, except for an awful-looking overcoat and a greasy cap. His face was very familiar. I looked at him more closely. He winked and smiled slyly.
“You don’t recognize me?”
5
“Ah! it’s you, masloboyev!” i exclaimed, suddenly recognizing in him my former schoolmate from the district high school. “Well, I never!”
“Knock me down with a feather! Must be all of six years. That is to say, we have met since, only Your Highness wouldn’t favour me with a second glance. My word, you’re a veritable general now, a literary one, that is—” Saying this, he smiled derisively.
“Come, come Masloboyev, old chum, you know that’s not true,” I interrupted him. “First, generals, be they literary, hardly look like me, and second, now you mention it, I do in fact remember running into you in the street a couple of times, but it was you who avoided me, so I thought, what’s the point approaching someone who just doesn’t want to know? And shall I tell you what I’m thinking? If you hadn’t had a few, you wouldn’t have stopped me now either. Am I not right? Well, good to see you! You know, old fellow, I really am delighted to have run into you.”
“You don’t say! Are you quite sure you’re not embarrassed by my… indecorous appearance? Well, no need to go on about it. It’s not that important. I’ll never forget, Vanya, my son, what a lovely lad you were. Remember that time you got the cane because of me? You kept mum and didn’t split on me, while I, instead of being grateful, kept pulling your leg for days afterwards. What an innocent lamb you were! So, hello then, old chap, how are you!” (We embraced each other.) “I’ve been struggling on my own for donkey’s years now – how the days flash past! – but I’ve a long memory. That’s just the way I am! And how about you, what have you been up to?”
“Well, nothing special. I’ve too been struggling on my own…”
He regarded me for a long time with the maudlin eyes of the inebriated. To be sure, he was a decent fellow through and through.
“No, Vanya, you’re not the same as me!” he said at last in a tragic tone of voice. “I’ve read your thing, you know. I have indeed, Vanya, yes I have!… Listen though – why don’t we have a heart-to-heart talk! Are you in a hurry?”
“I am. And I might as well tell you, I’m terribly upset about something. Look, I’ve a better idea – where do you live?”
“I’ll tell you. But it’s not a better one. Shall I tell you what is a better idea?”
“Well, what?”
“Listen! See that?” And he pointed to a sign about ten paces from where we were stand
ing. “Can you see: Coffee House and Restaurant – in a word it’s just an eating place, but it’s all right. And there’s another thing, the establishment’s quite fit and proper; as for the vodka – it’s out of this world! Fit for the tsar! I should know, I’ve tried it, many a time. Anyway, they wouldn’t dare serve me anything below standard. They know who Filip Filipych is. I am Filip Filipych, I’ll have you know. What? Stop making faces! No, you let me finish. It’s quarter-past eleven now, I’ve just looked. Well then, at eleven thirty-five sharp I’ll let you go. In the meantime, let’s go and knock back a few. Twenty minutes, for old time’s sake – agreed?”
“If it’s only twenty minutes, then all right. Because, my friend, honest to God, I’m so busy…”
“That’s settled then. Only look here, two words before anything else – you look just awful, as though somebody had given you the what-for. Am I right?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“I thought as much. I’m a bit of a dab hand at studying people’s faces – it’s something to do anyway! Well then, let’s go and talk. In twenty minutes I’ll get Admiral Samovar on the boil and we’ll have a chance to sample some birch-bud brandy, chase it with a shot of the neat stuff, followed by a dram of the orange-flavoured one, followed by your heart’s delight, pursued by whatever else I may think of. Drink’s my weakness, old chap! The only time I’m fit for anything is Sundays before midday Mass. Don’t mind if you have none. All I want is your company. If you join in though, that’ll be the gentleman in you. Let’s go! Bit of a chinwag and we can go our separate ways for the next ten years or so. We’re no birds of a feather, Vanya, you and me!”
“Stop jabbering, and let’s go. I give you twenty minutes, then I’m off.”
The dining room on the first floor was reached by climbing three angled flights of wooden stairs ending in a small set of steps that led to the next floor. On the way up we bumped into two well-oiled gentlemen. Seeing us they stood aside, swaying.
One of them was a very young, bumptious-looking, smooth-faced lad with just a faint crop of whiskers and an intensely stupid expression on his face. His dress was rather foppish, but in a funny kind of way, as though it didn’t belong to him; he was sporting rings with precious stones on his fingers and an expensive jewelled tiepin; a ridiculous forelock of hair completed the picture. He could not help smiling and sniggering all the time. His companion was a man of about fifty, stout, pot-bellied, dressed in a rather careless manner, also sporting a large tiepin, but bald with just the occasional tuft of hair above a sagging, inebriated, pock-marked face and a pair of glasses perched on a button-like nose. The expression on his face was ill-humoured and sensuous. His mean, viciously mistrustful eyes were reduced to narrow slits by surrounding folds of fat. Apparently they both knew Masloboyev, but on meeting us, the fat one screwed up his face, though only for an instant, into a doleful grimace, while the youngster simply dissolved in an ingratiatingly oleaginous smile. He even doffed his cap – he wore a cap.
“Beg your pardon, Filip Filipych,” he muttered, looking at Masloboyev obsequiously.
“What’s up?”
“Awfully sorry… and all that…” (He gave his shirt collar a flick.)* “You’ll find Mitroshka sitting over there. Well, the man’s a right scoundrel, Filip Filipych.”
“What are you on about?”
“Nothing, really… except it was Mitroshka’s doing: they smeared sour cream all over his face” – he motioned his head towards his companion – “the other week in a whorehouse… hehe!”
The fat man poked him with his elbow in annoyance.
“Wouldn’t you like to join us, Filip Filipych, at Dussot’s to crack half a case or so of bubbly? May we have the pleasure of your company?”
“No, my dear fellow, not now,” Masloboyev replied. “I’m busy.”
“Hehe! So am I, as a matter of fact I’d like to pick your brains…” His friend again nudged him with his elbow.
“Later, later.”
Masloboyev deliberately avoided looking at them. But no sooner had we entered the first room, with a laden food counter stretching its whole length – stone-baked pies, pasties and carafes with different-coloured infusions – than Masloboyev quickly took me to a corner and said, “The young one’s Sizobryukhov – he’s on a spree, son of a famous corn merchant, who left him half a million. He came back from Paris where he blew no end of money and would have gone through the lot most likely, but then he came into another inheritance from his uncle, and now he’s finishing that off too on native soil. Give him a year and he’ll be passing the hat around. He’s as thick as two planks – but hangs out in the most expensive restaurants, cellar bars and taverns, not to mention all the actresses he calls on, even applied for a commission in the hussars recently. The older one – Arkhipov – is something of a merchant or business manager, has dabbled in the wine trade too, a proper rogue and crook, and now he’s Sizobryukhov’s crony, Judas and Falstaff rolled into one, has been bankrupted twice, a sickening dirty old bastard with every perversion under the sun. Apropos this, he could have been up on a charge in a case I was pursuing, but he managed to wriggle out. As it happens, I’m very glad indeed I met him here. I’ve been looking out for him… It goes without saying Arkhipov’s fleecing the youngster. He knows every nook and cranny in town, hence his appeal to such greenhorns. Don’t worry my friend, I’ve had my eye on him for a long time. So has Mitroshka, that strapping fellow over there in the expensive frock coat – there look, over by the window, the gypsy-looking one. He trades in horses and knows every local hussar. He’s such a con artist, I tell you, he’ll forge a banknote right in front of your very eyes, and though you’ll have seen it done, you’ll still go and change it for him. He’s sporting that coat now, velveteen to be sure, pretty traditional (it suits him, I must admit), but if you dressed him up in a good suit of tails and all the rest of it, took him to some exclusive gentleman’s club and introduced him as the wealthy Count Barabanov, say, he’d fool everyone for the best part of two hours – and he’d sit down to a game of cards, talk like a proper toff, and nobody’d smell a rat – everybody’d be taken in. He’ll come to no good. He’s now fallen upon lean times and is all out to get old fat-guts who’s lured his former pal Sizobryukhov away from him before he’d had a chance to pick the youngster clean himself. If they’ve all ended up in this joint, there’s bound to be something fishy afoot. And I could even tell you what, and wouldn’t mind betting it was Mitroshka, and no one else, who passed the word to me that Arkhipov and Sizobryukhov would be slinking around here up to some mischief or other. For reasons of my own I want to take advantage of Mitroshka’s hatred for Arkhipov, and that as a matter of fact is mainly what brought me here now. But I don’t want Mitroshka to twig, so don’t keep staring at him either. When the time comes for us to leave, he’ll no doubt approach me himself and tell me all I need to know… And now let’s go, Vanya, through to that room, see? Well, Stepan,” he continued, turning to a waiter, “do you know what it is I require?”
“I do, sir.”
“And can you oblige?”
“Indeed, sir.”
“Go ahead then. Sit down, Vanya. Well, why are you looking at me like that? Of course I see you’re looking at me. You’re astonished? No need! Anything can happen to a man that wouldn’t have occurred to him even in his wildest dreams – especially then… well, say, in those dim and distant days when you and I were swotting up Cornelius Nepos!* Look here, Vanya, remember one thing: Masloboyev may have strayed from the path of righteousness, but his heart is still in the right place, it’s only the circumstances that have changed. I may be a pot, but no blacker than the kettle. I had a shot at being a doctor, I aspired to be a teacher of our Russian literature, I wrote an article on Gogol, I thought of going into gold mining, and was planning to get spliced – where there’s life, there’s temptation, and she had already said yes, even though she came from a house w
here she lived in the lap of luxury. I was even about to borrow a pair of shoes to wear for the wedding ceremony, seeing as mine were full of holes for the past year and a half… But it all fell through. She married a schoolteacher, while I went to work in an office, not a commercial office, you understand, but just simply an office. Well, it was soon clear I was on the wrong tack. Years rolled by, and now, though I’m not in regular service, I rake in enough – I pocket bribes without ruth, but stick to truth. I’m tough when the going’s good, but when it gets rough – I chicken and bluff. I’ve my own code though. I know, for instance, you can’t take on everybody single-handed, and I keep my nose clean. My line of business is more in the way of uncovering things… if you follow my meaning?”
“What are you, a private eye or something?”
“No, I wouldn’t put it quite that way, but I do have a few irons in the fire, some of them official, others – of the personal kind. You see, Vanya, it’s like this – I drink vodka. But as I’ve never done so to excess, I know the score. My time’s past, you can’t make a leopard change his spots. I’ll say one thing, if the human spark were already dead in me, I wouldn’t have approached you today, Vanya. You were right, I did see you before; many’s the time I wanted to come up to you, but couldn’t pluck up the courage and kept procrastinating. I’m not worthy of you. And you were perfectly right to say that if I did approach you, it was because I had a few. But as all this is complete and utter rubbish, enough said about me! Let’s talk about you instead. Well, me old pal, me old beauty, I have read it! Indeed I have! I’m talking, my friend, about your first-born baby. And the minute I read it, I was within an ace of turning into a decent person! Within an ace. But then I thought on it and preferred to stay the way I was. Yes, sir…”
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