The door on to the stairs was opened…. I listened…. Asanov was asking my servant if I were at home.
Pasinkov got up; he did not care for Asanov, and telling me in a whisper that he would go and lie down on my bed, he went into my bedroom.
A minute later Asanov entered.
From the very sight of his flushed face, from his brief, cool bow, I guessed that he had not come to me without some set purpose in his mind. 'What is going to happen?' I wondered.
'Sir,' he began, quickly seating himself in an armchair, 'I have come to you for you to settle a matter of doubt for me.'
'And that is?'
'That is: I wish to know whether you are an honest man.'
I flew into a rage. 'What's the meaning of that?' I demanded.
'I'll tell you what's the meaning of it,' he retorted, underlining as it were each word. 'Yesterday I showed you a pocket-book containing letters from a certain person to me…. To-day you repeated to that person, with reproach—with reproach, observe—some expressions from those letters, without having the slightest right to do so. I should like to know what explanation you can give of this?'
'And I should like to know what right you have to cross-examine me,' I answered, trembling with fury and inward shame.
'You chose to boast of your uncle, of your correspondence; I'd nothing to do with it. You've got all your letters all right, haven't you?'
'The letters are all right; but I was yesterday in a condition in which you could easily——'
'In short, sir,' I began, speaking intentionally as loud as I could, 'I beg you to leave me alone, do you hear? I don't want to know anything about it, and I'm not going to give you any explanation. You can go to that person for explanations!' I felt that my head was beginning to go round.
Asanov turned upon me a look to which he obviously tried to impart an air of scornful penetration, pulled his moustaches, and got up slowly.
'I know now what to think,' he observed; 'your face is the best evidence against you. But I must tell you that that's not the way honourable people behave…. To read a letter on the sly, and then to go and worry an honourable girl….'
'Will you go to the devil!' I shouted, stamping, 'and send me a second;
I don't mean to talk to you.'
'Kindly refrain from telling me what to do,' Asanov retorted frigidly; 'but I certainly will send a second to you.'
He went away. I fell on the sofa and hid my face in my hands. Some one touched me on the shoulder; I moved my hands—before me was standing Pasinkov.
'What's this? is it true?' … he asked me. 'You read another man's letter?'
I had not the strength to answer, but I nodded in assent.
Pasinkov went to the window, and standing with his back to me, said slowly: 'You read a letter from a girl to Asanov. Who was the girl?'
'Sophia Zlotnitsky,' I answered, as a prisoner on his trial answers the judge.
For a long while Pasinkov did not utter a word.
'Nothing but passion could to some extent excuse you,' he began at last. 'Are you in love then with the younger Zlotnitsky?'
'Yes.'
Pasinkov was silent again for a little.
'I thought so. And you went to her to-day and began reproaching her?…'
'Yes, yes, yes!…' I articulated desperately. 'Now you can despise me….'
Pasinkov walked a couple of times up and down the room.
'And she loves him?' he queried.
'She loves him….'
Pasinkov looked down, and gazed a long while at the floor without moving.
'Well, it must be set right,' he began, raising his head,' things can't be left like this.'
And he took up his hat.
'Where are you going?'
'To Asanov.'
I jumped up from the sofa.
'But I won't let you. Good heavens! how can you! what will he think?'
Pasinkov looked at me.
'Why, do you think it better to keep this folly up, to bring ruin on yourself, and disgrace on the girl?'
'But what are you going to say to Asanov?'
'I'll try and explain things to him, I'll tell him you beg his forgiveness …'
'But I don't want to apologise to him!'
'You don't? Why, aren't you in fault?'
I looked at Pasinkov; the calm and severe, though mournful, expression of his face impressed me; it was new to me. I made no reply, and sat down on the sofa.
Pasinkov went out.
In what agonies of suspense I waited for his return! With what cruel slowness the time lingered by! At last he came back—late.
'Well?' I queried in a timid voice.
'Thank goodness!' he answered; 'it's all settled.'
'You have been at Asanov's?'
'Yes.'
'Well, and he?—made a great to-do, I suppose?' I articulated with an effort.
'No, I can't say that. I expected more … He … he's not such a vulgar fellow as I thought.'
'Well, and have you seen any one else besides?' I asked, after a brief pause.
'I've been at the Zlotnitskys'.'
'Ah!…' (My heart began to throb. I did not dare look Pasinkov in the face.) 'Well, and she?'
'Sophia Nikolaevna is a reasonable, kind-hearted girl…. Yes, she is a kind-hearted girl. She felt awkward at first, but she was soon at ease. But our whole conversation only lasted five minutes.'
'And you … told her everything … about me … everything?'
'I told her what was necessary.'
'I shall never be able to go and see them again now!' I pronounced dejectedly….
'Why? No, you can go occasionally. On the contrary, you are absolutely bound to go and see them, so that nothing should be thought….'
'Ah, Yakov, you will despise me now!' I cried, hardly keeping back my tears.
'Me! Despise you? …' (His affectionate eyes glowed with love.) 'Despise you … silly fellow! Don't I see how hard it's been for you, how you're suffering?'
He held out his hand to me; I fell on his neck and broke into sobs.
After a few days, during which I noticed that Pasinkov was in very low spirits, I made up my mind at last to go to the Zlotnitskys'. What I felt, as I stepped into their drawing-room, it would be difficult to convey in words; I remember that I could hardly distinguish the persons in the room, and my voice failed me. Sophia was no less ill at ease; she obviously forced herself to address me, but her eyes avoided mine as mine did hers, and every movement she made, her whole being, expressed constraint, mingled … why conceal the truth? with secret aversion. I tried, as far as possible, to spare her and myself from such painful sensations. This meeting was happily our last—before her marriage. A sudden change in my fortunes carried me off to the other end of Russia, and I bade a long farewell to Petersburg, to the Zlotnitsky family, and, what was most grievous of all for me, to dear Yakov Pasinkov.
II
Seven years had passed by. I don't think it necessary to relate all that happened to me during that period. I moved restlessly about over Russia, and made my way into the remotest wilds, and thank God I did! The wilds are not so much to be dreaded as some people suppose, and in the most hidden places, under the fallen twigs and rotting leaves in the very heart of the forest, spring up flowers of sweet fragrance.
One day in spring, as I was passing on some official duties through a small town in one of the outlying provinces of Eastern Russia, through the dim little window of my coach I saw standing before a shop in the square a man whose face struck me as exceedingly familiar. I looked attentively at the man, and to my great delight recognised him as Elisei, Pasinkov's servant.
I at once told the driver to stop, jumped out of the coach, and went up to Elisei.
'Hullo, friend!' I began, with difficulty concealing my excitement; 'are you here with your master?'
'Yes, I'm with my master,' he responded slowly, and then suddenly cried out: 'Why, sir, is it you? I didn't know you.'
&n
bsp; 'Are you here with Yakov Ivanitch?'
'Yes, sir, with him, to be sure … whom else would I be with?'
'Take me to him quickly.'
'To be sure! to be sure! This way, please, this way … we're stopping here at the tavern.' Elisei led me across the square, incessantly repeating—'Well, now, won't Yakov Ivanitch be pleased!'
This man, of Kalmuck extraction, and hideous, even savage appearance, but the kindest-hearted creature and by no means a fool, was passionately devoted to Pasinkov, and had been his servant for ten years.
'Is Yakov Ivanitch quite well?' I asked him.
Elisei turned his dusky, yellow little face to me.
'Ah, sir, he's in a poor way … in a poor way, sir! You won't know his honour…. He's not long for this world, I'm afraid. That's how it is we've stopped here, or we had been going on to Odessa for his health.'
'Where do you come from?'
'From Siberia, sir.'
'From Siberia?'
'Yes, sir. Yakov Ivanitch was sent to a post out there. It was there his honour got his wound.'
'Do you mean to say he went into the military service?'
'Oh no, sir. He served in the civil service.'
'What a strange thing!' I thought.
Meanwhile we had reached the tavern, and Elisei ran on in front to announce me. During the first years of our separation, Pasinkov and I had written to each other pretty often, but his last letter had reached me four years before, and since then I had heard nothing of him.
'Please come up, sir!' Elisei shouted to me from the staircase; 'Yakov
Ivanitch is very anxious to see you.'
I ran hurriedly up the tottering stairs, went into a dark little room—and my heart sank…. On a narrow bed, under a fur cloak, pale as a corpse, lay Pasinkov, and he was stretching out to me a bare, wasted hand. I rushed up to him and embraced him passionately.
'Yasha!' I cried at last; 'what's wrong with you?'
'Nothing,' he answered in a faint voice; 'I'm a bit feeble. What chance brought you here?'
I sat down on a chair beside Pasinkov's bed, and, never letting his hands out of my hands, I began gazing into his face. I recognised the features I loved; the expression of the eyes and the smile were unchanged; but what a wreck illness had made of him!
He noticed the impression he was making on me.
'It's three days since I shaved,' he observed; 'and, to be sure, I've not been combed and brushed, but except for that … I'm not so bad.'
'Tell me, please, Yasha,' I began; 'what's this Elisei's been telling me … you were wounded?'
'Ah! yes, it's quite a history,' he replied. 'I'll tell you it later.
Yes, I was wounded, and only fancy what by?—an arrow.'
'An arrow?'
'Yes, an arrow; only not a mythological one, not Cupid's arrow, but a real arrow of very flexible wood, with a sharply-pointed tip at one end…. A very unpleasant sensation is produced by such an arrow, especially when it sticks in one's lungs.'
'But however did it come about? upon my word!…'
'I'll tell you how it happened. You know there always was a great deal of the absurd in my life. Do you remember my comical correspondence about getting my passport? Well, I was wounded in an absurd fashion too. And if you come to think of it, what self-respecting person in our enlightened century would permit himself to be wounded by an arrow? And not accidentally—observe—not at sports of any sort, but in a battle.'
'But you still don't tell me …'
'All right, wait a minute,' he interrupted. 'You know that soon after you left Petersburg I was transferred to Novgorod. I was a good time at Novgorod, and I must own I was bored there, though even there I came across one creature….' (He sighed.) … 'But no matter about that now; two years ago I got a capital little berth, some way off, it's true, in the Irkutsk province, but what of that! It seems as though my father and I were destined from birth to visit Siberia. A splendid country, Siberia! Rich, fertile—every one will tell you the same. I liked it very much there. The natives were put under my rule; they're a harmless lot of people; but as my ill-luck would have it, they took it into their heads, a dozen of them, not more, to smuggle in contraband goods. I was sent to arrest them. Arrest them I did, but one of them, crazy he must have been, thought fit to defend himself, and treated me to the arrow…. I almost died of it; however, I got all right again. Now, here I am going to get completely cured…. The government—God give them all good health!—have provided the cash.'
Pasinkov let his head fall back on the pillow, exhausted, and ceased speaking. A faint flush suffused his cheeks. He closed his eyes.
'He can't talk much,' Elisei, who had not left the room, murmured in an undertone.
A silence followed; nothing was heard but the sick man's painful breathing.
'But here,' he went on, opening his eyes, 'I've been stopping a fortnight in this little town…. I caught cold, I suppose. The district doctor here is attending me—you'll see him; he seems to know his business. I'm awfully glad it happened so, though, or how should we have met?' (And he took my hand. His hand, which had just before been cold as ice, was now burning hot.) 'Tell me something about yourself,' he began again, throwing the cloak back off his chest. 'You and I haven't seen each other since God knows when.'
I hastened to carry out his wish, so as not to let him talk, and started giving an account of myself. He listened to me at first with great attention, then asked for drink, and then began closing his eyes again and turning his head restlessly on the pillow. I advised him to have a little nap, adding that I should not go on further till he was well again, and that I should establish myself in a room beside him. 'It's very nasty here …' Pasinkov was beginning, but I stopped his mouth, and went softly out. Elisei followed me.
'What is it, Elisei? Why, he's dying, isn't he?' I questioned the faithful servant.
Elisei simply made a gesture with his hand, and turned away.
Having dismissed my driver, and rapidly moved my things into the next room, I went to see whether Pasinkov was asleep. At the door I ran up against a tall man, very fat and heavily built. His face, pock-marked and puffy, expressed laziness—and nothing else; his tiny little eyes seemed, as it were, glued up, and his lips looked polished, as though he were just awake.
'Allow me to ask,' I questioned him, 'are you not the doctor?'
The fat man looked at me, seeming with an effort to lift his overhanging forehead with his eyebrows.
'Yes, sir,' he responded at last.
'Do me the favour, Mr. Doctor, won't you, please, to come this way into my room? Yakov Ivanitch, is, I believe, now asleep. I am a friend of his and should like to have a little talk with you about his illness, which makes me very uneasy.'
'Very good,' answered the doctor, with an expression which seemed to try and say, 'Why talk so much? I'd have come anyway,' and he followed me.
'Tell me, please,' I began, as soon as he had dropped into a chair, 'is my friend's condition serious? What do you think?'
'Yes,' answered the fat man, tranquilly.
'And… is it very serious?'
'Yes, it's serious.'
'So that he may…even die?'
'He may.'
I confess I looked almost with hatred at the fat man.
'Good heavens!' I began; 'we must take some steps, call a consultation, or something. You know we can't… Mercy on us!'
'A consultation?—quite possible; why not? It's possible. Call in Ivan
Efremitch….'
The doctor spoke with difficulty, and sighed continually. His stomach heaved perceptibly when he spoke, as it were emphasising each word.
'Who is Ivan Efremitch?'
'The parish doctor.'
'Shouldn't we send to the chief town of the province? What do you think? There are sure to be good doctors there.'
'Well! you might.'
'And who is considered the best doctor there?'
'The best? There was a doctor Ko
lrabus there … only I fancy he's been transferred somewhere else. Though I must own there's no need really to send.'
'Why so?'
'Even the best doctor will be of no use to your friend.'
'Why, is he so bad?'
'Yes, he's run down.' 'In what way precisely is he ill?'
'He received a wound…. The lungs were affected in consequence … and then he's taken cold too, and fever was set up … and so on. And there's no reserve force; a man can't get on, you know yourself, with no reserve force.'
We were both silent for a while.
'How about trying homoeopathy?…' said the fat man, with a sidelong glance at me.
'Homoeopathy? Why, you're an allopath, aren't you?'
'What of that? Do you think I don't understand homoeopathy? I understand it as well as the other! Why, the chemist here among us treats people homeopathically, and he has no learned degree whatever.'
'Oh,' I thought, 'it's a bad look-out!…'
'No, doctor,' I observed, 'you had better treat him according to your usual method.'
'As you please.'
The fat man got up and heaved a sigh.
'You are going to him? 'I asked.
'Yes, I must have a look at him.'
And he went out.
I did not follow him; to see him at the bedside of my poor, sick friend was more than I could stand. I called my man and gave him orders to drive at once to the chief town of the province, to inquire there for the best doctor, and to bring him without fail. There was a slight noise in the passage. I opened the door quickly.
The doctor was already coming out of Pasinkov's room.
'Well?' I questioned him in a whisper.
'It's all right. I have prescribed a mixture.'
'I have decided, doctor, to send to the chief town. I have no doubt of your skill, but as you're aware, two heads are better than one.'
'Well, that's very praiseworthy!' responded the fat man, and he began to descend the staircase. He was obviously tired of me.
I went in to Pasinkov.
'Have you seen the local Aesculapius?' he asked.
'Yes,' I answered.
'What I like about him,' remarked Pasinkov, 'is his astounding composure. A doctor ought to be phlegmatic, oughtn't he? It's so encouraging for the patient.'
The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories Page 11