Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (138 page)

And in her frenzy, she rushed at the little girl, who stood petrified with horror, clutched her by the hair, and flung her on the ground. The cup with the cucumbers in it was dashed aside and broken. This only increased the drunken fury’s rage. She beat her victim about the face and the head; but Elena remained obstinately mute; not a sound, not a cry, not a complaint escaped her, even under the blows.

I rushed into the yard, almost beside myself with indignation, and went straight to the drunken woman.

“What are you about? How dare you treat a poor orphan like that?” I cried, seizing the fury by her arm.

“What’s this? Why, who are you?” she screamed, leaving Elena, and putting her arms akimbo. “What do you want in my house?”

“To tell you you’re a heartless woman.” I cried. “How dare you bully a poor child like that? She’s not yours. I’ve just heard that she’s only adopted, a poor orphan.”

“Lord Jesus!” cried the fury. “But who are you, poking your nose in! Did you come with her, eh? I’ll go straight to the police-captain! Andrey Timofeyitch himself treats me like a lady. Why, is it to see you she goes, eh? Who is it? He’s come to make an upset in another person’s house. Police!”

And she flew at me, brandishing her fists. But at that instant we heard a piercing, inhuman shriek. I looked. Elena, who had been standing as though unconscious, uttering a strange, unnatural scream, fell with a thud on the ground, writhing in awful convulsions. Her face was working. She was in an epileptic fit. The dishevelled female and the woman from the basement ran, lifted her up, and hurriedly carried her up the steps.

“She may choke for me, the damned slut the woman shrieked after her. “That’s the third fit this month! … Get off, you pickpocket” and she rushed at me again. “Why are you standing there, porter? What do you get your wages for?”

“Get along, get along! Do you want a smack on the head?” the porter boomed out lazily, apparently only as a matter of form. “Two’s company and three’s none. Make your bow and take your hook!”

There was no help for it. I went out at the gate, feeling that my interference had been useless. But I was boiling with indignation. I stood on, the pavement facing the gateway, and looked through the gate. As soon as I had gone out the woman rushed up the steps, and the porter having done his duty vanished. Soon after, the woman who had helped to carry up Elena hurried down the steps on the way to the basement. Seeing me she stood still and looked at me with curiosity. Her quiet, good-natured face encouraged me. I went back into the yard and straight up to her.

“Allow me to ask,” I said, “who is that girl and what is that horrible woman doing with her? Please don’t imagine that I ask simply from curiosity. I’ve met the girl, and owing to special circumstances I am much interested in her.”

“If you’re interested in her you’d better take her home or find some place for her than let her come to ruin here,” said the woman with apparent reluctance, making a movement to get away from me.

“But if you don’t tell me, what can I do? I tell you I know nothing about her. I suppose that’s Mme. Bubnov herself, the woman of the house?”

“Yes”

“Then how did the girl fall into her hands? Did her mother die here?”

“Oh, I can’t say. It’s not our business.”

And again she would have moved away.

“But please do me a kindness. I tell you it’s very interesting to me. Perhaps I may be able to do something. Who is the girl? What was her mother? Do you know?”

“She looked like a foreigner of some sort; she lived down below with us; but she was ill; she died of consumption.”

“Then she must have been very poor if she shared a room in the basement?”

“Ough! she was poor! My heart was always aching for her. We simply live from hand to mouth, yet she owed us six roubles in the five months she lived with us. We buried her, too. My husband made the coffin.”

“How was it then that woman said she’d buried her?”

“As though she’d buried her!”

“And what was her surname?”

“I can’t pronounce it, sir. It’s difficult. It must have been German.”

“Smith?”

“No, not quite that. Well, Anna Trifonovna took charge of the orphan, to bring her up, she says. But it’s not the right thing at all.”

“I suppose she took her for some object?”

“She’s a woman who’s up to no good,” answered the woman, seeming to ponder and hesitate whether to speak or not. “What is it to us? We’re outsiders.”

“You’d better keep a check on your tongue,” I heard a man’s voice say behind us.

It was a middle-aged man in a dressing-gown, with a full-coat over the dressing-gown, who looked like an artisan, the woman’s husband.

“She’s no call to be talking to you, sir; it’s not our business,” he said, looking askance at me. “And you go in. Good-bye, sir; we’re coffin-makers. If you ever need anything in our way we shall be pleased…but apart from that we’ve nothing to say.”

I went out, musing, and greatly excited. I could do nothing, but I felt that it was hard for me to leave it like this. Some words dropped by the coffin-maker’s wife revolted me particularly. There was something wrong here; I felt that.  I was walking away, looking down and meditating, when suddenly a sharp voice called me by my surname. I looked up.

Before me stood a man who had been drinking and was almost staggering, dressed fairly neatly, though he had a shabby overcoat and a greasy cap. His face was very familiar. I looked more closely at it. He winked at me and smiled ironically.

“Don’t you know me?”

CHAPTER V

AH, WHY IT’S YOU, Masloboev!” I cried, suddenly recognizing him as an old schoolfellow who had been at my provincial gymnasium. “Well, this is a meeting!”

“Yes, a meeting indeed! We’ve not met for six years. Or rather, we have met, but your excellency hasn’t deigned to look at me. To be sure, you’re a general, a literary one that is, eh!…”

He smiled ironically as he said it.

“Come, Masloboev,, old boy, you’re talking nonsense!” I interrupted. “Generals look very different from me even if they are literary ones, and besides, let me tell you, I certainly do remember having met you twice in the street. But you obviously. avoided me. And why should I go up to a man if I see he’s trying to avoid me? And do you know what I believe? If you weren’t drunk you wouldn’t have called to me even now. That’s true, isn’t it? Well, how are you? I’m very, very glad to have met you, my boy.”

“Really? And I’m not compromising you by my … ‘unconventional’ appearance? But there’s no need to ask that. It’s not a great matter; I always remember what a jolly chap you were, old Vanya. Do you remember you took a thrashing for me? You held your tongue and didn’t give me away, and, instead of being grateful, I jeered at you for a week afterwards. You’re a blessed innocent! Glad to see you, my dear soul!” (We kissed each other.) “How many years I’ve been pining in solitude—’From morn till night, from dark till light but I’ve not forgotten old times. They’re not easy to forget. But what have you been doing, what have you been doing?”

“I? Why, I’m pining in solitude, too.”

He gave me a long look, full of the deep feeling of a man slightly inebriated; though he was a very good-natured fellow at any time.

“No, Vanya, your case is not like mine,” he brought out at last in a tragic tone. “I’ve read it, Vanya, you know, I’ve read it, I’ve read it!

… But I say, let us have a good talk! Are you in a hurry?”

“I am in a hurry, and I must confess I’m very much upset about something. I’ll tell you what’s better. Where do you live?”

“I’ll tell you. But that’s not better; shall I tell you what is better?”

“Why, what?”

“Why, this, do you see?” and he pointed out to me a sign a few yards from where we were standing. “You see, confectioner’s and restaurant; that is simply an eating-house, but it’s a good place. I tell you it’s a decent place, and the vodka — there’s no word for it! It’s come all the way from Kiev on foot. I’ve tasted it, many a time I’ve tasted it, I know; and they wouldn’t dare offer me poor stuff here. They know Filip Filippitch. I’m Filip Filippitch, you know. Eh? You make a face? No, let me have my say. Now it’s a quarter past eleven; I’ve just looked. Well, at twenty-five to twelve exactly I’ll let you go. And in the meantime we’ll drain the flowing bowl. Twenty minutes for an old friend. Is that right?”

“If it will really be twenty minutes, all right; because, my dear chap, I really am busy.”

“Well, that’s a bargain. But I tell you what. Two words to begin with: you don’t look cheerful … as though you were put out about something, is that so?”

“Yes.”

“I guessed it. I am going in for the study of physiognomy, you know; it’s an occupation, too. So, come along, we’ll have a talk. In twenty minutes I shall have time in the first place to sip the cup that cheers and to toss off a glass of birch wine, and another of orange bitters, then a Parfait amour, and anything else I can think of. I drink, old man! I’m good for nothing except on a holiday before service. But don’t you drink. I want you just as you are. Though if you did drink you’d betray a peculiar nobility of soul. Come along! We’ll have a little chat and then part for another ten years. I’m not fit company for you, friend Vanya!”

“Don’t chatter so much, but come along. You shall have twenty minutes and then let me go.”

To get to the eating-house we had to go tip a wooden staircase of two flights, leading from the street to the second storey. But on the stairs we suddenly came upon two gentlemen, very drunk. Seeing us they moved aside, staggering.

One of them was a very young and youthful-looking lad, with an exaggeratedly stupid expression of face, with only a faint trace of moustache and no beard. He was dressed like a dandy, but looked ridiculous, as though he were dressed up in someone else’s clothes. He had expensive-looking rings on his fingers, an expensive pin in his tie, and his hair was combed up into a crest which looked particularly absurd. He kept smiling and sniggering. His companion, a thick-set, corpulent, bald-headed man of fifty, with a puffy, drunken, pock-marked face and a nose like a button, was dressed rather carelessly, though he, too, had a big pin in his tie and wore spectacles. The expression of his face was malicious and sensual. His nasty, spiteful and suspicious-looking little eyes were lost in fat and seemed to be peeping through chinks. Evidently they both knew Masloboev, but the fat man made a momentary grimace of vexation on seeing us, while the young man subsided into a grin of obsequious sweetness. He even took off his cap. He was wearing a cap.

“Excuse us, Filip Filippitch,” he muttered, gazing tenderly at him.

“What’s up?”

“I beg your pardon — I’m …. “ (He flicked at his collar.). Mitroshka’s in there. So it seems he’s a scoundrel, Filip Filippitch.

“Well, what’s the matter?”

“Why, it seems so…. Why, last week he” (here he nodded towards his companion) “got his mug smeared with sour cream in a shocking place, all through that chap Mitroshka …khe-e.”

His companion, looking annoyed, poked him with his elbow.

“You should come with us, Filip Filippitch. We’d empty a half-dozen. May we hope for your company?”

“No, my dear man, I can’t now,” answered Masloboev, “I’ve business.”

 “Khe-e! And I’ve a little business, too concerning you….”

Again his companion nudged him with his elbow.

“Afterwards! Afterwards!”

Masloboev was unmistakably trying not to look at them. But no sooner had we entered the outer room, along the whole length of which ran a fairly clean counter, covered with eatables, pies, tarts, and decanters of different-coloured liqueurs, when Masloboev drew me into a corner and said:

“The young fellow’s Sizobryuhov, the son of the celebrated corn-dealer; he came in for half a million when his father died, and now he’s having a good time. He went to Paris, and there he got through no end of money. He’d have spent all there, perhaps, but he came in for another fortune when his uncle died, and he came back from Paris. So he’s getting through the rest of it here. In another year he’ll be sending the hat round. He’s as stupid as a goose. He goes about in the best restaurants and in cellars and taverns, and with actresses, and he’s trying to get into the hussars — he’s just applied for a commission. The other, the old fellow, Arhipov, is something in the way of a merchant, too, or an agent; he had something to do with government contracts, too. He’s a beast, a rogue, and now he’s a pal of Sizobryuhov’s. He’s a Judas and a Falstaff both at once; he’s twice been made bankrupt, and he’s a disgusting, sensual brute, up to all sorts of tricks. I know one criminal affair in that line that he was mixed up in; but he managed to get off. For one thing, I’m very glad I met him here; I was on the lookout for him….  He’s plucking Sizobryuhov now, of course. He knows all sorts of queer places, which is what makes him of use to young fellows like that. I’ve had a grudge against him for ever so long. Mitroshka’s got a bone to pick with him, too — that dashing-looking fellow with the gipsy face in the smart tunic, standing by the window. He deals in horses; he’s known to all the hussars about here. I tell you, he’s such a clever rogue that he’ll make a false bank-note before your very eyes, and pass it off upon you though you’ve seen it. He wears a tunic, though it’s a velvet one, and looks like a Slavophile (though I think it suits him); but put him into a fine dress-coat, or something like it, and take him to the English club and call him the great landowner, count Barabanov; he’ll pass for a count for two hours, play whist, and talk like a count, and they’ll never guess; he’ll take them in. He’ll come to a bad end. Well, Mitroshka’s got a great grudge against the fat man, for Mitroshka’s hard up just now. Sizobryuhov used to be very thick with him, but the fat man’s carried him off before Mitroshka had time to fleece him. If they met in the eating-house just now there must be something up. I know something about it, too, and can guess what it is, for Mitroshka and no one else told me that they’d be here, and be hanging about these parts after some mischief. I want to take advantage of Mitroshka’s hatred for Arhipov, for I have my own reasons, and indeed I came here chiefly on that account. I don’t want to let Mitroshka see, and don’t you keep looking at him, but when we go out he’s sure to come up of himself and tell me what I want to know…. Now come along, Vanya, into the other room, do you see? Now, Stepan,” he said, addressing the waiter, “you understand what I want.”