entered a lying-in institution and had worked very hard to gain the necessary certificate. She was unmarried and very chaste.) “No wonder!” some sceptics may say (bearing in mind the description of her personal appearance; but we will permit ourselves to say that it was wonderful and rare).
Paklin laughed at her retort.
“Well done, my dear! I feel quite crushed! But it serves me right for being such a dwarf! I wonder where our host has got to?”
Paklin purposely changed the subject of conversation, which was rather a sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature, nor indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the more because he was passionately fond of women and would have given anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and unenviable position in society. His father, a member of the lower middle class, had, through all sorts of dishonest means, attained the rank of titular councillor. He had been fairly successful as an intermediary in legal matters, and managed estates and house property. He had made a moderate fortune, but had taken to drink towards the end of his life and had left nothing after his death.
Young Paklin, he was called Sila—Sila Samsonitch, [Meaning strength, son of Samson] and always regarded this name as a joke against himself, was educated in a commercial school, where he had acquired a good knowledge of German. After a great many difficulties he had entered an office, where he received a salary of five hundred roubles a year, out of which he had to keep himself, an invalid aunt, and a humpbacked sister. At the time of our story Paklin was twenty-eight years old. He had a great many acquaintances among students and young people, who liked him for his cynical wit, his harmless, though biting, self-confident speeches, his one-sided, unpedantic, though genuine, learning, but occasionally they sat on him severely. Once, on arriving late at a political meeting, he hastily began excusing himself. “Paklin was afraid!” some one sang out from a corner of the room, and everyone laughed. Paklin laughed with them, although it was like a stab in his heart. “He is right, the blackguard!” he thought to himself. Nejdanov he had come across in a little Greek restaurant, where he was in the habit of taking his dinner, and where he sat airing his rather free and audacious views. He assured everyone that the main cause of his democratic turn of mind was the bad Greek cooking, which upset his liver.
“I wonder where our host has got to?” he repeated. “He has been out of sorts lately. Heaven forbid that he should be in love!”
Mashurina scowled.
“He has gone to the library for books. As for falling in love, he has neither the time nor the opportunity.”
“Why not with you?” almost escaped Paklin’s lips.
“I should like to see him, because I have an important matter to talk over with him,” he said aloud.
“What about?” Ostrodumov asked. “Our affairs?”
“Perhaps yours; that is, our common affairs.”
Ostrodumov hummed. He did not believe him. “Who knows? He’s such a busy body,” he thought.
“There he is at last!” Mashurina exclaimed suddenly, and her small unattractive eyes, fixed on the door, brightened, as if lit up by an inner ray, making them soft and warm and tender.
The door opened, and this time a young man of twenty-three, with a cap on his head and a bundle of books under his arm, entered the room. It was Nejdanov himself.
II
AT the sight of visitors he stopped in the doorway, took them in at a glance, threw off his cap, dropped the books on to the floor, walked over to the bed, and sat down on the very edge. An expression of annoyance and displeasure passed over his pale handsome face, which seemed even paler than it really was, in contrast to his dark-red, wavy hair.
Mashurina turned away and bit her lip; Ostrodumov muttered, “At last!”
Paklin was the first to approach him.
“Why, what is the matter, Alexai Dmitritch, Hamlet of Russia? Has something happened, or are you just simply depressed, without any particular cause?
“Oh, stop! Mephistopheles of Russia!” Nejdanov exclaimed irritably. “I am not in the mood for fencing with blunt witticisms just now.”
Paklin laughed.
“That’s not quite correct. If it is wit, then it can’t be blunt. If blunt, then it can’t be wit.”
“All right, all right! We know you are clever!
“Your nerves are out of order,” Paklin remarked hesitatingly. “Or has something really happened?”
“Oh, nothing in particular, only that it is impossible to show one’s nose in this hateful town without knocking against some vulgarity, stupidity, tittle-tattle, or some horrible injustice. One can’t live here any longer!”
“Is that why your advertisement in the papers says that you want a place and have no objection to leaving St. Petersburg?” Ostrodumov asked.
“Yes. I would go away from here with the greatest of pleasure, if some fool could be found who would offer me a place!”
“You should first fulfill your duties here,” Mashurina remarked significantly, her face still turned away.
“What duties?” Nejdanov asked, turning towards her.
Mashurina bit her lip. “Ask Ostrodumov.”
Nejdanov turned to Ostrodumov. The latter hummed and hawed, as if to say, “Wait a minute.”
“But seriously,” Paklin broke in, “have you heard any unpleasant news?”
Nejdanov bounced up from the bed like an india-rubber ball. “What more do you want?” he shouted out suddenly, in a ringing voice. “Half of Russia is dying of hunger! The Moscow News is triumphant! They want to introduce classicism, the students’ benefit clubs have been closed, spies everywhere, oppression, lies, betrayals, deceit! And it is not enough for him! He wants some new unpleasantness! He thinks that I am joking. … Basanov has been arrested,” he added, lowering his voice. “I heard it at the library.”
Mashurina and Ostrodumov lifted their heads simultaneously.
“My dear Alexai Dmitritch,” Paklin began, “you are upset, and for a very good reason. But have you forgotten in what times and in what country we are living? Amongst us a drowning man must himself create the straw to clutch at. Why be sentimental over it? One must look the devil straight in the face and not get excited like children—”
“Oh, don’t, please!” Nejdanov interrupted him desperately, frowning as if in pain. “We know you are energetic and not afraid of anything—”
“I—not afraid of anything?” Paklin began.
“I wonder who could have betrayed Basanov?” Nejdanov continued. “I simply can’t understand!”
