‘Yes sir! Of course, I could not give him a certificate, but I told him to apply to you… You’ll manage to settle the matter with him somehow… The wound is a slight one, but considering the case unofficially a wound in the head that goes as far as the skull is a serious affair… There are often cases when an apparently trifling wound in the head which had been considered a slight one has ended with mortification of the bone of the skull and consequently with a journey ad patres.’
And, carried away by his subject, ‘Screw’ rose from his seat and, walking about the room along the walls and waving his hands, he began to unload all his knowledge of surgical pathology for my benefit… Mortification of the bones of the skull, inflammation of the brain, death, and other horrors poured from his lips with endless explanations, macroscopic and microscopic processes, that accompany this misty and, for me, quite uninteresting terra incognita.
‘Stop that drivel!’ I cried, trying to check his medical chatter. ‘Can’t you understand how tiresome all this stuff is?’
‘No matter that it’s tiresome… Pay heed, and take yourself in hand… Perhaps another time you will be more careful. It may teach you not to do such stupidities. If you don’t arrange matters with this scabby Osipov, it may cost you your position! The priest of Themis to be tried for thrashing a man! What a scandal!’
Pavel Ivanovich is the only man whose judgments I listen to with a light heart, without frowning, whom I allow to gaze inquiringly into my eyes and to thrust his investigating hand into the depths of my soul… We two are friends in the very best sense of the word; we respect each other, although we have between us accounts of the most unpleasant, the most delicate nature… Like a black cat, a woman had passed between us. This eternal casus belli had been the cause of reckonings between us, but did not make us quarrel, and we continued to be at peace. ‘Screw’ is a very nice fellow. I like his impassive face, with its large nose, screwed-up eyes and thin, reddish beard. I like his tall, thin, narrow-shouldered figure, on which his frockcoat and paletot hung as on a clothes-horse.
His badly made trousers formed ugly creases at the knees, and his boots were terribly trodden down at the heels; his white tie was always in the wrong place. But do not think that he was slovenly… You had only to look once at his calm, intense expression to understand that he had no time to trouble about his own appearance; besides, he did not know how to… He was young, honest, not vain, and loved his medicine, and he was always on the move — this in itself is sufficient to explain to his advantage all the defects of his inelegant toilet. He, like an artist, did not know the value of money, and imperturbably sacrificed his own comfort and the blessings of life to one of his passions, and thus he gave the impression of being a man without means, who could scarcely make both ends meet… He neither smoked nor drank, he spent no money on women, but nevertheless the two thousand roubles he earned by his appointment at the hospital and by private practice passed through his hands as quickly as my money does when I am out on a spree. Two passions drained him: the passion of lending money, and the passion of ordering things he saw advertised in the newspapers… He lent money without demur to whoever asked for it, not uttering a single word about when it was to be returned. It was not possible either by hook or by crook to eradicate in him his heedless trust in people’s conscientiousness, and this confidence was even more apparent in his constantly ordering things that were lauded in newspaper advertisements… He wrote off for everything, the necessary and the unnecessary. He wrote for books, telescopes, humorous magazines, dinner services ‘composed of 100 articles’, chronometers… And it was not surprising that the patients who came to Pavel Ivanovich mistook his room for an arsenal or for a museum. He had always been cheated, but his trust was as strong and unshakable as ever. He was a capital fellow, and we shall meet him more than once in the pages of this novel.
‘Good gracious! What a time I have been sitting here!’ he exclaimed suddenly, looking at the cheap half-hunter watch he had ordered from Moscow, and which was ‘guaranteed for five years’, but had already been repaired twice. ‘I must be off, friend! Goodbye! And mark my words, these sprees of the Count’s will lead to no good! To say nothing about your health… Oh, by-the-by! Will you be going to Tenevo tomorrow?’
‘What’s up there tomorrow?’
‘The church fête! Everybody will be there, so be sure you come too! I have promised that you will be there. Don’t make me out a liar!’
It was not necessary to ask to whom he had given his word. We understood each other. The doctor then took leave, put on his well-worn overcoat, and went away.
I remained alone… In order to drown the unpleasant thoughts that began to swarm in my head, I went to my writing-table and trying not to think nor to call myself to account, I began to open my post. The first envelope that caught my eye contained the following letter:
My Darling Serezha,
Forgive me for troubling you, but I am so surprised that I don’t know to whom to apply… It is shameful! Of course, now it will be impossible to get it back, and I’m not sorry, but judge for yourself: if thieves are to enjoy indulgence, a respectable woman cannot feel safe anywhere. After you left I awoke on the divan and found many of my things were missing. Somebody had stolen my bracelet, my gold studs, ten pearls out of my necklace, and had taken about a hundred roubles out of my purse. I wanted to complain to the Count, but he was asleep, so I went away without doing so. This is very wrong! The Count’s house - and they steal as in a tavern! Tell the Count. I send you much love and kisses.
Your loving
TINA.
That his Excellency’s house was swarming with thieves was nothing new to me; and I added Tina’s letter to the information I had already in my memory on this count. Sooner or later I would be obliged to use this intelligence in a case… I knew who the thieves were.
CHAPTER VIII
Black-eyed Tina’s letter, her large sprawling handwriting, reminded me of the mosaic room and aroused in me desires such as a drunkard has for more drink; but I overcame them, and by the strength of my will I forced myself to work. At first I found it unspeakably dull to decipher the bold handwriting of the various commissaries, but gradually my attention became fixed on a burglary, and I began to work with delight. All day long I sat working at my table, and Polycarp passed behind me from time to time and looked suspiciously at my work. He had no confidence in my sobriety, and at any moment he expected to see me rise from the table and order Zorka to be saddled; but towards evening, seeing my persistence, he began to give credence to my good intentions, and the expression of moroseness on his face gave place to one of satisfaction… He began to walk about on tiptoe and to speak in whispers… When some young fellows passed my house, playing on the accordion, he went into the street and shouted:
‘What do you young devils mean by making such a row here? Can’t you go another way? Don’t you know, you infidels, that the master is working?’
In the evening when he served the samovar in the dining-room, he quietly opened my door and called me graciously to come to tea.
‘Will you please come to tea?’ he said, sighing gently and smiling respectfully.
And while I was drinking my tea he came up behind me and kissed me on the shoulder.
‘Now that’s better, Sergey Petrovich,’ he mumbled. ‘Why don’t you let that white-eyebrowed devil go hang… How can you, with your great intelligence and your education, behave like
