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Ward
Six
I
II
III IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XV Andrey Yefimitch now lodged in a little house with three
windows. There were only three rooms besides the kitchen in the
little house. The doctor lived in two of them which looked into
the street, while Daryushka and the landlady with her three
children lived in the third room and the kitchen. Sometimes the
landlady's lover, a drunken peasant who was rowdy and reduced
the children and Daryushka to terror, would come for the night.
When he arrived and established himself in the kitchen and
demanded vodka, they all felt very uncomfortable, and the doctor
would be moved by pity to take the crying children into his room
and let them lie on his floor, and this gave him great
satisfaction.
He got up as before at eight o'clock, and after his morning tea
sat down to read his old books and magazines: he had no money
for new ones. Either because the books were old, or perhaps
because of the change in his surroundings, reading exhausted
him, and did not grip his attention as before. That he might not
spend his time in idleness he made a detailed catalogue of his
books and gummed little labels on their backs, and this
mechanical, tedious work seemed to him more interesting than
reading. The monotonous, tedious work lulled his thoughts to
sleep in some unaccountable way, and the time passed quickly
while he thought of nothing. Even sitting in the kitchen,
peeling potatoes with Daryushka or picking over the buckwheat
grain, seemed to him interesting. On Saturdays and Sundays he
went to church. Standing near the wall and half closing his
eyes, he listened to the singing and thought of his father, of
his mother, of the university, of the religions of the world; he
felt calm and melancholy, and as he went out of the church
afterwards he regretted that the service was so soon over. He
went twice to the hospital to talk to Ivan Dmitritch. But on
both occasions Ivan Dmitritch was unusually excited and
ill-humoured; he bade the doctor leave him in peace, as he had
long been sick of empty chatter, and declared, to make up for
all his sufferings, he asked from the damned scoundrels only one
favour -- solitary confinement. Surely they would not refuse him
even that? On both occasions when Andrey Yefimitch was taking
leave of him and wishing him good-night, he answered rudely and
said:
"Go to hell!"
And Andrey Yefimitch did not know now whether to go to him for
the third time or not. He longed to go.
In old days Andrey Yefimitch used to walk about his rooms and
think in the interval after dinner, but now from dinner-time
till evening tea he lay on the sofa with his face to the back
and gave himself up to trivial thoughts which he could not
struggle against. He was mortified that after more than twenty
years of service he had been given neither a pension nor any
assistance. It is true that he had not done his work honestly,
but, then, all who are in the Service get a pension without
distinction whether they are honest or not. Contemporary justice
lies precisely in the bestowal of grades, orders, and pensions,
not for moral qualities or capacities, but for service whatever
it may have been like. Why was he alone to be an exception? He
had no money at all. He was ashamed to pass by the shop and look
at the woman who owned it. He owed thirty-two roubles for beer
already. There was money owing to the landlady also. Daryushka
sold old clothes and books on the sly, and told lies to the
landlady, saying that the doctor was just going to receive a
large sum of money.
He was angry with himself for having wasted on travelling the
thousand roubles he had saved up. How useful that thousand
roubles would have been now! He was vexed that people would not
leave him in peace. Hobotov thought it his duty to look in on
his sick colleague from time to time. Everything about him was
revolting to Andrey Yefimitch -- his well-fed face and vulgar,
condescending tone, and his use of the word "colleague," and his
high top-boots; the most revolting thing was that he thought it
was his duty to treat Andrey Yefimitch, and thought that he
really was treating him. On every visit he brought a bottle of
bromide and rhubarb pills.
Mihail Averyanitch, too, thought it his duty to visit his friend
and entertain him. Every time he went in to Andrey Yefimitch
with an affectation of ease, laughed constrainedly, and began
assuring him that he was looking very well to-day, and that,
thank God, he was on the highroad to recovery, and from this it
might be concluded that he looked on his friend's condition as
hopeless. He had not yet repaid his Warsaw debt, and was
overwhelmed by shame; he was constrained, and so tried to laugh
louder and talk more amusingly. His anecdotes and descriptions
seemed endless now, and were an agony both to Andrey Yefimitch
and himself.
In his presence Andrey Yefimitch usually lay on the sofa with
his face to the wall, and listened with his teeth clenched; his
soul was oppressed with rankling disgust, and after every visit
from his friend he felt as though this disgust had risen higher,
and was mounting into his throat.
To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he
himself, and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner
or later perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one
imagined some spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a
million years he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks.
Everything -- culture and the moral law -- would pass away and
not even a burdock would grow out of them. Of what consequence
was shame in the presence of a shopkeeper, of what consequence
was the insignificant Hobotov or the wearisome friendship of
Mihail Averyanitch? It was all trivial and nonsensical.
But such reflections did not help him now. Scarcely had he
imagined the earthly globe in a million years, when Hobotov in
his high top-boots or Mihail Averyanitch with his forced laugh
would appear from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the
shamefaced whisper: "The Warsaw debt. . . . I will repay it in a
day or two, my dear fellow, without fail. . . ."
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