Fifty-Two Stories

Manyusya again rode beside Nikitin. He would have liked to talk about how passionately he loved her, but he was afraid that the officers and Varya would hear him and kept silent. Manyusya was also silent, and he sensed what kept her silent and why she rode beside him, and was so happy that the earth, the sky, the lights of the town, the black silhouette of the brewery—all merged in his eyes into something very good and affectionate, and it seemed to him that his Count Nulin was riding on air and wanted to climb up into the crimson sky.

They came home. On the table in the garden the samovar was already boiling, and old Shelestov was sitting at one end of the table with his friends, the officials of the circuit court, and criticizing something as usual.

“That’s boorishness!” he said. “Boorishness and nothing but! Yes, sirs, boorishness!”

Since Nikitin fell in love with Manyusya, he had liked everything at the Shelestovs’: the house, the garden by the house, the evening tea, the wicker chairs, the old nanny, and even the word “boorishness,” which the old man loved to pronounce all the time. The only things he did not like were the abundance of dogs and cats and the Egyptian doves that moaned mournfully in a big cage on the terrace. There were so many yard dogs and house dogs that in the course of his acquaintance with the Shelestovs he had learned to recognize only two: Mushka and Som. Mushka was a small, mangy dog with a shaggy muzzle, wicked and spoiled. She hated Nikitin. Each time she saw him, she cocked her head to one side, bared her teeth, and went “grrr…nya-nya-nya-nya…grrr…”

Then she would get under his chair. When he tried to chase her out from under his chair, she would dissolve into shrill barking, and the owners would say:

“Don’t be afraid. She doesn’t bite. She’s a good dog.”

Som was a huge black dog with long legs and a tail as stiff as a stick. During dinner and tea, he usually walked silently under the table and beat his tail against the boots and table legs. He was a kindly, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not stand him, because he had the habit of putting his muzzle on the diners’ knees and slobbering on their trousers. More than once Nikitin tried to hit him on his big forehead with a knife handle, gave him flicks on the nose, yelled at him, complained, but nothing saved his trousers from the spots.

After the promenade on horseback, the tea, preserves, rusks and butter seemed very tasty. They all drank the first glass with great appetite and in silence, but before the second they began to argue. The arguments at tea and at dinner were started each time by Varya. She was already twenty-three, good-looking, prettier than Manyusya, was considered the most intelligent and educated one in the house, and behaved importantly, sternly, as befitted an older daughter who had taken the place in the house of the late mother. By right as hostess she came before the guests in a smock, called the officers by their last names, looked at Manyusya as a little girl, and talked to her in the tone of a headmistress. She called herself an old maid—meaning she was sure she would marry.

Every conversation, even about the weather, she unfailingly turned into an argument. It was some sort of passion with her—to catch everyone at their words, to expose their contradictions, to pick on phrases. You would start telling her something, and she would already be peering intently into your face, and would suddenly interrupt: “Excuse me, excuse me, Petrov, but two days ago you said just the opposite!”

Or else she would smile mockingly and say: “However, I notice you’re beginning to preach the principles of the Third Department.³ My congratulations.”

If you said something witty or produced a quip, you would immediately hear her voice: “That’s old hat!” or “That’s banal!” If an officer joked, she would make a contemptuous grimace and say: “An arrrmy joke!”

And she would bring out that “grrr” so impressively that Mushka never failed to respond from under the chair: “Grrr…nya-nya-nya…”

This time the argument over tea began with Nikitin talking about school examinations.

“Excuse me, Sergei Vassilyich,” Varya interrupted him. “Here you’re telling us it’s difficult for the students. But whose fault is that, may I ask? For instance, you assigned your students a composition on the theme ‘Pushkin as Psychologist.’ First of all, you shouldn’t assign such difficult topics, and second, what kind of psychologist is Pushkin? Well, Shchedrin⁴ or, let’s say, Dostoevsky—that’s another matter, but Pushkin is a great poet and nothing more.”

“Shchedrin is one thing, and Pushkin is another,” Nikitin replied sullenly.

“I know, you schoolteachers don’t recognize Shchedrin, but that’s not the point. Tell me, what kind of psychologist is Pushkin?”

“So he’s not a psychologist? If you like, I’ll give you examples.”

And Nikitin recited several passages from Onegin, then from Boris Godunov.⁵