Fifty-Two Stories

Nikitin shuddered all over and opened his eyes. In front of the sofa stood Ippolit Ippolitych, his head thrown back, tying his necktie.

“Get up, it’s time for work,” he said. “And you shouldn’t sleep in your clothes. It’s bad for the clothes. You should sleep in your own bed, undressed…”

And, as usual, he began speaking at length and with pauses about something that had long been known to everyone.

Nikitin’s first lesson was in Russian language for the second-year students. When he entered the classroom at exactly nine o’clock, there were two big letters written in chalk on the blackboard: M. S. They probably meant Masha Shelestov.

“They’ve already sniffed it out, the rascals…,” thought Nikitin. “How do they know everything?”

The second lesson in literature was for the fifth-year students. Here, too, M. S. was written on the blackboard, and when he finished the lesson and was leaving the classroom, he was followed by a cry, as if from a theater gallery:

“Hurrah! Shelestova!!”

Sleeping in his clothes had given him a slight headache and left his body feeling weary and lazy. The students, who were waiting every day for the break before examinations, did nothing, languished, became mischievous out of boredom. Nikitin also languished, did not notice the mischief, and kept going to the window. He could see the street, brightly lit by the sun. Above the houses a transparent blue sky, birds, and far away, beyond the green gardens and the houses, a vast, endless distance with bluish groves and the smoke of a racing train…

Now two officers in white tunics came walking down the street in the shade of the acacias, brandishing their whips. Now a group of Jews with gray beards and visored caps drove by in a wagon. A governess strolled with the headmaster’s granddaughter…Som ran somewhere with two yard dogs…Now Varya came along, in a simple gray dress and red stockings, holding The Messenger of Europe in her hand.¹² She must have visited the town library…

And the lessons would not end soon—only at three o’clock! After the lessons he had to go, not home and not to the Shelestovs’, but to Wolf’s for a lesson. This Wolf, a rich Jew who had embraced Lutheranism, did not send his children to school, but invited schoolteachers to them and paid five roubles per lesson…

“Boring, boring, boring!”

At three o’clock he went to Wolf’s and sat it out there through what seemed like a whole eternity. He left them at five o’clock, and after six he already had to go to school for a faculty meeting—to set up oral examinations for the fourth- and sixth-year students!

When, late in the evening, he walked from school to the Shelestovs’, his heart was pounding and his face was burning. A week ago and a month ago, each time he had intended to propose, he had prepared a whole speech with a preface and a conclusion, but this time he had not prepared a single word, everything was confused in his head, and he knew only that today he would certainly propose to her and that to wait any longer was absolutely impossible.

“I’ll invite her to the garden,” he reflected, “stroll a little, and propose…”

There was not a soul in the front hall; he went into the reception room, then the drawing room…There was no one there either. Varya could be heard arguing with someone upstairs, on the first floor, and the hired seamstress clicking her scissors in the children’s room.

There was a little room in the house that bore three epithets: small, pass-through, and dark. In it stood a big old cupboard with medicines, gunpowder, and other hunting accessories. From there a narrow wooden stairway, on which the cats always slept, led to the first floor. Here there were doors: one to the children’s room, the other to the drawing room. When Nikitin came in to go upstairs, the door to the children’s room opened and made such a bang that the stairs and the cupboard shook; Manyusya ran in wearing a dark dress, with a length of blue fabric in her hands, and, not noticing Nikitin, darted for the stairs.

“Wait…” Nikitin stopped her. “Good evening, Godefroi…Allow me…”

He was breathless, he did not know what to say; with one hand he held her by the hand, with the other by the blue fabric. She was either frightened or surprised and looked at him with big eyes.

“Allow me…,” Nikitin went on, afraid she might leave. “I must tell you something…Only…it’s awkward here. I can’t, I’m not able…Understand, Godefroi, I just can’t…that’s all…”

The blue fabric fell to the floor, and Nikitin took Manyusya by the other hand. She turned pale, moved her lips, then backed away from Nikitin and ended up in the corner between the wall and the cupboard.

“My word of honor, I assure you…,” he said softly. “Manyusya, my word of honor…”