‘Let him sit there!’
‘I can’t look at him! I say,’ I continued, addressing Pshekhotsky, ‘you refused to talk to me; but forgive me. I have not yet given up hope of being more closely acquainted with your conversational capacities.’
‘Leave him alone!’ the Count said, pulling me by the sleeve. ‘I implore you!’
‘I shall not stop worrying you until you answer me,’ I continued. ‘Why are you frowning? Is it possible that you still hear laughter in my voice?’
‘If I had drunk as much as you have, I would talk to you; but as it is we are not fairly matched,’ the Pole replied.
‘That we are not fairly matched is what was to be proved… That is exactly what I wanted to say. A goose and a swine are no comrades; the drunkard and the sober man are no kin; the drunkard disturbs the sober man, the sober man the drunkard. In the adjoining drawing-room there is a soft and excellent sofa. It’s a good thing to lie upon it after sturgeon with horseradish. My voice will not be heard there. Do you not wish to retire to that room?’
The Count clasped his hands and walked about the dining-room with blinking eyes.
He is a coward and is always afraid of ‘big’ talk. I, on the contrary, when drunk, am amused by cross-purposes and discontentedness.
‘I don’t understand! I don’t un-der-stand!’ the Count groaned, not knowing what to say or what to do.
He knew it was difficult to stop me.
‘I am only slightly acquainted with you,’ I continued. ‘Perhaps you are an excellent man, and therefore I don’t wish to quarrel with you too soon… I won’t quarrel with you. I only invite you to understand that there is no place for a sober man among drunken ones… The presence of a sober man has an irritating effect on the drunken organism! Take that to heart!’
‘Say whatever you like!’ Pshekhotsky sighed. ‘Nothing that you can say will provoke me, young man.’
‘So nothing will provoke you? Will you also not be offended if I call you an obstinate swine?’
The Pole grew red in the face — but only that. The Count became pale, he came up to me, looked imploringly at me, and spread his arms.
‘Come, I beg you! Restrain your tongue!’
I had now quite entered into my drunken part, and wanted to go on, but fortunately at that moment the Count and the Pole heard footsteps and Urbenin entered the dining-room.
‘I wish you all a good appetite!’ he began. ‘I have come, your Excellency, to find out if you have any orders for me?’
‘I have no orders so far, but a request,’ the Count replied, I am very glad you have come, Pëtr Egorych… Sit down and have supper with us, and let us talk about the business of the estate…’
Urbenin sat down. The Count drank off a glass of cognac and began to explain his plans for the future rational management of the estate. He spoke very long and wearisomely, often repeating himself and changing the subject. Urbenin listened to him lazily and attentively as serious people listen to the prattle of children and women. He ate his fish-soup, and looked sadly at his plate.
‘I have brought some remarkable plans with me!’ the Count said among other things. ‘Remarkable plans! I will show them to you if you wish?’
Karnéev jumped up and ran into his study for the plans. Urbenin took advantage of his absence to pour out half a tumbler of vodka, gulped it down, and did not even take anything to eat after it.
‘Disgusting stuff this vodka is!’ he said, looking with abhorrence at the decanter.
‘Why didn’t you drink while the Count was here, Pëtr Egorych?’ I asked him. is it possible that you were afraid to?’
‘It is better to dissimulate, Sergey Petrovich, and drink in secret than to drink before the Count. You know what a strange character the Count has… If I stole twenty thousand from him and he knew it, he would say nothing owing to his carelessness; but if I forgot to give him an account of ten kopecks that I had spent, or drank vodka in his presence, he would begin to lament that his bailiff was a robber. You know him well.’
Urbenin half-filled the tumbler again and swigged it off.
‘I think you did not drink formerly, Pëtr Egorych,’ I said.
‘Yes, but now I drink… I drink terribly!’ he whispered. ‘Terribly, day and night, not giving myself a moment’s respite! Even the Count never drank to such an extent as I do now… It is dreadfully hard, Sergey Petrovich! God alone knows what a weight I have on my heart! It’s just grief that makes me drink… I always liked and honoured you, Sergey Petrovich, and I can tell you quite candidly… I’d often be glad to hang myself!’
‘For what reason?’
‘My own stupidity… Not only children are stupid… There are also fools at fifty. Don’t ask the cause.’
The Count reentered the room and put a stop to his effusions.
‘A most excellent liqueur,’ he said, placing a potbellied bottle with the seal of the Benedictine monks on the table instead of the ‘remarkable plans’. ‘When I passed through Moscow I got it at Depré’s. Have a glass, Sergey?’
‘I thought you had gone to fetch the plans,’ I said.
‘I? What plans? Oh, yes! But, brother, the devil himself couldn’t find anything in my portmanteaux… I rummaged and rummaged and gave it up as a bad job… The liqueur is very nice. Won’t you have some, Serezha?’
Urbenin remained a little longer, then he took leave and went away. When he left we began to drink claret. This wine quite finished me. I became intoxicated in the way I had wished while riding to the Count’s. I became very bold, active and unusually gay. I wanted to do some extraordinary deed, something ludicrous, something that would astonish people… In such moments I thought I could swim across the lake, unravel the most entangled case, conquer any woman… The world and its life made me enthusiastic; I loved it, but at the same time I wanted to pick a quarrel with somebody, to consume him with venomous jests and ridicule… It was necessary to scoff at the comical black-browed Pole and the Count, to attack them with biting sarcasm, to turn them to dust.
‘Why are you silent?’ I began again. ‘Speak! I am listening to you! Ha-ha! I am awfully fond of hearing people with serious, sedate faces talk childish drivel! It is such mockery, such mockery of the brains of man! The face does not correspond to the brains! In order not to lie, you ought to have the faces of idiots, and you have the countenances of Greek sages!’
I had not finished… My tongue was entangled by the thought that I was talking to people who were nullities, who were unworthy of even half a word! I required a hall filled with people, brilliant women, thousands of lights… I rose, took my glass and began walking about the rooms. When we indulge in debauchery, we do not limit ourselves to space. We do not restrict ourselves only to the dining-room, but take the whole house and sometimes even the whole estate.
I chose a Turkish divan in the ‘mosaic hall’, lay down on it and gave myself up to the power of my fantasy and to castles in the air. Drunken thoughts, one more grandiose, more limitless than the other, took possession of my young brain. A new world arose before me, full of stupefying delights and indescribable beauty.
It only remained for me to talk in rhyme and to see visions.
The Count came to me and sat down on a corner of the divan… He wanted to say something to me. I had begun to read in his eyes the desire to communicate something special to me shortly after the five glasses of vodka described above. I knew of what he wanted to speak.
‘What a lot I have drunk today!’ he said to me. ‘This is more harmful to me than any sort of poison… But today it is for the last time… Upon my honour, the very last time… I have strength of will…’
‘All