ecame essential at once to embrace my
fellows and all mankind; and for that purpose I needed, at least, one
human being, actually existing. I had to call on Anton Antonitch,
however, on Tuesday--his at-home day; so I had always to time my
passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a
Tuesday.
This Anton Antonitch lived on the fourth storey in a house in Five
Corners, in four low-pitched rooms, one smaller than the other, of a
particularly frugal and sallow appearance. He had two daughters and
their aunt, who used to pour out the tea. Of the daughters one was
thirteen and another fourteen, they both had snub noses, and I was
awfully shy of them because they were always whispering and giggling
together. The master of the house usually sat in his study on a
leather couch in front of the table with some grey-headed gentleman,
usually a colleague from our office or some other department. I never
saw more than two or three visitors there, always the same. They
talked about the excise duty; about business in the senate, about
salaries, about promotions, about His Excellency, and the best means of
pleasing him, and so on. I had the patience to sit like a fool beside
these people for four hours at a stretch, listening to them without
knowing what to say to them or venturing to say a word. I became
stupefied, several times I felt myself perspiring, I was overcome by a
sort of paralysis; but this was pleasant and good for me. On returning
home I deferred for a time my desire to embrace all mankind.
I had however one other acquaintance of a sort, Simonov, who was an old
schoolfellow. I had a number of schoolfellows, indeed, in Petersburg,
but I did not associate with them and had even given up nodding to them
in the street. I believe I had transferred into the department I was
in simply to avoid their company and to cut off all connection with my
hateful childhood. Curses on that school and all those terrible years
of penal servitude! In short, I parted from my schoolfellows as soon
as I got out into the world. There were two or three left to whom I
nodded in the street. One of them was Simonov, who had in no way been
distinguished at school, was of a quiet and equable disposition; but I
discovered in him a certain independence of character and even honesty
I don't even suppose that he was particularly stupid. I had at one
time spent some rather soulful moments with him, but these had not
laste
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