‘Have you caught cold?’ asked Fustov,
and he introduced us to each other. We were both
students, but were in different faculties.
‘No!... Likely! Yesterday, I must
own...’ (here Ratsch junior smiled, again not
without a certain prettiness, though he showed a set
of bad teeth) ’I was drunk, awfully drunk.
Yes’—he lighted a cigar and cleared
his throat—’Obihodov’s farewell
supper.’
‘Where’s he going?’
’To the Caucasus, and taking his young lady
with him. You know the black-eyed girl, with
the freckles. Silly fool!’
‘Your father was asking after you yesterday,’
observed Fustov.
Viktor spat aside. ’Yes, I heard about
it. You were at our den yesterday. Well,
music, eh?’
‘As usual.’
‘And she... with a new visitor’
(here he pointed with his head in my direction) ‘she
gave herself airs, I’ll be bound. Wouldn’t
play, eh?’
‘Of whom are you speaking?’ Fustov asked.
‘Why, of the most honoured Susanna Ivanovna,
of course!’
Viktor lolled still more comfortably, put his arm
up round his head, gazed at his own hand, and cleared
his throat hoarsely.
I glanced at Fustov. He merely shrugged his shoulders,
as though giving me to understand that it was no use
talking to such a dolt.
Viktor, staring at the ceiling, fell to talking, deliberately
and through his nose, of the theatre, of two actors
he knew, of a certain Serafrina Serafrinovna, who
had ‘made a fool’ of him, of the new professor,
R., whom he called a brute. ’Because, only
fancy, what a monstrous notion! Every lecture
he begins with calling over the students’ names,
and he’s reckoned a liberal too! I’d
have all your liberals locked up in custody!’
and turning at last his full face and whole body towards
Fustov, he brought out in a half-plaintive, half-ironical
voice: ’I wanted to ask you something, Alexander
Daviditch.... Couldn’t you talk my governor
round somehow?... You play duets with him, you
know.... Here he gives me five miserable blue
notes a month.... What’s the use of that!
Not enough for tobacco. And then he goes on about
my not making debts! I should like to put him
in my place, and then we should see! I don’t
come in for pensions, not like some people.’
(Viktor pronounced these last words with peculiar
emphasis.) ’But he’s got a lot of tin,
I know! It’s no use his whining about hard
times, there’s no taking me in. No fear!
He’s made a snug little pile!’
Fustov looked dubiously at Victor.
‘If you like,’ he began, ’I’ll
speak to your father. Or, if you like... meanwhile...
a trifling sum....’
‘Oh, no! Better get round the governor...
Though,’ added Viktor, scratching his nose with
all his fingers at once, ’you might hand over
five-and-twenty roubles, if it’s the same to
you.... What’s the blessed total I owe
you?’
