‘Na! gut, gut... geh, alte!’ Mr. Ratsch
cut her short.
‘Geh’ schon, geh’ schon,’
muttered Eleonora Karpovna, and she went away, still
holding the kerchief with her fingers, and shedding
tears.
And I followed her. In the passage stood Viktor
in a student’s coat with a beaver collar and
a cap stuck jauntily on one side. He barely glanced
at me over his shoulder, shook his collar up, and did
not nod to me, for which I mentally thanked him.
I went back to Fustov.
I found my friend sitting in a corner of his room
with downcast head and arms folded across his breast.
He had sunk into a state of numbness, and he gazed
around him with the slow, bewildered look of a man
who has slept very heavily and has only just been
waked. I told him all about my visit to Ratsch’s,
repeated the veteran’s remarks and those of his
wife, described the impression they had made on me
and informed him of my conviction that the unhappy
girl had taken her own life.... Fustov listened
to me with no change of expression, and looked about
him with the same bewildered air.
‘Did you see her?’ he asked me at last.
‘Yes.’
‘In the coffin?’
Fustov seemed to doubt whether Susanna were really
dead.
‘In the coffin.’
Fustov’s face twitched and he dropped his eyes
and softly rubbed his hands.
‘Are you cold?’ I asked him.
‘Yes, old man, I’m cold,’ he answered
hesitatingly, and he shook his head stupidly.
I began to explain my reasons for thinking that Susanna
had poisoned herself or perhaps had been poisoned,
and that the matter could not be left so....
Fustov stared at me.
‘Why, what is there to be done?’ he said,
slowly opening his eyes wide and slowly closing them.
’Why, it’ll be worse... if it’s known
about. They won’t bury her. We must
let things... alone.’
This idea, simple as it was, had never entered my
head. My friend’s practical sense had not
deserted him.
‘When is... her funeral?’ he went on.
‘To-morrow.’
‘Are you going?’
‘Yes.’
‘To the house or straight to the church?’
‘To the house and to the church too; and from
there to the cemetery.’
‘But I shan’t go... I can’t,
I can’t!’ whispered Fustov and began crying.
It was at these same words that he had broken into
sobs in the morning. I have noticed that it is
often so with weeping; as though to certain words,
for the most of no great meaning,—but just
to these words and to no others—it is given
to open the fount of tears in a man, to break him
down, and to excite in him the feeling of pity for
others and himself... I remember a peasant woman
was once describing before me the sudden death of
her daughter, and she fairly dissolved and could not
go on with her tale as soon as she uttered the phrase,
’I said to her, Fekla. And she says, “Mother,
where have you put the salt... the salt... sa-alt?"’
The word ‘salt’ overpowered her.
