A Desperate Character and Other Stories eBook

a whole hour we drew up only two loaches and an eel.  I could not say why the brigadier aroused my curiosity; his rank could not have any influence on me; ruined noblemen were not even at that time looked upon as a rarity, and his appearance presented nothing remarkable.  Under the warm cap, which covered the whole upper part of his head down to his ears and his eyebrows, could be seen a smooth, red, clean-shaven, round face, with a little nose, little lips, and small, clear grey eyes.  Simplicity and weakness of character, and a sort of long-standing, helpless sorrow, were visible in that meek, almost childish face; the plump, white little hands with short fingers had something helpless, incapable about them too....  I could not conceive how this forlorn old man could once have been an officer, could have maintained discipline, have given his commands—­and that, too, in the stern days of Catherine!  I watched him; now and then he puffed out his cheeks and uttered a feeble whistle, like a little child; sometimes he screwed up his eyes painfully, with effort, as all decrepit people will.  Once he opened his eyes wide and lifted them....  They stared at me from out of the depths of the water—­and strangely touching and even full of meaning their dejected glance seemed to me.

VII

I tried to begin a conversation with the brigadier ... but Narkiz had not misinformed me; the poor old man certainly had become weak in his intellect.  He asked me my surname, and after repeating his inquiry twice, pondered and pondered, and at last brought out:  ’Yes, I fancy there was a judge of that name here.  Cucumber, wasn’t there a judge about here of that name, hey?’ ’To be sure there was, Vassily Fomitch, your honour,’ responded Cucumber, who treated him altogether as a child.  ’There was, certainly.  But let me have your hook; your worm must have been eaten off....  Yes, so it is.’

‘Did you know the Lomov family?’ the brigadier suddenly asked me in a cracked voice.

‘What Lomov family is that?’

’Why, Fiodor Ivanitch, Yevstigney Ivanitch, Alexey Ivanitch the Jew, and Fedulia Ivanovna the plunderer, ... and then, too ...’

The brigadier suddenly broke off and looked down confused.

They were the people he was most intimate with,’ Narkiz whispered, bending towards me; ’it was through them, through that same Alexey Ivanitch, that he called a Jew, and through a sister of Alexey Ivanitch’s, Agrafena Ivanovna, as you may say, that he lost all his property.’

‘What are you saying there about Agrafena Ivanovna?’ the brigadier called out suddenly, and his head was raised, his white eyebrows were frowning....  ’You’d better mind!  And why Agrafena, pray?  Agrippina Ivanovna—­that’s what you should call her.’

‘There—­there—­there, sir,’ Cucumber was beginning to falter.

‘Don’t you know the verses the poet Milonov wrote about her?’ the old man went on, suddenly getting into a state of excitement, which was a complete surprise to me.  ‘No hymeneal lights were kindled,’ he began chanting, pronouncing all the vowels through his nose, giving the syllables ‘an,’ ‘en,’ the nasal sound they have in French; and it was strange to hear this connected speech from his lips:  ’No torches ...  No, that’s not it: