Chapter 2 two

two About twelve or fifteen years ago the civil servant Gromov lived in one of the main streets of the town.He owns a private house, is quite famous, and his family is well off.He has two sons: Sergey and Ivan.Sergey died of acute tuberculosis in his fourth year at university.His death seemed to be the beginning of a chain of misfortunes that suddenly fell on the family.Sergey had just been buried, and a week later, his elderly father was prosecuted for forging documents and embezzling public funds, and died of typhoid fever in the prison hospital soon after.The house and all the chattels were auctioned off, leaving Ivan Dmitry and his mother destitute.

Once upon a time, during his father's life, Ivan Dmitry lived in Moscow, went to university there, received sixty or seventy rubles a month, didn't know what it meant to be poor, and then he had to change his life drastically .He was obliged to teach the poorly paid family library from morning to night, and to do copying work, and still starved, because he sent all his income to his mother to support him.Ivan Dmitry could not bear this life.Dejected and weak, he soon gave up his studies and returned to his hometown.Here, in this small town, he managed to get a job as a teacher in a county school.But he didn't get along well with his colleagues, and the students didn't like him, so he quit soon after.Mother died again.He was unemployed for half a year, living on bread and water, and later became a civil executor of the court.He held this position until he was dismissed due to illness.

He never came across as healthy, even as a teenager in college.He is always pale and thin, often catches a cold, eats little, and sleeps poorly.Just a glass of claret would make him dizzy and hysterical.He always wanted to mingle with people, but because of his irritable and suspicious nature, he had no friends, no close friends.He always spoke contemptuously of the townspeople, saying that their rudeness and ignorance and their brutish, brutish lives were abhorrent to him.He spoke in a tenor voice, loud and enthusiastic.When he spoke he was angry and indignant, or cheerful and surprised, but at all times his expression was sincere.No matter what he talked about, he always boiled it down to one thing: life in this city is dull and boring, this society has no noble needs, lives lifeless and meaningless, full of all kinds of violence, ignorance, corruption and hypocritical.The mean man is rich and well-fed, the honest man is hungry; society needs schools, just newspapers, theatres, popular books, intellectual solidarity;He always adds strong colors to his discussions about people, and he only has black and white, and he does not admit any other colors.He divided human beings into two types, the mean and the upright, and there is no one in between.He talked with enthusiasm and enthusiasm about women and love, but he had never been in love once.

Despite his sharp tongue and nervousness, the townspeople liked him and called him affectionately Vanya behind their backs.His kind and helpful nature, his decency, his moral purity, even his shabby frock coat, his sickly appearance, and his family's misfortune always aroused the beautiful, warm, and sad feelings in their hearts. emotion.In addition, he is well-educated and well-read. In the words of the city people, he knows everything. He is a figure like a living dictionary in this city. ①Ivan's nickname. He has read many books.He used to sit in clubs, nervously twirling his moustache, flipping through magazines and books.From his face, one can tell that he is not reading, but swallowing, and there is no time to chew.It should be thought that reading was a morbid habit of his, for whatever he caught, even last year's papers and calendars, he read with impatience.He always lies down and reads at home.