Chapter 4 "Anonymous Stories"

three We always have guests here every Thursday. I went to the restaurant to order a large piece of roast beef, and called Yeriseyev's store to send us roe, cheese, oysters, etc.I also bought a few decks of cards.Polya had prepared tea and tableware for dinner from morning.To tell the truth, this little activity somewhat changed our idle life, and Thursday was the most interesting day for us here. There are only three frequent guests.The most respectable and perhaps most interesting guest was a tall, thin man of about forty-five, named Pikarski, with a long hooked nose, a large black beard, and bare.He had large protruding eyes, and a serious, pensive expression on his face, like that of a Greek philosopher.He worked for the Railway Administration and a bank, was also a legal adviser to an important government agency, and had business relations with many private persons, such as legal guardian, chairman of the meeting of creditors, etc.His rank was small, he humbly called himself a lawyer, and yet his influence was great.As long as you have his business card or a short message, it is enough for famous doctors, railway directors or important officials to receive you first without you waiting in order.It is said that he can even get the position of a fourth-rank civil servant if he speaks from it, and any dispute can be settled.He was thought to be a man of great intellect, but of a peculiar, eccentric kind.He could multiply two hundred and thirteen by three hundred and seventy-three in his head in a split second, or convert pounds into marks without a pencil or a conversion table.He was well versed in railroad business and financial management, and nothing about the administration was a secret to him.It was rumored that he was the most versatile lawyer in civil litigation, and it was not easy to compete with him.However, his extraordinary intellect could not understand many things that even a stupid person could understand.For example, he couldn't understand why people get bored, cry, commit suicide, or even kill people, why they get excited about things and things that have nothing to do with them personally, why they laugh when they read Gogol or Shchedrin's works. . . . Everything that is abstract, that belongs to the sphere of thought and feeling, is incomprehensible and dull to him, just as music is incomprehensible to a man who has no discernment of notes.He only inspects people from the perspective of doing things, and divides people into two types: those who are capable and those who are not.No other method exists for him.Honesty and decency are nothing but marks of competence.Eating, drinking, playing cards, and debauchery are all right, as long as they don't get in the way of business.It is not wise to believe in God, but religion must be protected, because for the common people, the principle of restraint is indispensable, otherwise they will not work.Punishment is needed only to be feared.There is no need to move to a villa, because staying in the city is fine.and so on.His wife was dead, he had no children, but he lived in a luxurious manner, paying three thousand rubles a year in rent.

The second guest, Kukushikin, was a young civil servant of the fourth rank, not tall, and his short and stout figure was out of proportion to his thin face, so his appearance was very unpleasing to the eye.His lips were always pursed into a heart shape, and his trim mustache looked like it had been put on with paint.This man looks like a gecko.He didn't walk in, but he seemed to crawl in.He walked with small steps, staggered, and grinned, and when he smiled, his teeth showed.He is a civil servant who handles special affairs under someone. In fact, he doesn't do anything, but his salary is very high. Especially in summer, people always create various opportunities for him to travel.He is a greedy person, and his desire not only permeates his bone marrow, but also penetrates into every drop of his blood; but at the same time, he is a very small person who does not believe in his own strength. His career is entirely based on the gift of the big man.In order to obtain a foreign cross, or to have the newspapers publish that he attended someone's requiem or prayer service with other high-ranking people, he would not hesitate to do all kinds of low-key behaviors and pleadings. Flatter, make a wish.Out of cowardice he fawns over Orlov and Pikarsky, because he regards them as powerful men.He also flattered Polya and me, because we worked for powerful people.Every time I took off his fur coat for him, he always smiled and asked me: "Stepan, are you married?" Then he said some obscene and vulgar words, which seemed to show his special concern for me. .Kukushkin caters to Orlov's weaknesses, to his decadent and contented life.In order to please Orlov, he also pretended to say vicious irony and impious remarks, and together with Orlov he criticized certain people; Submissive post.At dinner, when women and love were talked about, he pretended to be a flamboyant and a proficient womanizer.In conclusion, it must be said that Petersburg rakes love to talk about their distinctive tastes.A young civil servant of the fourth rank, who is perfectly content with the caresses of his cook or an unfortunate street woman on the Nevsky Prospect, sounds as if he had been tainted with all the vices of the East and the West. Honorary member of a dozen unscrupulous secret societies, already on the attention of the police.It's not that Kukushikin made up a set of lies for himself out of conscience, and it's not that the people present didn't believe his words, they just ignored his lies.

The third guest, Gruzin, was the son of a respectable and learned general, of the same age as Orlov, with long flaxen hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold-rimmed spectacles.I still remember his long, white fingers, like those of a pianist.He had the air of a skilled musician about him, too.Such a person is often the first fiddler in the band.He coughed, had migraines, and generally looked sick and weak.Probably he was always undressed and dressed at home by others, like a child.He graduated from a law school, first worked in the Ministry of Justice, then transferred to the Privy Council, then resigned, and according to Xiang, he found a job in the Ministry of State-owned Industries, and soon resigned.During the time I was a servant, he was the head of Orlov's department, but he said he would soon be transferred to the Ministry of Justice.He has a rare and indifferent attitude towards his official position and his transfer from one institution to another. Whenever someone seriously talks about officials, medals, and salary in front of him, he smiles gently. , recite a motto of Plutkov ①: "You will know the truth only when you serve in the state organs!" He has a short wife with wrinkles on her face, but she is very jealous.He also has five emaciated children.He was unfaithful to his wife, he loved his children only when he saw them, and he was generally indifferent to his family, and made fun of them.His family lives on debt.As long as there is a suitable opportunity, no matter where he goes or who he meets, he will always borrow money, even his boss and those janitors, he will not let go.He is lazy by nature, so lazy that he doesn't care about himself, he drifts with the tide, and he doesn't know where he will drift and why he will drift.He will go wherever he is led.If he was taken somewhere dirty, he went.If someone puts a glass of beer in front of him, he will drink it; if not, he will not drink it.If someone scolded his wife in front of him, he scolded his wife too, insisting that she ruined his life.When people praised his wife, he would praise his wife too, saying sincerely: "I love her very much, poor woman." Plaid coat.During supper, when he was often brooding, rolling up little balls of bread, and drinking a great deal of claret, I was almost sure, strange to say, that if he had something on his mind, he probably did too. I vaguely feel it, but because of the turmoil and mundane things in life, I don't have time to understand it and pay attention to it.He sometimes plays the piano a little bit.Often, he would sit down by the piano, play two or three notes, and sing softly: What have you prepared for me in the days to come? ②But immediately, as if frightened, he stood up and walked away from the piano.

These guests did not arrive as usual until about ten o'clock.They played cards in Orlov's study, and Polya and I served them tea.Only at this time can I deeply appreciate the bitterness of being a servant.I had to stand by the door for four or five hours straight, making sure that no teacup was empty, changing the ashtray, running to the table to pick up a piece of chalk or a card that had been dropped on the floor, and the most important thing was that I had to stand. Waiting, waiting, being careful, not talking, coughing, or smiling.I'm sure this kind of work is harder than the heaviest farm work.I used to stand four hours' watch in a stormy winter night on a warship, but I think that watch is much easier.

They played cards until two o'clock, sometimes until three o'clock, and then stretched out and went into the dining room for supper, or, as Orlov said, to eat their stomachs.While eating, the conversation started.Orlov, as usual, took the lead, and with a mocking look he spoke of an acquaintance, of a book he had read not long ago, of a new appointment or a new project.The flattering Kukushkin assisted him, and, as I was feeling at the time, a most hideous conversation began.The jeers of Orlov and his friends knew no bounds, and they spared no one and nothing.When they talk about religion, they jeer for a while, and when they talk about philosophy, about the meaning and purpose of life, they jeer again.If someone mentioned the common people, they would still ridicule for a while.Petersburg has a special group of people who laugh at every phenomenon of life.They would not spare even the starving or the suicidal, and would always say a few vulgar words.But Orlov and his friends were not just joking or joking, they were sneering.They say that there is no God, and that once a person dies, he is finished. They say that only the French Academy of Sciences has immortality.True happiness does not exist and cannot exist, because its existence presupposes the perfection of man, and the perfection of man is a logical absurdity.Russia was a dull and impoverished country, no less than Persia.Intellectuals are hopeless, and, according to Pikarski, the vast majority of intellectuals are incompetent and useless people.As for ordinary people, they only know how to drink alcohol, be lazy, and steal. One generation is worse than the next.We have no science, literature is a mess, commerce is based on fraud: "If you don't lie, you can't sell." The list goes on and on.Everything is ridiculous.

Towards the end of the dinner, everyone cheered up after drinking, and the chat turned to amusing topics.They made fun of Grudzin's family life, of Kukushkin's success, of Pikarsky, who reportedly had one page of his disbursement book marked "Charitable Affairs" and another "Physiological Needs." ".They say there is no such thing as a faithful wife, and that a guest can contrive a way to be caressed by his wife without waiting to leave the drawing room, even though the husband is sitting in the adjoining study. The girls already have evil thoughts and know everything.Orlov kept a letter written by a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl: On her way home from school, she "hooked up an officer on Nevsky Prospekt," and he allegedly took her back to his home, where he did not release her until late at night. After she left, she hurriedly wrote a letter to tell her girlfriend about it, and let her girlfriend share the joy.Pure morality, they say, has never existed and does not exist, and it is evident that such a thing is unnecessary, without which the human race has hitherto done quite well.As for what is called licentiousness in general, its evils are no doubt greatly exaggerated.The perversions prescribed in our penal codes did not prevent Diogenes from being a philosopher and teacher, and Caesar and Cicero both lecherous and great men.The old man Cato married a younger woman, but he was still considered a strict fasting and moral man.

At three or four o'clock the guests parted, or else they all went out of town or to Officers' Street to find a woman named Varvara Osipovna.I went back to my servant's room and couldn't sleep for a long time because of headache and cough. "Notes" ① Kozima Plutkov is the pen name of the Russian writer Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy and the brothers Zemchuzhnikov. ——Russian text editor's note ② Lensky's aria in Tchaikovsky's opera "Evgeny Onegin". ——Russian text editor's note ③The French call members of the French Academy of Arts and Letters Immortals. ——Russian text editor's note

④Diogenes (about 404-323 BC), an ancient Greek philosopher. ⑤ Caesar (100-44 B.C.), commander and statesman of ancient Rome. ⑥ Cicero (106-43 BC), ancient Roman orator, writer, and statesman. ⑦ Cato (234-149 BC), an ancient Roman political activist.