Chapter 4 "My Life - A Mainlander's Story" IV

Four One day after dinner, he ran into the wing room and said out of breath, "Come on, your sister is here." I go out.Sure enough, there was a town carriage parked in front of the porch of the big house.My sister came, and with her Anyuta Bragovo, and a gentleman in uniform.When I got closer, I realized that this soldier was Anyuta's brother, who was a doctor. "We've come to you for a picnic," he said. "OK?" My sister and Anyuta wanted to ask me how life was going here, but neither of them spoke, just looked at me.I didn't speak either.They understood that I didn't like this place, tears came to my sister's eyes, Anyuta Bragovo began to blush.Everyone went to the garden.The Physician went ahead and said cheerfully, "What fresh air! Holy Mother, what fresh air!"

From the outside, he was still quite a college student.He talked and walked like a college student, and his gray eyes looked like a lovely college student's, so lively and simple and frank.Standing next to his tall and beautiful sister, he looked weak and thin, his beard was sparse, and his voice was also that tenor voice that was not sonorous, but it was quite pleasant.He works in a team in a certain place, and now he is on vacation, coming back to visit his relatives.He said he was going to Petersburg this autumn to take his doctor of medicine exams. He was married, with a wife and three children, and he married very early, when he was a sophomore in college.Now people in the city say that his family life is not happy, and he no longer lives with his wife.

"What time is it?" my sister asked anxiously. "We have to go back early. Dad let me out to see my brother. He promised me to go back at six o'clock!" "Oh, your father is so strict!" the doctor sighed. I brought the samovar.We spread a carpet in front of the terrace of the big house, and sat on it to drink tea. The doctor knelt on the carpet, drank tea from a saucer, and said he had experienced happiness.Then Cheprakov got the key, unlocked the glass door, and we all went into the house.The house was dark, mysterious, and smelled of mushrooms, and our footsteps made a loud noise, as if there was a cellar under the floor.The doctor stood pressing the keys of the piano, and the piano answered him with a faint, quivering, hoarse, but still harmonious sound.He tried his voice, sang a ballad, and when a key failed, he frowned and stamped his feet anxiously.My sister, no longer in a hurry to get home, walked up and down the room excitedly, saying, "I'm happy! I'm so happy, I'm so happy!"

There was surprise in the tone of her voice, as if she couldn't believe that she, too, could be in a good mood.It was the first time in my life that I saw her so happy. She had even become a little prettier, her profile was not pretty, her nose and mouth were turned forward a little, giving a look as if she were blowing; but her black eyes were pretty, and her Her face was so delicately white, and always had a touching expression of kindness and sorrow, that when she spoke she looked lovely, even beautiful.We both, she and I, looked like our mother, broad-shouldered, strong and enduring, but her pale complexion was sickly.She coughed a lot, and I sometimes saw in her eyes that look of people who are seriously ill and for some reason keep it secret.Her gaiety at the moment was a little childish, a little naive, as if the joy that had been suppressed and extinguished by the harsh upbringing of our childhood was suddenly awakening in her soul and was about to explode.

But when evening came and the carriage was ready, my sister sank down, and sat down in the open carriage, haggard, as if, from her countenance, the carriage had been the dock. They all left, and the fun ended. ... I remembered that Anyuta Bragovo never said a word to me. "What a queer girl!" I thought. "Strange girl!" Lent on St. Peter's Day is here, and we will be vegetarian every day from then on.I have nothing to do, and my status is uncertain, so that kind of physical boredom tortures me. I am dissatisfied, listless, and hungry. here. One day, towards dusk, while Radish was sitting in our lodge, suddenly Torschikov came in. He was quite sunburned, and his clothes were covered with gray dust.He had been at his station for three days, had just come to Dubechnya by locomotive, and came to us on foot from the station.While he was waiting for a carriage to be sent from the town, he took the steward on a tour of the estate, shouting orders, and then sat in our lodge for a full hour, writing letters.During this time, some telegrams came and were addressed to him, so he went to the telegraph machine himself to return the telegrams.

The three of us stood there straight, silent. "What a mess!" he said, looking at the report in disgust. "I'm moving this office to the station in a fortnight, and I don't know what to do with you, gentlemen." "I did my best, my lord," Cheprakov said. "Of course, of course, I can see what you're trying to do. You just get paid," the engineer continued, looking at me. "You're always counting on favors to get faire la carriere as quickly as possible without any difficulty. Well, I don't care about favors. I've never been asked for, sir. Before I was asked to build a railroad, I worked. Locomotive driver, worked as an ordinary oiler in Belgium, sir. And you, Panteele, what are you doing here?" He turned to turnip and asked Radish. "Drunk the bar with them?"

For some reason he called all ordinary people Panteley, looked down on people like Cheprakov and me, and called us drunkards, brutes, and vulgars behind our backs.In short, he was very harsh on the junior employees, often fined them, and dismissed them coldly without a word of explanation. At last the carriage came to fetch him.When he left he made a plan to dismiss us all in a fortnight, called the steward a fool, and sat down in the carriage with great dignity, and went into town. "Andrey Ivanitch," I said to Turnip, "take me as a laborer." "Oh, what's wrong with that!"

We walked to the city together.When the station and the estate were far behind us, I asked: "Andrey Ivanitch, why have you come to Dubechnya just now?" "First, my boys work on the railway, and second, I pay interest on the general's wife. Last year I borrowed fifty rubles from her, and now I pay her one ruble a month in interest. " At this point the painter stopped, and seized my button. "Miser Alekseitch, my angel," he went on, "it seems to me that an ordinary person or a gentleman lends money at interest, even a very small amount. , then he is a villain. This kind of person will not have righteousness."

The thin, pale, hideous turnip closed his eyes, shook his head, and said in a philosopher's tone: "Aphids eat grass, rust eats iron, and hypocrisy eats souls. Lord, save us sinners!" "Notes" ① French: Flying Huang Tengda.