I ordered a piece of roast beef from the restaurant and telephoned to Eliseyev's to send us caviare, cheese, oysters1, and so on. I bought playing-cards. Polya was busy all day getting ready the tea-things and the dinner service. To tell the truth, this spurt3 of activity came as a pleasant change in our idle life, and Thursdays were for us the most interesting days.
Only three visitors used to come. The most important and perhaps the most interesting was the one called Pekarsky—a tall, lean man of five and forty, with a long hooked nose, with a big black beard, and a bald patch on his head. His eyes were large and prominent, and his expression was grave and thoughtful like that of a Greek philosopher. He was on the board of management of some railway, and also had some post in a bank; he was a consulting lawyer in some important Government institution, and had business relations with a large number of private persons as a trustee, chairman of committees, and so on. He was of quite a low grade in the service, and modestly spoke4 of himself as a lawyer, but he had a vast influence. A note or card from him was enough to make a celebrated5 doctor, a director of a railway, or a great dignitary see any one without waiting; and it was said that through his protection one might obtain even a post of the Fourth Class, and get any sort of unpleasant business hushed up. He was looked upon as a very intelligent man, but his was a strange, peculiar6 intelligence. He was able to multiply 213 by 373 in his head instantaneously, or turn English pounds into German marks without help of pencil or paper; he understood finance and railway business thoroughly7, and the machinery8 of Russian administration had no secrets for him; he was a most skilful9 pleader in civil suits, and it was not easy to get the better of him at law. But that exceptional intelligence could not grasp many things which are understood even by some stupid people. For instance, he was absolutely unable to understand why people are depressed10, why they weep, shoot themselves, and even kill others; why they fret11 about things that do not affect them personally, and why they laugh when they read Gogol or Shtchedrin.... Everything abstract, everything belonging to the domain12 of thought and feeling, was to him boring and incomprehensible, like music to one who has no ear. He looked at people simply from the business point of view, and divided them into competent and incompetent13. No other classification existed for him. Honesty and rectitude were only signs of competence14. Drinking, gambling15, and debauchery were permissible16, but must not be allowed to interfere17 with business. Believing in God was rather stupid, but religion ought be safeguarded, as the common people must have some principle to restrain them, otherwise they would not work. Punishment is only necessary as deterrent18. There was no need to go away for holidays, as it was just as nice in town. And so on. He was a widower19 and had no children, but lived on a large scale, as though he had a family, and paid three thousand roubles a year for his flat.
The second visitor, Kukushkin, an actual civil councillor though a young man, was short, and was conspicuous20 for his extremely unpleasant appearance, which was due to the disproportion between his fat, puffy body and his lean little face. His lips were puckered21 up suavely22, and his little trimmed moustaches looked as though they had been fixed23 on with glue. He was a man with the manners of a lizard24. He did not walk, but, as it were, crept along with tiny steps, squirming and sniggering, and when he laughed he showed his teeth. He was a clerk on special commissions, and did nothing, though he received a good salary, especially in the summer, when special and lucrative25 jobs were found for him. He was a man of personal ambition, not only to the marrow26 of his bones, but more fundamentally—to the last drop of his blood; but even in his ambitions he was petty and did not rely on himself, but was building his career on the chance favour flung him by his superiors. For the sake of obtaining some foreign decoration, or for the sake of having his name mentioned in the newspapers as having been present at some special service in the company of other great personages, he was ready to submit to any kind of humiliation27, to beg, to flatter, to promise. He flattered Orlov and Pekarsky from cowardice28, because he thought they were powerful; he flattered Polya and me because we were in the service of a powerful man. Whenever I took off his fur coat he tittered and asked me: "Stepan, are you married?" and then unseemly vulgarities followed—by way of showing me special attention. Kukushkin flattered Orlov's weaknesses, humoured his corrupted29 and blasé ways; to please him he affected30 malicious31 raillery and atheism32, in his company criticised persons before whom in other places he would slavishly grovel33. When at supper they talked of love and women, he pretended to be a subtle and perverse34 voluptuary. As a rule, one may say, Petersburg rakes are fond of talking of their abnormal tastes. Some young actual civil councillor is perfectly35 satisfied with the embraces of his cook or of some unhappy street-walker on the Nevsky Prospect36, but to listen to him you would think he was contaminated by all the vices37 of East and West combined, that he was an honourary member of a dozen iniquitous38 secret societies and was already marked by the police. Kukushkin lied about himself in an unconscionable way, and they did not exactly disbelieve him, but paid little heed39 to his incredible stories.
The third guest was Gruzin, the son of a worthy40 and learned general; a man of Orlov's age, with long hair, short-sighted eyes, and gold spectacles. I remember his long white fingers, that looked like a pianist's; and, indeed, there was something of a musician, of a virtuoso41, about his whole figure. The first violins in orchestras look just like that. He used to cough, suffered from migraine, and seemed invalidish and delicate. Probably at home he was dressed and undressed like a baby. He had finished at the College of Jurisprudence, and had at first served in the Department of Justice, then he was transferred to the Senate; he left that, and through patronage42 had received a post in the Department of Crown Estates, and had soon afterwards given that up. In my time he was serving in Orlov's department; he was his head-clerk, but he said that he should soon exchange into the Department of Justice again. He took his duties and his shifting about from one post to another with exceptional levity43, and when people talked before him seriously of grades in the service, decorations, salaries, he smiled good-naturedly and repeated Prutkov's aphorism44: "It's only in the Government service you learn the truth." He had a little wife with a wrinkled face, who was very jealous of him, and five weedy-looking children. He was unfaithful to his wife, he was only fond of his children when he saw them, and on the whole was rather indifferent to his family, and made fun of them. He and his family existed on credit, borrowing wherever they could at every opportunity, even from his superiors in the office and porters in people's houses. His was a flabby nature; he was so lazy that he did not care what became of himself, and drifted along heedless where or why he was going. He went where he was taken. If he was taken to some low haunt, he went; if wine was set before him, he drank—if it were not put before him, he abstained45; if wives were abused in his presence, he abused his wife, declaring she had ruined his life—when wives were praised, he praised his and said quite sincerely: "I am very fond of her, poor thing!" He had no fur coat and always wore a rug which smelt46 of the nursery. When at supper he rolled balls of bread and drank a great deal of red wine, absorbed in thought, strange to say, I used to feel almost certain that there was something in him of which perhaps he had a vague sense, though in the bustle47 and vulgarity of his daily life he had not time to understand and appreciate it. He played a little on the piano. Sometimes he would sit down at the piano, play a chord or two, and begin singing softly:
"What does the coming day bring to me?"
But at once, as though afraid, he would get up and walk from the piano.
The visitors usually arrived about ten o'clock. They played cards in Orlov's study, and Polya and I handed them tea. It was only on these occasions that I could gauge48 the full sweetness of a flunkey's life. Standing49 for four or five hours at the door, watching that no one's glass should be empty, changing the ash-trays, running to the table to pick up the chalk or a card when it was dropped, and, above all, standing, waiting, being attentive50 without venturing to speak, to cough, to smile—is harder, I assure you, is harder than the hardest of field labour. I have stood on watch at sea for four hours at a stretch on stormy winter nights, and to my thinking it is an infinitely51 easier duty.
They used to play cards till two, sometimes till three o'clock at night, and then, stretching, they would go into the dining-room to supper, or, as Orlov said, for a snack of something. At supper there was conversation. It usually began by Orlov's speaking with laughing eyes of some acquaintance, of some book he had lately been reading, of a new appointment or Government scheme. Kukushkin, always ingratiating, would fall into his tone, and what followed was to me, in my mood at that time, a revolting exhibition. The irony52 of Orlov and his friends knew no bounds, and spared no one and nothing. If they spoke of religion, it was with irony; they spoke of philosophy, of the significance and object of life—irony again, if any one began about the peasantry, it was with irony.
There is in Petersburg a species of men whose specialty53 it is to jeer54 at every aspect of life; they cannot even pass by a starving man or a suicide without saying something vulgar. But Orlov and his friends did not jeer or make jokes, they talked ironically. They used to say that there was no God, and personality was completely lost at death; the immortals55 only existed in the French Academy. Real good did not and could not possibly exist, as its existence was conditional56 upon human perfection, which was a logical absurdity57. Russia was a country as poor and dull as Persia. The intellectual class was hopeless; in Pekarsky's opinion the overwhelming majority in it were incompetent persons, good for nothing. The people were drunken, lazy, thievish, and degenerate58. We had no science, our literature was uncouth59, our commerce rested on swindling—"No selling without cheating." And everything was in that style, and everything was a subject for laughter.
Towards the end of supper the wine made them more good-humoured, and they passed to more lively conversation. They laughed over Gruzin's family life, over Kukushkin's conquests, or at Pekarsky, who had, they said, in his account book one page headed Charity and another Physiological60 Necessities. They said that no wife was faithful; that there was no wife from whom one could not, with practice, obtain caresses61 without leaving her drawing-room while her husband was sitting in his study close by; that girls in their teens were perverted62 and knew everything. Orlov had preserved a letter of a schoolgirl of fourteen: on her way home from school she had "hooked an officer on the Nevsky," who had, it appears, taken her home with him, and had only let her go late in the evening; and she hastened to write about this to her school friend to share her joy with her. They maintained that there was not and never had been such a thing as moral purity, and that evidently it was unnecessary; mankind had so far done very well without it. The harm done by so-called vice2 was undoubtedly63 exaggerated. Vices which are punished by our legal code had not prevented Diogenes from being a philosopher and a teacher. C?sar and Cicero were profligates and at the same time great men. Cato in his old age married a young girl, and yet he was regarded as a great ascetic64 and a pillar of morality.
At three or four o'clock the party broke up or they went off together out of town, or to Officers' Street, to the house of a certain Varvara Ossipovna, while I retired65 to my quarters, and was kept awake a long while by coughing and headache.
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1
oysters
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| 牡蛎( oyster的名词复数 ) | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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3
spurt
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| v.喷出；突然进发；突然兴隆 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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5
celebrated
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| adj.有名的，声誉卓著的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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7
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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8
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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skilful
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| (=skillful)adj.灵巧的，熟练的 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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fret
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| v.(使)烦恼；(使)焦急；(使)腐蚀，(使)磨损 | |
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12
domain
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| n.(活动等)领域，范围；领地，势力范围 | |
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13
incompetent
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| adj.无能力的，不能胜任的 | |
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competence
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| n.能力，胜任，称职 | |
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15
gambling
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| n.赌博；投机 | |
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16
permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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17
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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18
deterrent
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| n.阻碍物，制止物；adj.威慑的，遏制的 | |
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19
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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20
conspicuous
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| adj.明眼的，惹人注目的；炫耀的，摆阔气的 | |
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21
puckered
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| v.（使某物）起褶子或皱纹( pucker的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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22
suavely
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23
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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24
lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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lucrative
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| adj.赚钱的，可获利的 | |
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26
marrow
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| n.骨髓；精华；活力 | |
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27
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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28
cowardice
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| n.胆小，怯懦 | |
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29
corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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30
affected
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| adj.不自然的，假装的 | |
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31
malicious
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| adj.有恶意的，心怀恶意的 | |
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32
atheism
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| n.无神论，不信神 | |
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33
grovel
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| vi.卑躬屈膝，奴颜婢膝 | |
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34
perverse
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| adj.刚愎的；坚持错误的，行为反常的 | |
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35
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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37
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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38
iniquitous
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| adj.不公正的；邪恶的；高得出奇的 | |
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39
heed
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| v.注意，留意；n.注意，留心 | |
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40
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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41
virtuoso
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| n.精于某种艺术或乐器的专家，行家里手 | |
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42
patronage
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| n.赞助，支援，援助；光顾，捧场 | |
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43
levity
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| n.轻率，轻浮，不稳定，多变 | |
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44
aphorism
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| n.格言，警语 | |
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45
abstained
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| v.戒（尤指酒），戒除( abstain的过去式和过去分词 )；弃权（不投票） | |
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46
smelt
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| v.熔解，熔炼；n.银白鱼，胡瓜鱼 | |
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47
bustle
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| v.喧扰地忙乱，匆忙，奔忙；n.忙碌；喧闹 | |
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48
gauge
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| v.精确计量；估计；n.标准度量；计量器 | |
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49
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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50
attentive
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| adj.注意的，专心的；关心(别人)的，殷勤的 | |
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51
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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52
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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53
specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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54
jeer
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| vi.嘲弄，揶揄；vt.奚落；n.嘲笑，讥评 | |
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55
immortals
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| 不朽的人物( immortal的名词复数 )； 永生不朽者 | |
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56
conditional
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| adj.条件的，带有条件的 | |
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57
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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58
degenerate
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| v.退步，堕落；adj.退步的，堕落的；n.堕落者 | |
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59
uncouth
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| adj.无教养的，粗鲁的 | |
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60
physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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61
caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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62
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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63
undoubtedly
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| adv.确实地，无疑地 | |
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64
ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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65
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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