‘Are you deaf? How long have you been deaf?’
Despite her great age, the old woman heard and saw very well, but she found it useful to pretend otherwise. I shook my finger at her and let her go.
Having gone on a few steps farther, I heard voices, and soon after saw people. At the spot where the avenue widened out and formed an open space surrounded by iron benches and shaded by tall white acacias, stood a table on which a samovar shone brightly. People were seated at the table, talking. I went quietly across the grass towards the gathering and, hiding behind a lilac bush, began to peer about for the Count.
My friend, Count Karnéev, was seated at the table on a cane-bottomed folding chair, drinking tea. He was dressed in the same many-coloured dressing-gown in which I had seen him two years before, and he wore a straw hat. His face had a troubled, concentrated expression, and it was very wrinkled, so that a man not acquainted with him might have imagined he was troubled at that moment by some serious thought or anxiety… The Count had not changed at all in appearance during the two years since last we met. He had the same small thin body, as frail and wizened as the body of a corncrake. He had the same narrow, consumptive shoulders, surmounted by a small redhaired head. His small nose was as red as formerly, and his cheeks were flabby and hanging like rags, as they had been two years before. On his face there was nothing of boldness, strength or manliness… All was weak, apathetic and languid. The only imposing thing about him was his long, drooping moustache. Somebody had told my friend that a long moustache was very becoming to him. He believed it, and every morning since then he had measured how much longer the growth on his pale lips had become. With this moustache he reminded you of a moustached but very young and puny kitten.
Sitting next to the Count at the table was a stout man with a large closely-cropped head and very dark eyebrows, who was unknown to me. His face was fat and shone like a ripe melon. His moustache was longer than the Count’s, his forehead was low, his lips were compressed, and his eyes gazed lazily into the sky… The features of his face were bloated, but nevertheless they were as hard as dried-up skin. He did not look like a Russian… The stout man was without his coat or waistcoat, and on his shirt there were dark spots caused by perspiration. He was not drinking tea but Seltzer water.
At a respectful distance from the table a short, thick-set man with a stout red neck and protruding ears was standing. This man was Urbenin, the Count’s bailiff. In honour of the Count’s arrival he was dressed in a new black suit and was now suffering torments. The perspiration was pouring in streams from his red, sunburnt face. Next to the bailiff stood the muzhik, who had come to me with the letter. It was only here I noticed that this muzhik had only one eye. Standing at attention, not allowing himself the slightest movement, he was like a statue, and waited to be questioned.
‘Kuz’ma, you deserve to be thrashed black and blue with your own whip,’ the bailiff said to him in his reproachful soft bass voice, pausing between each word, is it possible to execute the master’s orders in such a careless way. You ought to have requested him to come here at once and to have found out when he could be expected.’
‘Yes, yes, yes…’ the Count exclaimed nervously. ‘You ought to have found out everything! He said: “I’ll come!” But that’s not enough! I want him at once! Pos-i-tively at once! You asked him to come, but he did not understand!’
‘What do you want with him?’ the fat man asked the Count.
‘I want to see him!’
‘Only that? To my mind, Alexey, that magistrate would do far better if he remained at home today. I have no wish for guests.’
I opened my eyes. What was the meaning of that masterful, authoritative T?
‘But he’s not a guest!’ my friend said in an imploring tone. ‘He won’t prevent you from resting after the journey. I beg you not to stand on ceremonies with him… You’ll like him at once, my dear boy, and you’ll soon be friends with him!’
I came out of my hiding place behind the lilac bushes and went up to the tables. The Count saw and recognized me, and his face brightened with a pleased smile.
‘Here he is! Here he is!’ he exclaimed, getting red with pleasure, and he jumped up from the table. ‘How good of you to come!’
He ran towards me, seized me in his arms, embraced me and scratched my cheeks several times with his bristly moustache. These kisses were followed by lengthy shaking of my hand and long looks into my eyes.
‘You, Sergey, have not changed at all! You’re still the same! The same handsome strong fellow! Thank you for accepting my invitation and coming at once!’
When released from the Count’s embrace, I greeted the bailiff, who was an old friend of mine, and sat down at the table.
‘Oh, golubchek!’ the Count continued in an excitedly anxious tone, if you only knew how delighted I am to see your serious countenance again. You are not acquainted? Allow me to introduce you - my good friend, Kaetan Kazimirovich Pshekhotsky. And this,’ he continued, introducing me to the fat man, ‘is my good old friend, Sergey Petrovich Zinov’ev! Our magistrate.’
The stout, dark-browed man rose slightly from his seat and offered me his fat, and extremely sweaty hand.
‘Very pleased,’ he mumbled, examining me from head to foot. ‘Very glad!’
Having given vent to his feelings and become calm again, the Count filled a glass with cold, dark brown tea for me and moved a box of biscuits towards my hand.
‘Eat… When passing through Moscow I bought them at Einem’s. I’m very angry with you, Serezha, so angry that I wanted to quarrel with you! Not only have you not written me a line during the whole of the past two years, but you did not even think a single one of my letters worth answering! That’s not friendly!’
‘I don’t know how to write letters,’ I said. ‘Besides, I have no time for letter writing. Can you tell me what could I have written to you about?’
‘There must have been many things!’
‘Indeed, there was nothing. I admit of only three sorts of letters: love, congratulatory, and business letters. The first I did not write to you because you are not a woman, and I am not in love with you; the second you don’t require; and from the third category we are relieved as from our birth we have never had any business connection together.’
‘That’s perfectly true,’ the Count said, agreeing readily and quickly with everything; ‘but all the same, you might have written, if only a line… And what’s more, as Pëtr Egorych tells me, all these two years you’ve not set foot here, as though you were living a thousand versts away or disdained my property. You could have made your home here, shot over my grounds. Many things might have happened here while I was away.’
The Count spoke much and long. When once he began talking about anything, his tongue chattered on without ceasing and without end, quite regardless of the trivality or insignificance of his subject.
In the utterance of sounds he was as untiring as my Ivan Dem’yanych. I could hardly stand him for that facility. This time he was stopped by his butler, Il’ya, a tall, thin man in a well-worn, much-stained livery, who brought the Count a wineglass of vodka and half a tumbler of water on a silver tray. The Count swallowed the vodka, washed it down with some water, making a grimace with a shake of the head.
‘So it seems you have not yet stopped tippling vodka!’ I said.
‘No, Serezha, I have not.’
‘Well, you might at least drop that drunken habit of making faces and shaking your head! It’s disgusting!’
‘My dear boy, I’m going to drop everything… The doctors have forbidden me to drink. I drink now only because it’s unhealthy to drop habits all at once… It must be done gradually…
I looked at the Count’s unhealthy, worn face, at the wineglass, at the butler in yellow shoes.