“Well! That’s sense indeed! Let’s have some of the silver seal and some of the gold, Vanya, and then with souls refreshed we’ll fall upon the other beverages.”
“There, I knew that’s how it would be!
“Don’t be anxious, Sashenka. We’ll drink a cup of tea, too, with brandy in it, to your health.”
“Well, there it is! “ she cried, clasping her hands. “It’s caravan tea, six roubles the pound, a merchant made us a present of it the day before yesterday, and he wants to drink it with brandy. Don’t listen to him, Ivan Petrovitch, I’ll pour you out a cup directly. You’ll see … you’ll see for yourself what it’s like!”
And she busied herself at the samovar,
I realized that they were reckoning on keeping me for the whole evening. Alexandra Semyonovna had been expecting visitors for a whole year, and was now prepared to work it all off on me This did not suit me at all.
“Listen, Masloboev,” I said, sitting down. “I’ve not come to pay you a visit. I’ve come on business; you invited me yourself to tell me something….”
“Well, business is business, but there’s a time for friendly conversation too.”
“No, my friend, don’t reckon upon me. At half-past eight I must say goodbye. I’ve an appointment. It’s a promise.”
“Not likely. Good gracious, what a way to treat me! What a way to treat Alexandra Semyonovna. Just look at her, she’s overwhelmed. What has she been pomading me for: why I’m. covered with bergamot. Just think!”
“You do nothing but make jokes, Masloboev. I swear to Alexandra Semyonovna that. I’ll dine with you next week, or Friday if you like. But now, my boy, I’ve given my word; or rather it’s absolutely necessary for me to be at a certain place, You’d better explain what you meant to tell me.”
“Then can you really only stay till half-past eight?” cried Alexandra Semyonovna in a timid and plaintive voice, almost weeping as she handed me a cup of excellent tea.
“Don’t be uneasy, Sashenka; that’s all nonsense” Masloboev put in. “He’ll stay. That’s nonsense. But I’ll tell you what, Vanya, you’d much better let me know where it is you always go. What is your business? May I know? You keep running off somewhere every day. You don’t work….”
“But why do you want to know? I’ll tell you perhaps afterwards. You’d better explain why you came to see me yesterday when I told you myself I shouldn’t be at home.”
“I remembered afterwards. But I forgot at the time. I really did want to speak to you about something. But before everything I had to comfort Alexandra Semyonovna. ‘Here,’ says she, ‘is a person, a friend, who has turned up. Why not invite him?’ And here she’s been pestering me about you for the last four days. No doubt they’ll let me off forty sins for the bergamot in the next world, but I thought why shouldn’t he spend an evening with us in a friendly way? So I had recourse to strategy: I wrote to you that I had such business that if you didn’t come it would quite upset our apple-cart.”
I begged him not to do like this in the future, but to speak to me directly. But this explanation did not altogether satisfy me.
“Well, but why did you run away from me this morning?” I asked.
“This morning I really had business. I’m not telling the least little fib.”
“Not with the prince?”
“Do you like our tea?” Alexandra Semyonovna asked, in honied accents. For the last five minutes she had been waiting for me to praise the tea, but it never occurred to me.
“It’s splendid, Alexandra Semyonovna, superb. I have never drunk anything like it.”
Alexandra Semyonovna positively glowed with satisfaction and flew to pour me out some more.
“The prince!” cried Masloboev, “the prince! That prince, my boy, is a rogue, a rascal such as …. Well! I can tell you, my boy, though I’m a rogue myself, from a mere sense of decency I shouldn’t care to be in his skin. But enough. Mum’s the word! That’s all I can tell you about him.”
“But I’ve come, among other things, on purpose to ask you about him. But that will do later. Why did you give my Elena sweetmeats and dance for her when I was away yesterday? And what can you have been talking about for an hour and a half!”
“Elena is a little girl of twelve, or perhaps eleven, who is living for the time at Ivan Petrovitch’s,” Masloboev exclaimed, suddenly addressing Alexandra Semyonovna. “Look, Vanya, look,” he went on, pointing at her, “how she flushed up when she heard I had taken sweets to an unknown girl. Didn’t she give a start and turn red as though we’d fired a pistol at her? … I say, her eyes are flashing like coals of fire! It’s no use, Alexandra Semyonovna, it’s no use to try and hide it! She’s jealous. If I hadn’t explained that it was a child of eleven she’d have pulled my hair and the bergamot wouldn’t have saved me!”
“It won’t save you as it is!”
And with these words Alexandra Semyonovna darted at one bound from behind the tea-table, and before Masloboev had time to protect his head she snatched at a tuft of his hair and gave it a good pull.
“So there! So there! Don’t dare to say I’m jealous before a visitor! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!”
She was quite crimson, and though she laughed, Masloboev caught it pretty hotly.
“He talks of all sorts of shameful things,” she added seriously turning to me.
“Well, Vanya, you see the sort of life I lead! That’s I must have a drop of vodka,” Masloboev concluded, setting his hair straight and going almost at a trot to the decanter But Alexandra Semyonovna was beforehand with him. She skipped up to the table, poured some out herself, handed it him, and even gave him a friendly pat on the cheek. Masloboev winked at me, triumphantly clicked with his tongue, an solemnly emptied his glass.
“As for the sweets, it’s difficult to say,” he began, sitting down on the sofa beside me. “I bought them at a greengrocer’s shop the other day when I was drunk, I don’t know why. Perhaps it was to support home industries and manufactures, don’t know for sure. I only remember that I was walking along the street drunk, fell in the mud, clutched at my hair and cried at being unfit for anything. I forgot about the sweets, of course so they remained in my pocket till yesterday when I sat down on your sofa and sat on them. The dances, too, were a question of inebriety. Yesterday I was rather drunk, and when I’m drunk, if I’m contented with my lot I sometimes dance. That’s all. Except, perhaps, that that little orphan excited my pity besides, she wouldn’t talk to me, she seemed cross. And so danced to cheer her up and gave her the fruit-drops.”
“And