The Little Demon, Fyodor Sologub [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

told each other what cards they held. That night Peredonov had no luck. He made haste to win back his money, but Volodin was slow in dealing and spent too much time in shuffling.

“Pavloushka, hurry up and deal,” shouted Peredonov impatiently.

Volodin, feeling himself the equal of anybody in the game, looked important and asked:

“What do you mean by ‘Pavloushka’? Is it in friendship? Or how?”

“Of course, in friendship,” replied Peredonov carelessly. “Only deal quicker.”

“Well, if you say it in friendship then I’m glad, very glad,” said Volodin, laughing happily and stupidly as he dealt the cards. “You’re a good fellow, Ardasha, and I’m very fond of you. But if it weren’t in friendship it would be another matter, but as it is in friendship I’m glad. I’ve given you an ace for it,” said Volodin and turned up trumps.

Peredonov actually had an ace, but it wasn’t the ace of trumps and he had to sacrifice it.

Routilov babbled on incessantly; told all sorts of tales and anecdotes, some of an exceedingly indelicate character. In order to annoy Peredonov, Routilov began to tell him that his older pupils were behaving very badly, especially those who lived in apartments: they smoked, drank vodka and ran after girls. Peredonov believed him, and Grushina confirmed what Routilov said. These stories gave her especial pleasure: she herself, after her husband’s death, had wanted to board three or four of the students at her house, but the Headmaster would not give her the requisite permission, in spite of Peredonov’s recommendations⁠—Grushina’s reputation in the town was not very good. She now began to abuse the landladies of the houses where the students had apartments.

“They’re bribing the Headmaster,” she declared.

“All the landladies are carrion!” said Volodin with conviction; “take mine, for instance. When I took my room, mine agreed to give me three glasses of milk every evening. For the first two months I got it.”

“And you didn’t get drunk?” asked Routilov.

“Why should I get drunk?” said Volodin in offended tones, “milk’s a useful product. It’s my habit to drink three glasses of milk every night. When all of a sudden I see that they bring me only two glasses. ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ I ask; the servant says: ‘Anna Mikhailovna says she begs your pardon because the cow, she says, doesn’t give much milk now.’ What’s that to do with me? An agreement is more sacred than money. Suppose their cow gave no milk at all⁠—does that mean I’m not to have any milk? ‘No,’ I say. ‘If there is no milk, then tell Anna Mikhailovna to give me a glass of water. I’m used to three glasses and I must have them.’ ”

“Our Pavloushka’s a hero,” said Peredonov. “Tell them how you argued with the General, old chap.”

Volodin eagerly repeated his story. But this time they laughed at his expense. He stuck out an offended underlip.

After supper they all got drunk, even the women. Volodin proposed that they should dirty the walls some more. They were delighted: almost before they had finished supper they acted on this suggestion and amused themselves prodigiously. They spat on the wallpaper, poured beer on it, and they threw at the walls and ceiling paper arrows whose ends were smeared with butter, and they flipped pieces of moist bread at the ceiling. Afterwards they invented a new game which they played for money; they tore off strips of the wallpaper to see who could get the largest. But at this game the Prepolovenskys won another rouble and a half.

Volodin lost. Because of his loss and his intoxication he became depressed and began to complain about his mother. He made a dolorous face, and gesticulating ridiculously with his hand, said:

“Why did she bear me? And what did she think at the time? What’s my life now? She’s not been a mother to me, she only bore me. Because whereas a real mother worries about her child, mine only bore me and sent me to a charitable home when I was a mere baby.”

“Well, you’ve learnt something by it⁠—it made a man of you,” said Prepolovenskaya.

Volodin bent his head, wagged it to and fro and said:

“No, what’s my life? A dog’s life. Why did she bear me? What did she think then?”

Peredonov suddenly remembered yesterday’s erli. “There,” he thought, “he complains about his mother, because she bore him. He doesn’t want to be Pavloushka. It’s certain that he envies me. It may be that he’s thinking of marrying Varvara and of getting into my skin.” And he looked anxiously at Volodin.

He must try to marry him to someone.

At night in the bedroom Varvara said to Peredonov:

“You think that all these girls who are running after you are really good-looking? They’re all trash, and I’m prettier than any of them.”

She quickly undressed herself and, smiling insolently, showed Peredonov her rosy, graceful, flexible and beautiful body.

Though Varvara staggered from drunkenness and her face would have repelled any decent man with its flabby-lascivious expression, she really had the beautiful body of a nymph, with the head of a faded prostitute attached to it as if by some horrible black magic. And this superb body was for these two drunken and dirty-minded people merely the source of the vilest libidinousness.

And so it often happens in our age that beauty is debased and abused.

Peredonov laughed gruffly but boisterously as he looked at his naked companion.

The entire night he dreamed of women of all colours, naked and hideous.

Varvara believed that the friction with nettles, which she applied at Prepolovenskaya’s advice, helped her. It seemed to her that she got plumper almost at once. She asked all her acquaintances:

“It’s true, isn’t it, that I’m a little fuller?”

And she thought that now Peredonov would surely marry her, seeing that she was plumper, and that he would receive the forged letter.

Peredonov’s expectations were far from being so agreeable as hers. He had become convinced some time before that the Headmaster was hostile to him⁠—and as a matter of fact the Headmaster