It’s the revolt of individuality.”
“And that’s what makes me proud,” retorted Lokhankin somewhat iambically.
“You’re underestimating the importance of individuality and of the intelligentsia as a whole.”
“But society will condemn you.”
“So be it,” replied Basilius resolutely, falling back on the couch.
Barbara said nothing, threw her bag on the floor, hastily tore a straw bonnet from her head and, muttering “crazed pig,” “tyrant,” “slave-master,” quickly made a chopped eggplant sandwich.
“Eat!” she said, bringing the food to her husband’s scarlet lips.
“You hear me, Lokhankin?
Eat up!
Now!”
“Leave me alone,” he said, pushing his wife’s hand away.
Taking advantage of the fact that the hunger striker’s mouth was open for a moment, Barbara deftly tucked the sandwich into the gap that appeared between the pharaonic beard and the trim Moscow-style mustache.
But the striker forced the food out with a strong push from his tongue.
“Eat, you bastard!” Barbara yelled in desperation, trying to reinsert the sandwich. “Intellectual!”
But Lokhankin turned his face away and bellowed in protest.
After a few minutes, Barbara, flushed and covered in green eggplant paste, gave up.
She sat down on her bag and burst into icy tears.
Lokhankin brushed the crumbs off his beard, threw his wife a cautious, evasive glance, and quieted down on his couch.
He really didn’t want to part with Barbara.
Despite numerous shortcomings, Barbara had two very important merits: a large white bosom and a steady job.
Basilius had never had a job.
A job would have interfered with his reflections on the role of the Russian intelligentsia, the social group of which he considered himself a member.
As a result, Lokhankin’s prolonged ruminations boiled down to pleasant and familiar themes:
“Basilius Lokhankin and His Significance,”
“Lokhankin and the Tragedy of Russian Liberalism,”
“Lokhankin and His Role in the Russian Revolution.”
It was easy and comforting to think about all of that while walking around the room in little felt boots (bought with Barbara’s money) and glancing at his favorite bookcase, where the spines of the Brockhaus Encyclopedia glimmered with ecclesiastical gold.
Basilius spent hours standing in front of the bookcase and moving his eyes from spine to spine.
Splendid examples of the art of bookbinding were neatly arranged on the shelves: The Great Medical Encyclopedia, The Animals of the World, the massive Man and Woman, and The Earth and Its Inhabitants by Elisee Reclus.
“Proximity to these treasures of human reflection is purifying, somehow makes you grow spiritually,” thought Basilius unhurriedly.
Arriving at this conclusion, he would sigh happily, pull out an 1899 copy of Motherland, an illustrated magazine, its binding the color of frothy, foamy sea water, that sat under the bookcase, and look at the pictures from the Boer War, an ad by an unknown lady entitled
“How I Enlarged My Bust By Six Inches,” and other curious miscellany.
If Barbara were to leave, she’d take with her the financial foundation on which the well-being of this most deserving member of the intellectual class has been resting.
In the evening, Ptiburdukov arrived.
For a long time, he couldn’t bring himself to enter the Lokhankins’ rooms, and he loitered in the kitchen, amid the blazing Primus stoves and the crisscrossing lines for laundry, which was hard as plaster and stained by bluing.
The apartment came to life.
Doors were banging, shadows were darting, the tenants’ eyes were shining, and somebody sighed passionately: a man had arrived.
Ptiburdukov took off his cap, tugged on his engineer’s mustache, and finally steeled himself.
“Barb,” he said pleadingly, entering the room, “didn’t we agree . . .”
“Look at this, Sasha!” cried Barbara, grabbing his hand and pushing him towards the couch.
“There he is!
On the couch!
The pig!
The dirty slave-master!
See, this tyrant went on a hunger strike because I want to leave him.”
Catching sight of Ptiburdukov, the striker promptly unleashed his iambic pentameter.
“Ptiburdukov, I truly do despise you,” he whined.
“And don’t you dare touch my dear wife.
You are a lout, Ptiburdukov, a bastard!
Whither are you now taking her?”