They’re not easy to forget.
But what have you been doing, what have you been doing?”
“I? Why, I’m pining in solitude, too.”
He gave me a long look, full of the deep feeling of a man slightly inebriated; though he was a very goodnatured fellow at any time.
“No, Vanya, your case is not like mine,” he brought out at last in a tragic tone.
“I’ve read it, Vanya, you know, I’ve read it, I’ve read it! ...
But I say, let us have a good talk!
Are you in a hurry?”
“I am in a hurry, and I must confess I’m very much upset about something.
I’ll tell you what’s better. Where do you live?”
“I’ll tell you.
But that’s not better; shall I tell you what is better?”
“Why, what?”
“Why, this, do you see?” and he pointed out to me a sign a few yards from where we were standing. “You see, confectioner’s and restaurant; that is simply an eatinghouse, but it’s a good place.
I tell you it’s a decent place, and the vodka – there’s no word for it!
It’s come all the way from Kiev on foot.
I’ve tasted it, many a time I’ve tasted it, I know; and they wouldn’t dare offer me poor stuff here.
They know Filip Filippitch.
I’m Filip Filippitch, you know.
Eh?
You make a face?
No, let me have my say.
Now it’s a quarter past eleven; I’ve just looked. Well, at twentyfive to twelve exactly I’ll let you go.
And in the meantime we’ll drain the flowing bowl.
Twenty minutes for an old friend. Is that right?”
“If it will really be twenty minutes, all right; because, my dear chap, I really am busy.”
“Well, that’s a bargain.
But I tell you what. Two words to begin with: you don’t look cheerful ... as though you were put out about something, is that so?”
“Yes.”
“I guessed it.
I am going in for the study of physiognomy, you know; it’s an occupation, too.
So, come along, we’ll have a talk.
In twenty minutes I shall have time in the first place to sip the cup that cheers and to toss off a glass of birch wine, and another of orange bitters, then a Parfait amour, and anything else I can think of.
I drink, old man!
I’m good for nothing except on a holiday before service.
But don’t you drink.
I want you just as you are.
Though if you did drink you’d betray a peculiar nobility of soul.
Come along!
We’ll have a little chat and then part for another ten years.
I’m not fit company for you, friend Vanya!”
“Don’t chatter so much, but come along.
You shall have twenty minutes and then let me go.”
To get to the eatinghouse we had to go tip a wooden staircase of two flights, leading from the street to the second storey.
But on the stairs we suddenly came upon two gentlemen, very drunk.
Seeing us they moved aside, staggering.
One of them was a very young and youthfullooking lad, with an exaggeratedly stupid expression of face, with only a faint trace of moustache and no beard.
He was dressed like a dandy, but looked ridiculous, as though he were dressed up in someone else’s clothes. He had expensivelooking rings on his fingers, an expensive pin in his tie, and his hair was combed up into a crest which looked particularly absurd.
He kept smiling and sniggering.
His companion, a thickset, corpulent, baldheaded man of fifty, with a puffy, drunken, pockmarked face and a nose like a button, was dressed rather carelessly, though he, too, had a big pin in his tie and wore spectacles.