"This, that nowadays there's no use having any estate.
Money, that's the thing.
You take your money, put it in your pocket and off you go.
But real estate——"
"What sort of an age have we come to when there's no use owning real estate?"
"Yes, this is a peculiar age. You don't read the newspapers, but I do.
Nowadays the lawyers are everywhere—you can imagine the rest.
If a lawyer finds out that you have real estate, then he begins to circle around you."
"Well, how is he going to get at you when you have the proper deeds to the property?"
"Deeds or no deeds, they'll get you.
Porfiry the Bloodsucker may hire a lawyer and serve me with summons after summons."
"What are you talking about! We're not living in a lawless country."
"That's just why they serve summonses on you.
If the country were lawless, they would take it away without a summons.
There's my friend Gorlopiatov, for instance. His uncle died and he, fool that he was, up and accepted the inheritance.
The inheritance proved worthless, but the debts figured up to the thousands, the bills of exchange were all false.
Now they've been suing him for three years on end. First, they took his uncle's estate. Then they even sold his own property at auction.
That's what real estate is."
"Can there possibly be a law like that?"
"If there were no such law, they couldn't have sold it.
There's a law for everything.
A man without a conscience finds a law to back him in everything. But there are no laws for a man with a conscience.
Try and look for them in the books."
Arina Petrovna always let Pavel have his way in these controversies.
Many a time she could hardly refrain from shouting, "Out of my sight, you scoundrel." But she would think it over and keep silent.
Sometimes she would only murmur to herself:
"Goodness, whom do these monsters take after?
One is a bloodsucker, the other is a lunatic.
What did I hoard and save for? For what did I deny myself sleep and food? For whom did I do all that?"
The more completely drink took possession of Pavel Vladimirych, the more fantastic and annoying his conversations became.
Finally Arina Petrovna noticed there was something wrong.
A whole flask of vodka would be put away in the dining-room cupboard in the morning, and by dinner time there wouldn't be a drop left.
Or she would be sitting in the parlor and would hear a mysterious creaking in the dining-room near the cupboard. She would call out, "Who's there?" and would hear footsteps quickly but carefully withdrawing toward the entresol.
"Goodness, can it be that he drinks?" she once asked Ulita.
"I shouldn't deny it," answered the latter, with a vicious grin.
When Pavel Vladimirych saw that his mother had discovered the truth, he lost all restraint.
One morning Arina Petrovna found the cupboard had disappeared from the dining-room, and when she asked where it had gone to, Ulita told her she had been ordered to carry it to the entresol, because it would be more comfortable for the master to drink there.
In the entresol, the decanters of vodka followed one after the other with amazing rapidity.
Shut up alone by himself, Pavel Vladimirych began to hate human society. He created a peculiar fantastic reality for himself, spinning out a long-winded nonsensical romance, in which the main heroes were himself and the Bloodsucker.
He was not fully conscious of how, deeply rooted his hatred for Porfiry was.
It gnawed at his bones and entrails every minute of his life.
The loathed image of his brother stood lifelike before his eyes, and Yudushka's lachrymose, hypocritical twaddle rang in his ears. In his talk there lurked a cold, almost abstract hatred of every living thing that did not conform to the traditional code laid down by hypocrisy.
Pavel Vladimirych drank and recalled memories, all the insults and humiliations he had had to suffer because of Yudushka's claims to supremacy in the house; the division of the estate in particular; how he had calculated every kopek and compared every scrap of land. Oh, how he detested him!
Entire dramas were enacted in his imagination, heated by alcohol. In these dramas he avenged every offense that he had sustained, and not Yudushka but he himself was always the aggressor.
He saw himself the winner of two hundred thousand, and informed Yudushka of his good luck in a long scene, making his brother's face writhe with envy.
At other times he imagined his grandfather had died and left a million to him, while nothing at all to Porfiry.
He also discovered a means of becoming invisible and when unseen he played wicked tricks on Porfiry to make him groan in agony.
His genius for inventing tricks was inexhaustible, and for a long time his idiotic laughter would ring through the entresol, much to the delight of Ulita, who would hurry to inform Porfiry Vladimirych of his brother's doings.
He detested Yudushka and at the same time had a superstitious fear of him.
He imagined his eyes discharged a venom of magic effect, that his voice crept, snake-like, into the soul and paralyzed the will.