If it were not for the customary authority of Simanovsky and the importance with which he spoke, the remaining three would have burst into laughter in his face.
They only stared at him, with eyes popping out.
“Well, yes,” continued Simanovsky imperturbably, “I’ll show her a whole series of chemical and physical experiments, which it is possible to carry on at home; which are always amusing and beneficial to the mind; and which eradicate prejudices.
Incidentally, I’ll explain something of the structure of the world, of the properties of matter.
And as far as Karl Marx is concerned, just remember, that great books are equally accessible to the understanding both of a scholar and an unlettered peasant, if only comprehensibly presented.
And every great thought is simple.”
Lichonin found Liubka at the place agreed upon, on a bench of the boulevard.
She went home with him very unwillingly.
Just as Lichonin had supposed, meeting the grumbling Alexandra was a fearful thing to her, who had long since grown unused to every-day actuality; harsh, and plentiful with all sorts of unpleasantnesses. And besides that, the fact that Lichonin did not want to conceal her past acted oppressively upon her.
But she, who had long ago lost her will in the establishment of Anna Markovna, deprived of her personality, ready to follow after the call of every stranger, did not tell him a word and walked after him.
The crafty Alexandra had already managed during this time to run to the superintendent of the houses and to complain to him, that, now, Lichonin had come with some miss, had passed the night with her in the room; but who she is, that Alexandra don’t know; that Lichonin says she is his first cousin, like; but did not present a passport.
It was necessary to explain things at great length, diffusedly and tiresomely, to the superintendent, a coarse and insolent man, who bore himself to all the tenants in the house as toward a conquered city; and feared only the students slightly, because they gave him a severe rebuff at times.
Lichonin propitiated him only when he rented on the spot another room, several rooms away from his, for Liubka; under the very slope of the roof, so that it represented on the inside a sharply cut-off, low, four-sided pyramid, with one little window.
“But still, Mr. Lichonin, just you present the passport to-morrow without fail,” said the superintendent insistently at parting. “Since you’re a respectable man, hard-working, and you and I are long acquainted, also you pay punctually, I am willing to do it only for you.
You know yourself what hard times these are.
If some one tells on me, they’ll not only fire me, but they can put me out of town as well.
They’re strict now.”
In the evening Lichonin strolled with Liubka through Prince Park, listened to the music playing in the aristocratic club, and returned home early.
He escorted Liubka to the door of her room and at once took leave of her; kissing her, however, tenderly on the brow, like a father.
But after ten minutes, when he was already lying in bed undressed and reading the statutes of state, Liubka, having scratched on his door like a cat, suddenly entered his room.
“Darling, sweetie!
Excuse me for troubling you.
Haven’t you a needle and thread?
But don’t get angry at me; I’ll go away at once.”
“Liuba!
I beg of you to go away not at once, but this second.
Finally, I demand it!”
“My dearie, my pretty,” Liubka began to intone laughably and piteously, “well, what are you yelling at me for all the time?” and, in a moment, having blown upon the candle, she nestled up to him in the darkness, laughing and crying.
“No, Liuba, this must not be.
It’s impossible to go on like this,” Lichonin was saying ten minutes later, standing at the door, wrapped up in his blanket, like a Spanish hidalgo in a cape. “To-morrow at the latest I’ll rent a room for you in another house.
And, in general, don’t let this occur!
God be with you, and good night!
Still, you must give me your word of honour that our relations will be merely friendly.”
“I give it, dearie, I give it, I give it, I give it!” she began to prattle, smiling; and quickly smacked him first on the lips and then on his hand.
The last action was altogether instinctive; and, perhaps, unexpected even to Liubka herself.
Never yet in her life had she kissed any man’s hand, save a priest’s.
Perhaps she wanted to express through this her gratitude to Lichonin, and a prostration before him as before a higher being.
Chapter 15
Among Russian intelligents, as has already been noted by many, there is a decent quantity of wonderful people; true children of the Russian land and culture, who would be able heroically, without the quivering of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress; while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid distress.
And precisely such a one was Lichonin.
On the following day (yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the lateness), having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he had to take care of Liubka’s passport, he felt just as bad as when in former times, as a high-school boy, he went to an examination, knowing that he would surely fall through.
His head ached, while his arms and legs somehow seemed another’s; in addition, a drizzling and seemingly dirty rain had been falling on the street since morning.
“Always, now, when there’s some unpleasantness in store, there is inevitably a rain falling,” reflected Lichonin, dressing slowly.
It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not more than two-thirds of a mile.
In general, he was not infrequently in those parts, but he had never had occasion to go there in the daytime; and on the way it seemed to him all the time that every one he met, every cabby and policeman, was looking at him with curiosity, with reproach, or with disdain, as though surmising the destination of his journey.
As always on a nasty and muggy morning, all the faces that met his eyes seemed pale, ugly, with monstrously underlined defects.
Scores of times he imagined all that he would say in the beginning at the house; and later at the station house; and every time the outcome was different.
Angry at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would at times stop himself:
“Ah!
You mustn’t think, you mustn’t presuppose what you’re going to say.