Roshchin approached the soldiers and asked them the way to the address he was seeking.
One of them answered in unfriendly tones:
"We're strangers ourselves."
Another said:
"You've come to the Don at a bad time, officer."
Katya tugged at her husband's sleeve and they crossed to the opposite pavement.
There, on a broken bench beneath a leafless tree, sat an old man in a threadbare coat and straw hat, resting his unshaven chin on the handle of his stick. He was shaking convulsively, and tears were running down his hollow cheeks from his closed eyes.
A tremor passed over Katya's face.
Roshchin pulled her by the sleeve.
"Come on, you can't pity everyone...."
They roamed the dirty, dilapidated town for hours before they found the number of the house they wanted.
Turning into the gate they came upon a short man with fat legs and a skull as bare as an egg, in a soldier's wadded sleeveless vest, covered with grease spots.
He was carrying a vat, his face averted from the stench arising from it.
It was Lieutenant Colonel Tetkin, a brother officer of Roshchin's.
Placing the vat on the ground he embraced Vadim Petrovich, and, bringing his heels together, pressed Katya's hand.
"I see everything, don't say a word—I'll get you settled.
But you'll have to share a room.
Still, there's a three-leaved mirror, and an aspidistra.
My wife comes from these parts, you see.... At first we lived there" (he pointed to a two-storey brick house), "and then we moved over here, in quite a proletarian way." (He pointed to a rickety wooden annex.)
"And I, as you observe, make boot polish.
I registered at the labour exchange as unemployed. So long as the neighbours don't inform on us we'll see it through somehow.
We're Russians, we're used to this sort of thing."
He laughed, opening his big mouth and displaying a splendid set of teeth.
Then he said thoughtfully: "See what we've come to!" and rubbed his skull with his hand, smearing it with boot polish.
His wife, as short and stocky as himself, welcomed the guests in a melodious voice, but they could see in her hazel eyes that she was not enraptured.
Katya and Roshchin were shown into a low room with torn wallpaper.
In the corner there really was a shabby three-leaved mirror, its glass turned to the wall, an aspidistra, and an iron bedstead.
"We turned the glass to the wall for safety's sake, it's a valuable thing, you know," said Tetkin.
"If they came to raid the place they'd smash the glass to smithereens.
They can't bear to see their own faces."
He laughed again, rubbing his skull.
"And in a way I understand them, you know. A mirror in the midst of all this breakage—of course one would smash it."
His wife laid the table neatly, but the forks were rusty, the plates broken—they must have hidden away their best things.
Vadim and Katya partook heartily of smoked fish, white bread, and eggs fried in lard.
Tetkin fussed round them, piling their plates with food.
His wife, her plump arms folded over her chest, complained of everything.
"Such disgraceful goings-on, such oppression, it's simply excruciating!
I haven't been out of the house for over a month.... If only they'd drive away those Bolsheviks! What are they saying about it in the capital?
Will they soon crush them?"
"You be careful," said Tetkin anxiously.
"You won't be patted on the head for such words, Sofia Ivanovna, these days!"
"I'm not going to hold my tongue—let them shoot me!"
Sofia Ivanovna's eyes grew round, and she hugged herself still tighter.
"The tsar will come back, he will!" She turned on her husband, her bosom heaving. "You're the only one who can't see that!"
Tetkin frowned apologetically.
When his wife flounced angrily out of the room, he whispered:
"Take no notice, she's a goodhearted woman and a splendid housewife, but all these things have made her almost crazy..." he glanced at Katya's face, flushed from drinking tea, and at Roshchin, who was rolling a cigarette). "Ah, Vadim Petrovich, it's all so complicated! You can't reject everything pell-mell. I come in contact with people, I see a lot.... I'm often at Bataisk, on the other side of the Don—it's mostly poor people, workers, who live there. They're not scoundrels, Vadim Petrovich.
No, no, they're oppressed, insulted human beings. How they've been waiting for the Soviet power!
For God's sake, don't think I'm a Bolshevik or anything of that sort..." (he pressed his stumpy, hairy hands imploringly to his chest, as if in deep apology). "Rostov has been handed to the Bolsheviks by supercilious and incapable rulers. You should have seen what went on here under Ataman Kaledin. The guards, dissipated and arrogant, strolled up and down Sadovaya Street! 'We'll drive those swine down to the cellars!' That's the way they talked.
And those swine are the entire Russian people. They resisted, they didn't want to go down to the cellars.