He put his hat on the chair and, as earlier, slightly breathless, gazed at him.

“Kiss me, Alexei Ivanovich,” he suddenly offered.

“Are you drunk?” the man cried, and drew back.

“I am, sir, but kiss me anyway, Alexei Ivanovich, eh, kiss me! I did kiss your hand just now!”

Alexei Ivanovich was silent for a few moments, as if hit on the head with a club. But suddenly he bent down to Pavel Pavlovich, who came up to his shoulder, and kissed him on the lips, which smelled very strongly of wine. He was not entirely sure, incidentally, that he had kissed him.

“Well, and now, now…” Pavel Pavlovich shouted again in a drunken frenzy, flashing his drunken eyes, “now here’s what, sir: I had thought then—‘not this one, too? If even this one,’ I thought, ‘if even this one, too, then who can one believe after that!’ ”

Pavel Pavlovich suddenly dissolved in tears.

“So do you understand what kind of friend you’ve remained for me now?!”

And he ran out of the room with his hat. Velchaninov again stood for several minutes in the same spot, as after Pavel Pavlovich’s first visit.

“Eh, a drunken buffoon and nothing more!” he waved his hand.

“Decidedly nothing more!” he confirmed energetically when he was already undressed and lying in bed.

VIII

LIZA IS SICK

The next morning while waiting for Pavel Pavlovich, who had promised not to be late for going to the Pogoreltsevs’, Velchaninov paced the room sipping his coffee, smoking, and being conscious every moment that he was like a man who wakes up in the morning and remembers every instant that he had been slapped the day before. “Hm… he understands only too well what the point is, and will take revenge on me with Liza!” he thought in fear.

The dear image of the poor child flashed sadly before him. His heart beat faster at the thought that today, soon, in two hours, he would see his Liza again. “Eh, what is there to talk about!” he decided hotly. “My whole life and my whole purpose are now in that! What are all these slaps and remembrances!… And what have I even lived for so far? Disorder and sadness… but now—everything’s different, everything’s changed!”

But, despite his rapture, he fell to pondering more and more.

“He’ll torment me with Liza—that’s clear! And he’ll torment Liza. It’s over this that he’ll finally do me in, for everything. Hm… no question, I can’t allow yesterday’s escapades on his part,” he suddenly blushed, “and… and look, anyhow, he’s not here yet, and it’s already past eleven!”

He waited a long time, until half past twelve, and his anguish grew more and more. Pavel Pavlovich did not come. At last the long-stirring thought that he would not come on purpose, solely in order to perform yet another escapade like yesterday’s, made him thoroughly vexed: “He knows I’m counting on him. And what will happen now with Liza! And how can I come to her without him!”

Finally, he could not stand it and at exactly one in the afternoon he himself went galloping to the Pokrov. In the rooms he was told that Pavel Pavlovich had not slept at home and had come only after eight in the morning, stayed for a brief quarter of an hour, and left again. Velchaninov was standing by the door of Pavel Pavlovich’s room, listening to the maid talking to him, and mechanically turning the handle of the locked door, tugging it back and forth. Recollecting himself, he spat, let go of the latch, and asked to be taken to Marya Sysoevna. But she, when she heard him, willingly came out herself.

She was a kind woman, “a woman of noble feelings,” as Velchaninov referred to her later when telling Klavdia Petrovna about his conversation with her. After asking briefly how his trip yesterday with the “missy” had gone, Marya Sysoevna at once got to telling about Pavel Pavlovich. In her words, “only except for the little child, she’d have got rid of him long ago. The hotel already got rid of him because he was far too outrageous. Well, isn’t it a sin to bring a wench at night when there’s a little child there who already understands! He shouts: ‘She’ll be your mother, if I want her to be!’ And, would you believe it, wench as she was, even she spat in his mug. He shouts: ‘You’re not my daughter—you’re a whore’s spawn.’ ”

“What are you saying!” Velchaninov was frightened.

“I heard it myself. Though he’s a drunk man, like as if unconscious, still it’s no good in front of a little child; youngling as she is, she’ll still get it in her mind! The missy cries, I could see she’s all tormented. And the other day here in the yard we had a real sin happen: a commissary or whatever, so people said, took a room in the hotel in the evening and by morning he hanged himself. They said he’d squandered money. People come running, Pavel Pavlovich isn’t home, and the child goes around unattended, so there I see her in the corridor among the people, peeking from behind, and staring so strangely at the hanging man. I quickly brought her here. And what do you think—she’s trembling all over, got all black, and the moment I brought her here she just fell into a fit. She thrashed and thrashed, and wouldn’t come out of it. Convulsions or whatever, only from that time on she got sick. He came, found out about it, and pinched her all over, because he doesn’t really hit, it’s more like pinches, then he got soused with wine, came and started scaring her, saying: ‘I’ll hang myself, too, on account of you; from this very cord,’ he says, ‘I’ll hang myself from the curtain cord,’ and he makes a noose right in front of her. And the girl’s beside herself—she cries, puts her little arms around him: ‘I won’t,’ she cries, ‘I won’t ever.’ Such a pity!”

Though Velchaninov had expected something very strange, these stories struck him so much that he did not even believe them. Marya Sysoevna told him much more: there was, for instance, one occasion when, if it had not been for Marya Sysoevna, Liza might have thrown herself out the window. He left the rooms as if drunk himself. “I’ll kill him with a stick, like a dog, on the head!” he kept imagining. And for a long time he kept repeating it to himself.

He hired a carriage and set off for the Pogoreltsevs’. Still within the city, the carriage was forced to stop at an intersection, by a bridge across the canal, across which a big funeral procession was making its way. On both sides of the bridge a number of vehicles crowded, waiting; people also stopped. The funeral was a wealthy one and the train of coaches following it was very long, and then in one of these following coaches Pavel Pavlovich’s face suddenly flashed before Velchaninov. He would not have believed it, if Pavel Pavlovich had not thrust himself out the window and nodded to him, smiling. Apparently he was terribly glad to have recognized Velchaninov: he even began making signs from the coach with his hand. Velchaninov jumped out of his carriage and, in spite of the crowd and the policemen and the fact that Pavel Pavlovich’s coach was already driving onto the bridge, ran right up to the window. Pavel Pavlovich was alone.

“What’s the matter with you,” Velchaninov cried, “why didn’t you come? what are you doing here?”

“My duty, sir—don’t shout, don’t shout—I’m doing my duty,” Pavel Pavlovich tittered, squinting merrily. “I’m accompanying the mortal remains of my true friend Stepan Mikhailovich.”

“That’s all absurd, you drunken, crazy man!” Velchaninov, puzzled for a moment, cried still louder. “Get out right now and come with me—right now!”

“I can’t, sir, it’s a duty, sir…”

“I’ll drag you out,” Velchaninov screamed.

“And I’ll raise a cry, sir! I’ll raise a cry!” Pavel Pavlovich went on with the same merry titter—just as if it were all a game—hiding, however, in the far corner of the coach.

“Watch out, watch out, you’ll get run over!” a policeman shouted. Indeed, some extraneous carriage had broken through the train at the descent from the bridge and was causing alarm. Velchaninov was forced to jump down; other vehicles and people pushed him farther back. He spat and made his way to his carriage.