hand, and cleared his throat hoarsely.

I glanced at Fustov. He merely shrugged his shoulders, as though giving me to understand that it was no use talking to such a dolt.

XI

Viktor, staring at the ceiling, fell to talking, deliberately and through his nose, of the theatre, of two actors he knew, of a certain Serafrina Serafrinovna, who had ‘made a fool’ of him, of the new professor, R., whom he called a brute. ‘Because, only fancy, what a monstrous notion! Every lecture he begins with calling over the students’ names, and he’s reckoned a liberal too! I’d have all your liberals locked up in custody!’ and turning at last his full face and whole body towards Fustov, he brought out in a half-plaintive, half-ironical voice: ‘I wanted to ask you something, Alexander Daviditch…. Couldn’t you talk my governor round somehow?… You play duets with him, you know…. Here he gives me five miserable blue notes a month…. What’s the use of that! Not enough for tobacco. And then he goes on about my not making debts! I should like to put him in my place, and then we should see! I don’t come in for pensions, not like some people.’ (Viktor pronounced these last words with peculiar emphasis.) ‘But he’s got a lot of tin, I know! It’s no use his whining about hard times, there’s no taking me in. No fear! He’s made a snug little pile!’

Fustov looked dubiously at Victor.

‘If you like,’ he began, ‘I’ll speak to your father. Or, if you like… meanwhile… a trifling sum….’

‘Oh, no! Better get round the governor… Though,’ added Viktor, scratching his nose with all his fingers at once, ‘you might hand over five-and-twenty roubles, if it’s the same to you…. What’s the blessed total I owe you?’

‘You’ve borrowed eighty-five roubles of me.’

‘Yes…. Well, that’s all right, then… make it a hundred and ten. I’ll pay it all in a lump.’

Fustov went into the next room, brought back a twenty-five-rouble note and handed it in silence to Viktor. The latter took it, yawned with his mouth wide open, grumbled thanks, and, shrugging and stretching, got up from the sofa.

‘Foo! though… I’m bored,’ he muttered, ‘might as well turn in to the «Italie.»‘

He moved towards the door.

Fustov looked after him. He seemed to be struggling with himself.

‘What pension were you alluding to just now, Viktor Ivanitch?’ he asked at last.

Viktor stopped in the doorway and put on his cap.

‘Oh, don’t you know? Susanna Ivanovna’s pension…. She gets one. An awfully curious story, I can tell you! I’ll tell it you one of these days. Quite an affair, ‘pon my soul, a queer affair. But, I say, the governor, you won’t forget about the governor, please! His hide is thick, of course—German, and it’s had a Russian tanning too, still you can get through it. Only, mind my step-mother Elenorka’s nowhere about! Dad’s afraid of her, and she wants to keep everything for her brats! But there, you know your way about! Good-bye!’

‘Ugh, what a low beast that boy is!’ cried Fustov, as soon as the door had slammed-to.

His face was burning, as though from the fire, and he turned away from me. I did not question him, and soon retired.

XII

All that day I spent in speculating about Fustov, about Susanna, and about her relations. I had a vague feeling of something like a family drama. As far as I could judge, my friend was not indifferent to Susanna. But she? Did she care for him? Why did she seem so unhappy? And altogether, what sort of creature was she? These questions were continually recurring to my mind. An obscure but strong conviction told me that it would be no use to apply to Fustov for the solution of them. It ended in my setting off the next day alone to Mr. Ratsch’s house.

I felt all at once very uncomfortable and confused directly I found myself in the dark little passage. ‘She won’t appear even, very likely,’ flashed into my mind. ‘I shall have to stop with the repulsive veteran and his cook of a wife…. And indeed, even if she does show herself, what of it? She won’t even take part in the conversation…. She was anything but warm in her manner to me the other day. Why ever did I come?’ While I was making these reflections, the little page ran to announce my presence, and in the adjoining room, after two or three wondering ‘Who is it? Who, do you say?’ I heard the heavy shuffling of slippers, the folding-door was slightly opened, and in the crack between its two halves was thrust the face of Ivan Demianitch, an unkempt and grim-looking face. It stared at me and its expression did not immediately change…. Evidently, Mr. Ratsch did not at once recognise me; but suddenly his cheeks grew rounder, his eyes narrower, and from his opening mouth, there burst, together with a guffaw, the exclamation: ‘Ah! my dear sir! Is it you? Pray walk in!’

I followed him all the more unwillingly, because it seemed to me that this affable, good-humoured Mr. Ratsch was inwardly wishing me at the devil. There was nothing to be done, however. He led me into the drawing-room, and in the drawing-room who should be sitting but Susanna, bending over an account-book? She glanced at me with her melancholy eyes, and very slightly bit the finger-nails of her left hand…. It was a habit of hers, I noticed, a habit peculiar to nervous people. There was no one else in the room.

‘You see, sir,’ began Mr. Ratsch, dealing himself a smack on the haunch, ‘what you’ve found Susanna Ivanovna and me busy upon: we’re at our accounts. My spouse has no great head for arithmetic, and I, I must own, try to spare my eyes. I can’t read without spectacles, what am I to do? Let the young people exert themselves, ha-ha! That’s the proper thing. But there’s no need of haste…. More haste, worse speed in catching fleas, he-he!’

Susanna closed the book, and was about to leave the room.

‘Wait a bit, wait a bit,’ began Mr. Ratsch. ‘It’s no great matter if you’re not in your best dress….’ (Susanna was wearing a very old, almost childish, frock with short sleeves.) ‘Our dear guest is not a stickler for ceremony, and I should like just to clear up last week…. You don’t mind?’—he addressed me. ‘We needn’t stand on ceremony with you, eh?’

‘Please don’t put yourself out on my account!’ I cried.

‘To be sure, my good friend. As you’re aware, the late Tsar Alexey Nikolavitch Romanoff used to say, «Time is for business, but a minute for recreation!» We’ll devote one minute only to that same business… ha-ha! What about that thirteen roubles and thirty kopecks?’ he added in a low voice, turning his back on me.

‘Viktor took it from Eleonora Karpovna; he said that it was with your leave,’ Susanna replied, also in a low voice.

‘He said… he said… my leave…’ growled Ivan Demianitch. ‘I’m on the spot myself, I fancy. Might be asked. And who’s had that seventeen roubles?’

‘The upholsterer.’

‘Oh… the upholsterer. What’s that for?’ ‘His bill.’

‘His bill. Show me!’ He pulled the book away from Susanna, and planting a pair of round spectacles with silver rims on his nose, he began passing his finger along the lines. ‘The upholsterer,.. the upholsterer… You’d chuck all the money out of doors! Nothing pleases you better!… Wie die Croaten! A bill indeed! But, after all,’ he added aloud, and he turned round facing me again, and pulled the spectacles off his nose, ‘why do this now? I can go into these wretched details later. Susanna Ivanovna, be so good as to put away that account-book, and come back to us and enchant our kind guest’s ears with your musical accomplishments, to wit, playing on the pianoforte… Eh?’

Susanna turned away her head.

‘I should be very happy,’ I hastily observed; ‘it would be a great pleasure for me to hear Susanna Ivanovna play. But I would not for anything in the world be a trouble…’

‘Trouble, indeed, what nonsense! Now then, Susanna Ivanovna, eins, zwei, drei!’

Susanna made no response, and went out.

XIII

I had not expected her to come back; but she quickly reappeared. She had not even changed her dress, and sitting down in a corner, she looked twice intently at me. Whether it was that she was conscious in my manner to her of the involuntary respect, inexplicable to myself, which, more than curiosity, more even than sympathy, she aroused in me, or whether she was in a softened frame of mind that day, any way, she suddenly went to the piano, and laying her hand irresolutely on the keys, and turning her head a little over her shoulder towards me, she asked what I would like her to play. Before I had time to answer she had seated herself, taken up some music, hurriedly opened it, and begun to play. I loved music from childhood, but at that time I had but little comprehension of it, and very slight knowledge of the works of the great masters, and if Mr. Ratsch had not grumbled with some dissatisfaction, ‘Aha! wieder dieser Beethoven!’ I should not have guessed what Susanna had chosen. It was, as I found out afterwards, the celebrated sonata in F minor, opus 57. Susanna’s playing impressed me more than I can say; I had not expected such force, such fire, such bold execution. At the very first bars of the intensely passionate allegro, the beginning of the sonata, I felt that numbness, that chill and sweet terror