nine. They moved from the table to the sofa. Zverkov stretched himself
on a lounge and put one foot on a round table. Wine was brought there.
He did, as a fact, order three bottles on his own account. I, of course, was
not invited to join them. They all sat round him on the sofa. They
listened to him, almost with reverence. It was evident that they were fond
of him. "What for? What for?" I wondered. From time to time they were
moved to drunken enthusiasm and kissed each other. They talked of the
Caucasus, of the nature of true passion, of snug berths in the service, of
the income of an hussar called Podharzhevsky, whom none of them knew
personally, and rejoiced in the largeness of it, of the extraordinary grace
and beauty of a Princess D., whom none of them had ever seen; then it
came to Shakespeare's being immortal.
I smiled contemptuously and walked up and down the other side of the
room, opposite the sofa, from the table to the stove and back again. I tried
my very utmost to show them that I could do without them, and yet I
purposely made a noise with my boots, thumping with my heels. But it
was all in vain. They paid no attention. I had the patience to walk up and
down in front of them from eight o'clock till eleven, in the same place,
from the table to the stove and back again. "I walk up and down to please
myself and no one can prevent me." The waiter who came into the room
stopped, from time to time, to look at me. I was somewhat giddy from
turning round so often; at moments it seemed to me that I was in
delirium. During those three hours I was three times soaked with sweat
and dry again. At times, with an intense, acute pang I was stabbed to the
heart by the thought that ten years, twenty years, forty years would pass,
and that even in forty years I would remember with loathing and humiliation
those filthiest, most ludicrous, and most awful moments of my life.
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