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‘Yes,’ Onisim resumed, ‘there are women like that.’

‘There are,’ listlessly repeated Pyetushkov, in a tone half questioning, half perplexed.

Onisim looked intently at his master.

‘Ivan Afanasiitch,’ he began, ‘wouldn’t you have a snack of something?’

‘Wouldn’t I have a snack of something?’ repeated Pyetushkov.

‘Or may be you’d like to have a pipe?’

‘To have a pipe?’ repeated Pyetushkov.

‘So this is what it’s coming to,’ muttered Onisim. ‘It’s gone deep, it seems.’

VIII

The creak of boots resounded in the passage, and then there was heard the usual suppressed cough which announces the presence of a person of subordinate position. Onisim went out and promptly came back, accompanied by a diminutive soldier with a little, old woman’s face, in a patched cloak yellow with age, and wearing neither breeches nor cravat. Pyetushkov was startled; while the soldier drew himself up, wished him good day, and handed him a large envelope bearing the government seal. In this envelope was a note from the major in command of the garrison: he called upon Pyetushkov to come to him without fail or delay.

Pyetushkov turned the note over in his hands, and could not refrain from asking the messenger, did he know why the major desired his presence, though he was very well aware of the utter futility of his question.

‘We cannot tell!’ the soldier cried, with great effort, yet hardly audibly, as though he were half asleep.

‘Isn’t he summoning the other officers?’ Pyetushkov pursued.

‘We cannot tell,’ the soldier cried a second time, in just the same voice.

‘All right, you can go,’ pronounced Pyetushkov.

The soldier wheeled round to the left, scraping his foot as he did so, and slapping himself below the spine (this was considered smart in the twenties), withdrew.

Pyetushkov exchanged glances with Onisim, who at once assumed a look of anxiety. Without a word Ivan Afanasiitch set off to the major’s.

The major was a man of sixty, corpulent and clumsily built, with a red and bloated face, a short neck, and a continual trembling in his fingers, resulting from excessive indulgence in strong drink. He belonged to the class of so-called ‘bourbons,’ that’s to say, soldiers risen from the ranks; had learned to read at thirty, and spoke with difficulty, partly from shortness of breath, partly from inability to follow his own thought. His temperament exhibited all the varieties known to science: in the morning, before drinking, he was melancholy; in the middle of the day, choleric; and in the evening, phlegmatic, that is to say, he did nothing at that time but snore and grunt till he was put to bed. Ivan Afanasiitch appeared before him during the choleric period. He found him sitting on a sofa, in an open dressing-gown, with a pipe between his teeth. A fat, crop-eared cat had taken up her position beside him.

‘Aha! he’s come!’ growled the major, casting a sidelong glance out of his pewtery eyes upon Pyetushkov, and not stirring from his place. ‘Sit down. Well, I’m going to give you a talking to. I’ve wanted to get hold of you this long while.’

Pyetushkov sank into a chair.

‘For,’ the major began, with an unexpected lurch of his whole body, ‘you’re an officer, d’ye see, and so you’ve got to behave yourself according to rule. If you’d been a soldier, I’d have flogged you, and that’s all about it, but, as ’tis, you’re an officer. Did any one ever see the like of it? Disgracing yourself–is that a nice thing?’

‘Allow me to know to what these remarks may refer?’ Pyetushkov was beginning….

‘I’ll have no arguing! I dislike that beyond everything. I’ve said: I dislike it; and that’s all about it! Ugh–why, your hooks are not in good form even;–what a disgrace! He sits, day in and day out, at the baker’s shop; and he a gentleman born! There’s a petticoat to be found there–and so there he sits. Let her go to the devil, the petticoat! Why, they do say he puts the bread in the oven. It’s a stain on the uniform … so it is!’