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Updated: May 1, 2025
The windows in all the blocks of buildings were brightly lighted up, and that made the huge courtyard seem very dark: at the gates, and at the far end of the yard near the warehouses and the workpeople's barracks, electric lamps were gleaming. Anna Akimovna disliked and feared those huge dark buildings, warehouses, and barracks where the workmen lived.
It was an astonishing thing: a thousand roubles were spent annually on keeping the barracks in good order, yet, if she were to believe the anonymous letters, the condition of the workpeople was growing worse and worse every year. "There was more order in my father's day," thought Anna Akimovna, as she drove out of the yard, "because he had been a workman himself.
"It's essential for you; it's your duty to be frivolous and depraved! Ponder that, my dear, ponder it." Anna Akimovna was glad she had spoken out, and her spirits rose. She was pleased she had spoken so well, and that her ideas were so fine and just, and she was already convinced that if Pimenov, for instance, loved her, she would marry him with pleasure. Mishenka began to pour out champagne.
Red-haired Masha was kneeling before the bed, gazing at her in mournful perplexity; then she, too, began crying, and laid her face against her mistress's arm, and without words it was clear why she was so wretched. "We are fools!" said Anna Akimovna, laughing and crying. "We are fools! Oh, what fools we are!"
She felt ashamed that people should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting, and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet, knocking the snow off. "The lodger has come in," said Madame Tchalikov. Anna Akimovna grew even more confused.
Anna Akimovna was always afraid of their thinking her proud, an upstart, or a crow in peacock's feathers; and now while the foremen were crowding round the food, she did not leave the dining-room, but took part in the conversation. She asked Pimenov, her acquaintance of the previous day: "Why have you so many clocks in your room?" "I mend clocks," he answered.
"He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for medicine." Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table. "It's messy here! What are you doing?" hissed Tchalikov, looking at her wrathfully. "Take her to the lodger's room! I make bold to ask you, madam, to step into the lodger's room," he said, addressing Anna Akimovna. "It's clean there."
Anna Akimovna knew that he had nothing to do at the factory, but she could not dismiss him she had not the moral courage; and besides, she was used to him. He used to call himself her legal adviser, and his salary, which he invariably sent for on the first of the month punctually, he used to call "stern prose."
"Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!" said one of the little girls, sternly. But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it was evident from the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and in the other three slept across the bed. In the lodger's room, that came next, it really was clean.
She remembered how black he had been the day before, and how sleepy, and the thought of it for some reason touched her. When the men were preparing to go, Anna Akimovna put out her hand to Pimenov.
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