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Updated: June 19, 2025
To stifle petty thoughts he made haste to reflect that he himself, and Hobotov, and Mihail Averyanitch, would all sooner or later perish without leaving any trace on the world. If one imagined some spirit flying by the earthly globe in space in a million years he would see nothing but clay and bare rocks.
He meant to go on softly and politely, but against his will he suddenly clenched his fists and raised them above his head. "Leave me alone," he shouted in a voice unlike his own, blushing crimson and shaking all over. "Go away, both of you!" Mihail Averyanitch and Hobotov got up and stared at him first with amazement and then with alarm. "Go away, both!" Andrey Yefimitch went on shouting.
Andrey Yefimitch would listen without hearing; he was musing as he sipped his beer. "I often dream of intellectual people and conversation with them," he said suddenly, interrupting Mihail Averyanitch. "My father gave me an excellent education, but under the influence of the ideas of the sixties made me become a doctor.
There was a greenness before his eyes. Andrey Yefimitch understood that his end had come, and remembered that Ivan Dmitritch, Mihail Averyanitch, and millions of people believed in immortality. And what if it really existed? But he did not want immortality and he thought of it only for one instant.
Scarcely had he imagined the earthly globe in a million years, when Hobotov in his high top-boots or Mihail Averyanitch with his forced laugh would appear from behind a bare rock, and he even heard the shamefaced whisper: "The Warsaw debt. . . . I will repay it in a day or two, my dear fellow, without fail. . . ."
"Stupid people! Foolish people! I don't want either your friendship or your medicines, stupid man! Vulgar! Nasty!" Hobotov and Mihail Averyanitch, looking at each other in bewilderment, staggered to the door and went out. Andrey Yefimitch snatched up the bottle of bromide and flung it after them; the bottle broke with a crash on the door-frame.
When anyone in the post office made a protest, expressed disagreement, or even began to argue, Mihail Averyanitch would turn crimson, shake all over, and shout in a voice of thunder, "Hold your tongue!" so that the post office had long enjoyed the reputation of an institution which it was terrible to visit.
"It is all the same to me," he thought when they asked him questions. "I am not going to answer. . . . It's all the same to me." After dinner Mihail Averyanitch brought him a quarter pound of tea and a pound of fruit pastilles. Daryushka came too and stood for a whole hour by the bed with an expression of dull grief on her face. Dr. Hobotov visited him.
One day Mihail Averyanitch came after dinner when Andrey Yefimitch was lying on the sofa. It so happened that Hobotov arrived at the same time with his bromide. Andrey Yefimitch got up heavily and sat down, leaning both arms on the sofa. "You have a much better colour to-day than you had yesterday, my dear man," began Mihail Averyanitch. "Yes, you look jolly. Upon my soul, you do!"
"My friend," the postmaster said to him timidly, "excuse an indiscreet question: what means have you at your disposal?" Andrey Yefimitch, without a word, counted out his money and said: "Eighty-six roubles." "I don't mean that," Mihail Averyanitch brought out in confusion, misunderstanding him; "I mean, what have you to live on?" "I tell you, eighty-six roubles . . . I have nothing else."
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