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Aunt Anfisa had gone to the cloister, perhaps never to return she might die there. At home were Ivan, the old deaf dvornik, the old maid, Sekleteya, his cook and servant, and a black, shaggy dog, with a snout as blunt as that of a sheat-fish. And the dog, too, was old. "Perhaps I really ought to get married," thought Foma, with a sigh.
They have few easy social graces, and they are inclined to abandon at once a situation if it is made difficult for them. If it needs an effort to make a guest happy they leave him alone and trust to a providence in whose powers, however, they entirely disbelieve. Bohun was led to his room, his bags being carried by old Sacha, the Markovitch's servant, and the Dvornik.
If she was quite exasperated with the stupidity of Yakub, the dvornik, she pretended to curse him in a phrase of her own invention, a mixture of Hebrew and Russian, which, translated, said, "Mayst thou have gold and silver in thy bosom"; but to the choreman, who was not a linguist, the mongrel phrase conveyed a sense of his delinquency.
If anybody dogged my steps or drew me into conversation to report my opinions at the bureau secret, I never knew it. The servants who brought my cutlets and tea, the woman who washed my linen, or the dvornik who guarded the door, may have been spies upon me; but, if so, I didn't see it. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.
The house to which she brought him had a cavernous courtyard arch like a tunnel, outside whose gates the swaddled dvornik huddled upon the sheltered side of the arch. Of all his body, only his eyes moved as they approached, pivoting under his great hood to scan them and follow them through the gate.
These intellectual occupations were varied by an occasional inspection of the roof of his house, by ferreting his dvòrnik, or porter, fifty times a-day out of the kennel in which he oftener slept than watched, and by a monthly attack upon his lodgers for their rent.
And while we adorned ourselves in our best, my grandmother superintended the sealing of the oven, the maids washed the sweat from their faces, and the dvornik scraped his feet at the door. My father and brother went to the synagogue, while we women and girls assembled in the living-room for candle prayer. The table gleamed with spotless linen and china.
"I like you much better as you are now than when you indulge that bitter vein of yours, Razumov. And nobody in the house saw you return eh? That might have appeared queer." "No one," Razumov said firmly. "Dvornik, landlady, girl, all out of the way. I went up like a shadow. It was a murky morning. The stairs were dark. I glided up like a phantom. Fate? Luck? What do you think?" "I just see it!"
He seemed to recognize Cartoner, however, for he raised his hand to his peaked cap when he answered that the gentleman asked for was within. "On the second floor. You will remember the door," he said, over his shoulder, as Cartoner, having paid the driver, hurried towards the house, leaving the dvornik to bring the luggage.
When a more or less healthy man asked him for alms, Ignat would say, sternly: "Get away! You can work yet. Go to my dvornik and help him to remove the dung. I'll pay you for it." Whenever he had been carried away by his work he regarded people morosely and piteously, nor did he give himself rest while hunting for roubles.
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