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Updated: June 20, 2025
I went to open the door. You can imagine my astonishment when I found a lady in a veil standing at the door on the landing. "Is Georgy Ivanitch up?" she asked. From her voice I recognised Zinaida Fyodorovna, to whom I had taken letters in Znamensky Street. I don't remember whether I had time or self-possession to answer her I was taken aback at seeing her. And, indeed, she did not need my answer.
I knew beforehand that if Zinaida Fyodorovna liked anything, it would be certain not to please Orlov. When on coming in from shopping she made haste to show him with pride some new purchase, he would glance at it and say coldly that the more unnecessary objects they had in the flat, the less airy it would be.
I rang. Taking from me her small light basket the only luggage we had brought with us Zinaida Fyodorovna gave a wry smile and said: "These are my bijoux." But she was so weak that she could not carry these bijoux. It was a long while before the door was opened.
Ever since he had finally made up his mind to go away and leave Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, she had begun to raise in him pity and a sense of guilt; he felt a little ashamed in her presence, as though in the presence of a sick or old horse whom one has decided to kill. He stopped in the doorway and looked round at her. "I was out of humour at the picnic and said something rude to you.
"I could have been a lady like that long ago, but I have some self-respect! We'll see which of us will be the first to go!" Zinaida Fyodorovna rang the bell. She was sitting in her room, in the corner, looking as though she had been put in the corner as a punishment. "No telegram has come?" she asked. "No, madam." "Ask the porter; perhaps there is a telegram.
"It doesn't interest me to know what every fool says of me," Nadyezhda Fyodorovna said coldly, and the amusing thought of playing with handsome young Atchmianov suddenly lost its charm. "We must go down," she said; "they're calling us." The fish soup was ready by now.
"Come in, my dear," she said in an imploring voice, and at the same time she looked at Nadyezhda Fyodorovna with anxiety and hope; perhaps she would refuse and not come in! "With pleasure," said Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, accepting. "You know how I love being with you!" And she went into the house.
They had thrust on him the care of Nina Fyodorovna, the worry of her children, and of her burial; and that coxcomb Panaurov would not trouble himself about it, and had even borrowed a hundred roubles from him and had never paid it back. "Take me to Moscow and put me in a madhouse," said the doctor. "I'm mad; I'm a simple child, as I still put faith in truth and justice."
When they were seated at dinner, Zinaida Fyodorovna said to Orlov in French: "There seem to be spirits in the flat. I lost my purse in the hall to-day, and now, lo and behold, it is on my table. But it's not quite a disinterested trick of the spirits. They took out a gold coin and twenty roubles in notes."
It seemed as though he only liked to be in people's company because there was a ridiculous side to them, and because they might be given ridiculous nicknames. He had nicknamed Samoylenko "the tarantula," his orderly "the drake," and was in ecstasies when on one occasion Von Koren spoke of Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna as "Japanese monkeys."
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