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Updated: June 17, 2025
In the middle of April, Gavrilov fell ill, and died in the arms of Kolosov, who never left his room for an instant, and went nowhere for a whole week afterwards. We were all grieved for poor Gavrilov; the pale, silent lad seemed to have had a foreboding of his end.
'Ah!... observed Kolosov ironically, and he lighted his pipe. 'Andrei, I said to him, 'aren't you sorry for her?... If you had seen her tears... And I launched into an eloquent description of my visit of the previous day. I was genuinely moved. Kolosov did not speak, and smoked his pipe. 'You sat with her under the apple-tree in the garden, he said at last.
I felt that I had come at an unlucky moment, but there was nothing to be done for it; without any kind of preface, I handed Andrei Varia's note. Kolosov looked at me in perplexity, tore open the note, ran his eyes over it, said nothing, but smiled composedly. 'Oh, ho! he said at last; 'so you've been at Ivan Semyonitch's? 'Yes, I was there yesterday, alone, I answered abruptly and resolutely.
Bobov conducted me to one of the very dirtiest, crookedest, and narrowest streets in Moscow.... The house in which Kolosov lodged was built in the old-fashioned style, rambling and uncomfortable. We went into the courtyard; a fat peasant woman was hanging out clothes on a line stretched from the house to the fence.... Children were squalling on the wooden staircase...
Matrona Semyonovna where are you? the card-table quick!... And tea! With these words Mr. Sidorenko walked into the next room. Kolosov looked at me. 'Listen, he said, 'you can't think how ashamed I am!... I shut him up. 'Come, you there, what's your name, this way, called Ivan Semyonitch. I went into the drawing-room. The drawing-room was even smaller than the dining-room.
I began, for whole days together, to dream of marriage.... I imagined what gratitude would fill Varia's heart when I, the friend and confidant of Kolosov, should offer her my hand, knowing her to be hopelessly in love with another.
Meanwhile night had come on. On the right in the fog were the twinkling lights, the innumerable church-spires of the immense city; on the left, two white horses were grazing in a meadow skirting the forest: before us stretched fields covered with greyish mists. I followed Kolosov in silence.
I can see even now his rather long pale face, his little brown eyes, his long hawk nose crooked at the end, his thin sarcastic lips, his solemn upstanding shock of hair, and his chin that lost itself complacently in the wide striped cravat of the colour of a raven's wing, the shirt front with bronze buttons, the open blue frock-coat and striped waistcoat.... I can hear his unpleasantly jarring laugh.... He went everywhere, was conspicuous at all possible kinds of 'dancing classes. ... I remember I could not listen to his cynical stories without a peculiar shudder.... Kolosov once compared him to an unswept Russian refreshment bar ... a horrible comparison!
At the beginning of my story I told you that we all considered Andrei Kolosov an extraordinary man. And if a clear, simple outlook upon life, if the absence of every kind of cant in a young man, can be called an extraordinary thing, Kolosov deserved the name. At a certain age, to be natural is to be extraordinary.... It is time to finish, though.
After dinner papa is asleep; no one will interfere with us. I pressed her hand without a word, and we parted. Next day, at three o'clock in the afternoon, I was in Ivan Semyonitch's garden. In the morning I had not seen Kolosov, though he had come to see me. It was a grey autumn day, but soft and warm.
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