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Updated: June 15, 2025
If Yakov Ivanov had been an undertaker in the chief town of the province he would certainly have had a house of his own, and people would have addressed him as Yakov Matveyitch; here in this wretched little town people called him simply Yakov; his nickname in the street was for some reason Bronze, and he lived in a poor way like a humble peasant, in a little old hut in which there was only one room, and in this room he and Marfa, the stove, a double bed, the coffins, his bench, and all their belongings were crowded together.
He has not till then noticed that two big puddles have been made by the snow melting off his boots on the floor. He is ashamed. "I can't get on to-day . . ." mutters the man of learning. "I suppose you are fond of catching birds, too, Ivan Matveyitch?" "That's in autumn, . . . I don't catch them here, but there at home I always did." "To be sure . . . very good. But we must write, though."
The man of learning gets up resolutely and begins dictating, but after ten lines sits down on the lounge again. "No. . . . Perhaps we had better put it off till to-morrow morning," he says. "Come to-morrow morning, only come early, at nine o'clock. God preserve you from being late!" Ivan Matveyitch lays down his pen, gets up from the table and sits in another chair.
Trudging along among the others was Pavel Matveyitch Zaikin, a member of the Circuit Court, a tall, stooping man, in a cheap cotton dust-coat and with a cockade on his faded cap. He was perspiring, red in the face, and gloomy. . . . "Do you come out to your holiday home every day?" said a summer visitor, in ginger-coloured trousers, addressing him. "No, not every day," Zaikin answered sullenly.
His tie will not set properly, the stud has come out, and the collar keeps coming apart. "H'm! . . ." says the man of learning. "Well, haven't you found a job yet, Ivan Matveyitch?" "No. And how is one to find one? I am thinking, you know, of volunteering for the army. But my father advises my going into a chemist's." "H'm! . . . But it would be better for you to go into the university.
He paused again for a little, smiled still more broadly and said: "Nikolay Matveyitch came back from Harkov to-day. He has been telling me about my Pyotr. He has been to see him twice, he tells me." "What has he been telling you, then?" "He has upset me, God bless him. He meant to please me but when I came to think it over, it seems there is not much to be pleased at.
And if you think I don't put enough in the line, you can take something off my pay." "Oh dear, that's not the point. You have no delicacy, really. . . . At the least thing you drag in money. The great thing is to be exact, Ivan Matveyitch, to be exact is the great thing. You ought to train yourself to be exact."
He-he-he! . . ." Anastasy went on coughing till he choked. "Don't interfere, Father Anastasy," said his Reverence sternly. "Nikolay Matveyitch asked him, 'What madame is this helping the soup at your table?" the deacon went on, gloomily scanning Anastasy's bent figure. "'That is my wife, said he.
"That's another spider, very much the same as a tarantula. In a fight one of them can kill a hundred tarantulas." "H'm! . . . But we must write, . . . Where did we stop?" The man of learning dictates another twenty lines, then sits plunged in meditation. Ivan Matveyitch, waiting while the other cogitates, sits and, craning his neck, puts the collar of his shirt to rights.
Pavel Matveyitch forgot his exhaustion and hunger, and thought of nothing but his boy's future. Meanwhile, outside the light was gradually fading. . . . He could hear the summer visitors trooping back from the evening bathe. Some one was stopping near the open dining-room window and shouting: "Do you want any mushrooms?"
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