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Updated: May 19, 2025
I told him all about my visit to Ratsch's, repeated the veteran's remarks and those of his wife, described the impression they had made on me and informed him of my conviction that the unhappy girl had taken her own life.... Fustov listened to me with no change of expression, and looked about him with the same bewildered air. 'Did you see her? he asked me at last. 'Yes. 'In the coffin?
He's a Jew, and all Jews, like all Czechs, are born musicians. Especially Jews. That's right, isn't it, Susanna Ivanovna? Hey? Ha, ha, ha, ha! In Mr. Ratsch's last words, and this time even in his guffaw, there could be heard something more than his usual bantering tone the desire to wound was evident. So, at least, I fancied, and so Susanna understood him.
Ratsch's family looked self-satisfied, simple-hearted, healthy creatures; her beautiful, but already careworn, face bore the traces of depression, pride and morbidity. The others, unmistakable plebeians, were unconstrained in their manners, coarse perhaps, but simple; but a painful uneasiness was manifest in all her indubitably aristocratic nature.
Ratsch's proposal was received with genuine sympathy; 'the reverend clergy' exchanged expressive glances with one another, while the officer of roads and highways slapped Ivan Demianitch on the shoulder, and called him a patriot and the soul of the company. We set off all together to the restaurant.
Ratsch's performance, too, was not calculated to give me much pleasure; moreover, his face became suddenly purple, and assumed a malignant expression, while his whitish eyes rolled viciously, as though he were just about to murder some one with his bassoon, and were swearing and threatening by way of preliminary, puffing out chokingly husky, coarse notes one after another.
He received me cordially, as usual, but of our visit of the previous evening not a word! As though he had taken water into his mouth, as they say. I began turning over the pages of the last number of the Telescope. A person, unknown to me, came into the room. It turned out to be Mr. Ratsch's son, the Viktor whose absence had been censured by his father the evening before.
Ratsch's calling, 'Susanna Ivanovna, go, please, your mother wishes to give you her blessing! and then the pale hand stretched out from the heavy counterpane, the agonised breathing, the dying eyes.... Oh, enough! enough! With what horror, with what indignation and piteous curiosity I looked next day, and on the day of the funeral, into the face of my father... yes, my father!
Ratsch's four children sitting there, stout, chubby little creatures, exceedingly like their mother, with coarsely moulded, sturdy faces, curls on their foreheads, and red, shapeless fingers. All the four of them had rather flat noses, large, swollen-looking lips, and tiny, light-grey eyes. 'Here's my squadron! cried Mr. Ratsch, laying his heavy hand on the children's heads one after another.
'I must make her acquaintance, I decided. A few days later, Fustov and I set off to Mr. Ratsch's to spend the evening. He lived in a wooden house with a big yard and garden, in Krivoy Place near the Pretchistensky boulevard.
Ratsch coming in and triumph again, malignant triumph, in his face and in his hands a page of the Invalid, and there the announcement of the death of the Captain of the Guards Mihail Koltovsky. What can I add? I remained alive, and went on living in Mr. Ratsch's house. He hated me as before more than before he had unmasked his black soul too much before me, he could not pardon me that.
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