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Updated: June 2, 2025
Her father, Akim Ivanovitch, had been the brother of the factory owner, and yet he had been afraid of foremen like this lodger and had tried to win their favour. "Excuse me for having come in here in your absence," said Anna Akimovna. The workman looked at her in surprise, smiled in confusion and did not speak. "You must speak a little louder, madam . . . ." said Tchalikov softly. "When Mr.
Leaving the sledge in the street, Anna Akimovna went in at the gate and there inquired how to get to No. 46 to see a clerk called Tchalikov. She was directed to the furthest door on the right in the third story. And in the courtyard and near the outer door, and even on the stairs, there was still the same loathsome smell as under the archway.
"You have graciously given this for medicine," said Tchalikov in a quivering voice, "but hold out a helping hand to me also . . . and the children!" he added with a sob. "My unhappy children! I am not afraid for myself; it is for my daughters I fear! It's the hydra of vice that I fear!" Trying to open her purse, the catch of which had gone wrong, Anna Akimovna was confused and turned red.
After a brief silence during which nothing could be heard but the ticking of the clocks and the scratching of the pen on the paper, Tchalikov heaved a sigh and said ironically, with indignation: "It's a true saying: gentle birth and a grade in the service won't put a coat on your back. A cockade in your cap and a noble title, but nothing to eat.
"Tchalikov came again this evening," she said, yawning, "but I did not dare to announce him; he was very drunk. He says he will come again tomorrow." "What does he want with me?" said Anna Akimovna, and she flung her comb on the floor. "I won't see him, I won't."
Better die, unhappy woman!" "Why is he playing these antics?" thought Anna Akimovna with annoyance. "One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants." "Speak to me like a human being," she said. "I don't care for farces. "Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother's coffin with funeral candles that's a farce? Eh?" said Tchalikov bitterly, and turned away.
His beard was parted in the middle, his moustache was shaven, and this made him look more like a hired footman than a government clerk. "Does Mr. Tchalikov live here?" asked Anna Akimovna. "Yes, madam," Tchalikov answered severely, but immediately recognizing Anna Akimovna, he cried: "Anna Akimovna!" and all at once he gasped and clasped his hands as though in terrible alarm. "Benefactress!"
She felt ashamed that people should be standing before her, looking at her hands and waiting, and most likely at the bottom of their hearts laughing at her. At that instant some one came into the kitchen and stamped his feet, knocking the snow off. "The lodger has come in," said Madame Tchalikov. Anna Akimovna grew even more confused.
"You wrote that your wife was very ill," said Anna Akimovna, and she felt ashamed and annoyed. "I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred," she thought. "Here she is, my wife," said Tchalikov in a thin feminine voice, as though his tears had gone to his head. "Here she is, unhappy creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam. Better death than such a life.
To go to some Tchalikov or other, when at home a business worth a million was gradually going to pieces and being ruined, and the workpeople in the barracks were living worse than convicts, meant doing something silly and cheating her conscience.
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