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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Quack! hangman!" "Calm yourself," said Andrey Yefimitch, smiling guiltily. "I assure you I have never stolen anything; and as to the rest, most likely you greatly exaggerate. I see you are angry with me. Calm yourself, I beg, if you can, and tell me coolly what are you angry for?" "What are you keeping me here for?" "Because you are ill." "Yes, I am ill.
In the same way there are people who never say anything but what is clever and good, yet one feels that they are dull-witted people." For the following days Andrey Yefimitch declared himself ill and would not leave the hotel room; he lay with his face to the back of the sofa, and suffered agonies of weariness when his friend entertained him with conversation, or rested when his friend was absent.
"Andrey Yefimitch, isn't it time for you to have your beer?" she would ask anxiously. "No, it's not time yet . . ." he would answer. "I'll wait a little . . . . I'll wait a little. . ." Towards the evening the postmaster, Mihail Averyanitch, the only man in town whose society did not bore Andrey Yefimitch, would come in.
Hobotov said in an undertone, going into the yard with Andrey Yefimitch. "You wait here, I'll be back directly. I am going for a stethoscope." And he went away. It was getting dusk. Ivan Dmitritch was lying on his bed with his face thrust unto his pillow; the paralytic was sitting motionless, crying quietly and moving his lips. The fat peasant and the former sorter were asleep. It was quiet.
"But, after all, what of it?" Andrey Yefimitch would ask himself, opening his eyes. "There is the antiseptic system, there is Koch, there is Pasteur, but the essential reality is not altered a bit; ill-health and mortality are still the same.
Well, it does not matter. . . . We shall have our good time in the other world. . . . I shall come here as a ghost from the other world and frighten these reptiles. I'll turn their hair grey." Moiseika returned, and, seeing the doctor, held out his hand. "Give me one little kopeck," he said. Andrey Yefimitch walked away to the window and looked out into the open country.
Andrey Yefimitch knew that with modern tastes and views such an abomination as Ward No. 6 was possible only a hundred and fifty miles from a railway in a little town where the mayor and all the town council were half-illiterate tradesmen who looked upon the doctor as an oracle who must be believed without any criticism even if he had poured molten lead into their mouths; in any other place the public and the newspapers would long ago have torn this little Bastille to pieces.
This, Andrey Yefimitch thought, was like a gentleman, but disgusting. First of all Mihail Averyanitch led his friend to the Iversky Madonna. He prayed fervently, shedding tears and bowing down to the earth, and when he had finished, heaved a deep sigh and said: "Even though one does not believe it makes one somehow easier when one prays a little. Kiss the ikon, my dear fellow."
"And perhaps I shouldn't howl," said Andrey Yefimitch, with a gentle smile. "Oh, I dare say! Well, if you had a stroke of paralysis, or supposing some fool or bully took advantage of his position and rank to insult you in public, and if you knew he could do it with impunity, then you would understand what it means to put people off with comprehension and true happiness."
This endless chatter to the accompaniment of loud laughter and expressive gestures wearied Andrey Yefimitch. "Which of us is the madman?" he thought with vexation. "I, who try not to disturb my fellow-passengers in any way, or this egoist who thinks that he is cleverer and more interesting than anyone here, and so will leave no one in peace?"
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