Part 36

“Is your governor a fool then?” Paklin asked.

“I told you he was an ass!”

“By the way, does he speak in a hoarse voice or through his nose?”

“What do you mean?” Golushkin asked somewhat bewildered.

“Why, don’t you know? In Russia all our important civilians speak in a hoarse voice and our great army men speak through the nose. Only our very highest dignitaries do both at the same time.”

Golushkin roared with laughter till the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“Yes, yes,” he spluttered, “if he talks through his nose ... then he’s an army man!”

“You idiot!” Paklin thought to himself.

“Everything is rotten in this country, wherever you may turn!” he bawled out after a pause. “Everything is rotten, everything!”

“My dear Kapiton Andraitch,” Paklin began suggestively (he had just asked Nejdanov in an undertone, “Why does he throw his arms about as if his coat were too tight for him?”), “my dear Kapiton Andraitch, believe me, half measures are of no use!”

“Who talks of half measures!” Golushkin shouted furiously (he had suddenly ceased laughing), “there’s only one thing to be done; it must all be pulled up by the roots: Vasia, drink!”

“I am drinking, Kapiton Andraitch,” the clerk observed, emptying a glass down his throat.

Golushkin followed his suit.

“I wonder he doesn’t burst!” Paklin whispered to Nejdanov.

“He’s used to it!” the latter replied.

But the clerk was not the only one who drank. Little by little the wine affected them all. Nejdanov, Markelov, and even Solomin began taking part in the conversation.

At first disdainfully, as if annoyed with himself for doing so, for not keeping up his character, Nejdanov began to hold forth. He maintained that the time had now come to leave off playing with words; that the time had come for “action,” that they were now on sure ground! And then, quite unconscious of the fact that he was contradicting himself, he began to demand of them to show him what real existing elements they had to rely on, saying that as far as he could see society was utterly unsympathetic towards them, and the people were as ignorant as could be. Nobody made any objection to what he said, not because there was nothing to object to, but because everyone was talking on his own account. Markelov hammered out obstinately in his hoarse, angry, monotonous voice (“just as if he were chopping cabbage,” Paklin remarked). Precisely what he was talking about no one could make out, but the word “artillery” could be heard in a momentary hush. He was no doubt referring to the defects he had discovered in its organisation. Germans and adjutants were also brought in. Solomin remarked that there were two ways of waiting, waiting and doing nothing and waiting while pushing things ahead at the same time.

“We don’t want moderates,” Markelov said angrily.

“The moderates have so far been working among the upper classes,” Solomin remarked, “and we must go for the lower.”

“We don’t want it! damnation! We don’t want it!” Golushkin bawled out furiously. “We must do everything with one blow! With one blow, I say!”

“What is the use of extreme measures? It’s like jumping out of the window.”

“And I’ll jump too, if necessary!” Golushkin shouted. “I’ll jump! and so will Vasia! I’ve only to tell him and he’ll jump! eh, Vasia? You’ll jump, eh?”

The clerk finished his glass of champagne.

“Where you go, Kapiton Andraitch, there I follow. I shouldn’t dare do otherwise.”

“You had better not, or I’ll make mincemeat of you!”

Soon a perfect babel followed.

Like the first flakes of snow whirling round and round in the mild autumn air, so words began flying in all directions in Golushkin’s hot, stuffy dining-room; all kinds of words, rolling and tumbling over one another: progress, government, literature, the taxation question, the church question, the woman question; the law-court question, realism, nihilism, communism, international, clerical, liberal, capital, administration, organisation, association, and even crystallisation! It was just what Golushkin wanted; this uproar seemed to him the real thing. He was triumphant. “Look at us! out of the way or I’ll knock you on the head! Kapiton Golushkin is coming!” At last the clerk Vasia became so tipsy that he began to giggle and talk to his plate. All at once he jumped up shouting wildly, “What sort of devil is this progymnasium?”

Golushkin sprang up too, and throwing back his hot, flushed face, on which an expression of vulgar self-satisfaction was curiously mingled with a feeling of terror, a secret misgiving, he bawled out, “I’ll sacrifice another thousand! Get it for me, Vasia!” To which Vasia replied, “All right!”