XIII
A week after this conversation, Andréi Yéfimitch received a formal proposal to take a rest, that is, to retire from his post, and he received the proposal with indifference. Still a week later, he and Mikhail Averyanitch were sitting in the post tarantass and driving to the railway station. The weather was cool and clear, the sky blue and transparent. The two hundred versts were traversed in two days and two nights. When they stopped at the post-houses and were given dirty glasses for tea, or were delayed over the horses, Mikhail Averyanitch grew purple, shook all over, and roared "Silence! Don't argue!"... And as they sat in the tarantass he talked incessantly of his travels in the Caucasus and in Poland. What adventures he had, what meetings! He spoke in a loud voice, and all the time made such astonished eyes that it might have been thought he was lying. As he told his stories he breathed in the doctor's face and laughed in his ear. All this incommoded the doctor and hindered his thinking and concentrating his mind.
For reasons of economy they travelled third-class, in a non-smoking carriage. Half of the passengers were clean. Mikhail Averyanitch struck up acquaintance with all, and as he shifted from seat to seat, announced in a loud voice that it was a mistake to travel on these tormenting railways. Nothing but rascals around! What a different thing to ride on horseback; in a single day you cover a hundred versts, and at the end feel wholesome and fresh. Yes, and we had been cursed with famines as the result of the draining of the Pinsky marshes! Everywhere nothing but disorder! Mikhail Averyanitch lost his temper, spoke loudly, and allowed no one else to say a word. His incessant chatter, broken only by loud laughter and expressive gesticulations, bored Andréi Yéfimitch.
"Which of us is the more mad?" he asked himself. "I who do my best not to disturb my fellow-travellers, or this egoist who thinks he is cleverer and more interesting than anyone else, and gives no one a moment's rest?"
In Moscow, Mikhail Averyanitch donned his military tunic without shoulder-straps, and trousers with red piping. Out of doors he wore an army forage-cap and cloak, and was saluted by the soldiers. To Andréi Yéfimitch he began to seem a man who had lost all the good points of the upper classes and retained only the bad. He loved people to dance attendance on him even when it was quite unnecessary. Matches lay before him on the table and he saw them, yet he roared to the waiter to hand them to him; he marched about in his underclothing before the chambermaid; he addressed the waitresses—even the elderly ones—indiscriminately as "thou," and when he was irritated called them blockheads and fools. This, thought Andréi Yéfimitch, is no doubt gentlemanly, but it is detestable.
First of all, Mikhail Averyanitch brought his friend to the Iverskaya.[1] He prayed piously, bowed to the ground, shed teal's, and when he had finished, sighed deeply and said:
"Even an unbeliever feels himself at peace after he has prayed. Kiss the image, dear!"
Andréi Yéfimitch got red in the face and kissed the image; and Mikhail Averyanitch puffed out his lips, shook his head, prayed in a whisper; and again into his eyes came tears. After this they visited the Kremlin and inspected the Tsar-Cannon and the Tsar-Bell, touched them with their fingers, admired the view across the Moscow River, and spent some time in the Temple of the Saviour and afterwards in the Rumiantseff Museum.
They dined at Testoffs.[2] Mikhail Averyanitch stroked his whiskers, gazed long at the menu, and said to the waiter in the tone of a gourmet who feels at home in restaurants:
"Well see what you'll feed us with to-day, angel!"
[1] A celebrated ikon kept in a small chapel near the Moscow Town Hall. It is supposed to possess miraculous healing virtues.
[2] A Moscow restaurant noted for genuine Russian cookery.