‘You just sling your hook while you’ve got a whole skin,’ said Arseny sternly, pressing on the lieutenant from behind and pushing him with his shoulder.
‘Get away, you swine! You’ve not the right to lay a finger on an officer,’ the lieutenant proudly exclaimed. ‘I know about everything! You let people in here without passports! You receive—you receive stolen goods.... You keep a broth——’
At this point Arseny seized the lieutenant adroitly from behind. The door slammed with a shattering noise. The two men rolled out into the street together like a ball, and thence came an angry: ‘Brothel!’
This morning, as it had always happened before, Lieutenant Tchijhevich came back penitent, with a bouquet of lilac torn out of somebody’s garden. His face was weary. A dim blue surrounded his hollow eyes. His forehead was yellow, his clothes unbrushed, and there were feathers in his hair. The reconciliation goes slowly. Anna Friedrichovna hasn’t yet had her fill of her lover’s submissive look and repentant words. Besides, she is a little jealous of the three nights her Valerian has passed, she knows not where.
‘Anna, darling, ... where ...’ the lieutenant began in an extraordinarily meek and tender falsetto, slightly tremulous even.
‘Wha-at! Who’s Anna darling, I’d like to know,’ the landlady contemptuously cut him short. ‘I’m not Anna darling to any scum of a road sweeper!’
‘But I only wanted to ask what address I was to write for “Praskovia Uvertiesheva, 34 years old,” there’s nothing written down here.’
‘Put her down at the Rag-market, and put yourself there, too. You’re a pretty pair. Or put yourself in a doss-house.’
‘Dirty beast,’ thinks the lieutenant, but he only gives a deep, submissive sigh. ‘You’re very nervous to-day, Anna, darling!’
‘Nervous! Whatever I am, I know I’m an honest, hard-working woman.... Get out of the way, you bastards,’ she shouts at the children, and suddenly, ‘Shlop, shlop’—two well-aimed smacks with the spoon come down on Adka’s and Edka’s foreheads. The boys begin to snivel.