Grisha came in, haggard, sickly and trying to smile. The skin of both his hands was off. This, like his frequent headaches, was the effect of the work he did in these rooms—of inhaling nitroglycerine and kneading dynamite with his bare fists.
Baska gayly told how the porter’s wife had offered her a salve for her “husband,” and how the night before, as Grisha was pouring nitroglycerine into some dynamite “dough,” there was an explosion and the house filled with smoke.
“Our next door neighbour knew at once that our kerosene stove exploded and set fire to a rag,” Baska said with a deep-voiced titter. “She gave me quite a lecture on negligence.”
“She only wondered why there should be such a strange smell to the smoke,” Grisha added, his hand to his head.
As Pavel looked at Baska relishing her tea and her muffin and talking merrily between gulps, a desire took hold of him to spoil her vivacity. It jarred on him to see her enjoy herself while the image of the three new gallows was so vivid in his mind.
“You people don’t seem to know what’s going on in the world,” he said testily. “They have hanged Malinka, Maidanski and Drobiazgin.”
“Have they?” Baska asked paling. She had known two of them personally.
While Pavel took out his newspaper and read the brief despatch, her head sank on the table. Her solid frame was convulsed with sobbing.
“Be calm, be calm,” Grisha entreated, offering her a glass of water. In spite of her excellent physique she was subject to violent hysterical fits which were apt to occur at a time when the proffer of neighbourly sympathy was least desirable.
She told all she remembered of the executed men, whom she had met in the south. But that was not much; so Pavel went to see Purring Cat who, being a southerner, had detailed information to give him about the three Nihilists. Boulatoff could talk of nothing else that day. When he met Makar, in the afternoon, he said: