Their presence often gave rise to astonishing scenes.
“Are you not well, that you are eating nothing, Anna Yakimovna?” my father would ask.
Then Anna Yakimovna, the widow of some obscure official, an old woman with a worn faded face and a perpetual smell of camphor, apologised with eyes and fingers as she answered: “Excuse me, bátyushka—I am really quite ashamed; but, you know, by old custom to-day is a Fast-day.”
“What a nuisance! You are too scrupulous, mátushka: ‘not that which entereth into a man defileth a man but that which cometh out’: whatever you eat, the end is the same. But we ought to watch ‘what cometh out of the mouth,’ and that means scandal against our neighbours. I think you should dine at home on such days. Suppose a Turk were to turn up, he might want pilaus; but my house is not a hotel where each can order what he wants.” This terrified the old woman who had intended to ask for some milk pudding; but she now attacked the kvass and the salad, and made a pretence of eating enormously.
But if she, or any of them, began to eat meat on a Fast-day, then my father (who never fasted himself) would shake his head sorrowfully and say: “Do you really think it worth while, Anna Yakimovna, to give up the ancient custom, when you have so few years still to live? I, poor sinner, don’t fast myself, because I have many diseases; but you may thank God for your health, considering your age, and you have kept the fasts all your life; and now all of a sudden—think what an example to them—” pointing to the servants. And the poor old woman once more fell upon the kvass and the salad.
These scenes filled me with disgust, and I sometimes ventured to defend the victim by pointing out the desire of conformity which he expressed at other times. Then it was my father’s custom to get up and take off his velvet skull-cap by the tassel: holding it over his head, he would thank me for my lecture and beg me to excuse his forgetfulness. Then he would say to the old lady: “These are terrible times! Little wonder that you neglect the Fast, when children teach their parents! What are we coming to? It is an awful prospect; but fortunately you and I will not live to see it.”
§15
After dinner my father generally lay down for an hour and a half, and the servants at once made off to the taverns and tea-shops. Tea was served at seven, and we sometimes had a visitor at that hour, especially my uncle, the Senator. This was a respite for us; for he generally brought a budget of news with him and produced it with much vivacity. Meanwhile my father put on an air of absolute indifference, keeping perfectly grave over the most comic stories, and questioning the narrator, as if he could not see the point, when he was told of any striking fact.
The Senator came off much worse, when he occasionally contradicted or disagreed with his younger brother, and sometimes even without contradicting him, if my father happened to be specially out of humour. In these serio-comic scenes, the most comic feature was the contrast between my uncle’s natural vehemence and my father’s artificial composure. “Oh, you’re not well to-day,” my uncle would say at last, and then snatch his hat and go off in a hurry. One day he was unable in his anger to open the door. “Damn that door!” he said, and kicked it with all his might. My father walked slowly up to the door, opened it, and said with perfect calmness, “The door works perfectly: but it opens outwards, and you try to open it inwards and get angry with it.” I may mention that the Senator, being two years older than my father, always addressed him as “thou,” while my father said “you” as a mark of respect for seniority.
When my uncle had gone, my father went to his bedroom; but first he always enquired whether the gates of the court were shut, and expressed some doubt when he was told they were, though he never took any steps to ascertain the facts. And now began the long business of undressing: face and hands were washed, fomentations applied and medicines swallowed; the valet placed on the table near the bed a whole arsenal of phials, nightlights, and pill-boxes. For about an hour the old man read memoirs of some kind, very often Bourrienne’s Memorial de St. Hélène. And so the day ended.