“What a booby you are, Maximitch!” said the Captain’s wife. “Polejaeff’s house is crowded already; besides, he is my gossip, and remembers that we are his superiors. Take the officer—what is your name, little father?”[5]
“Peter Andreitch.”
“Take Peter Andreitch to Simon Kouzoff. The rascal allowed his horse to get in my kitchen-garden.... And is everything right, Maximitch?”
“Everything, thank God!” replied the Cossack; “only Corporal Prokhoroff has been having a squabble at the bath with Ustinia Pegoulina, on account of a can of hot water.”
“Ivan Ignatitch,” said the Captain’s wife to the one-eyed old man, “decide between Prokhoroff and Ustinia as to who is right and who is wrong, and then punish both. Now, Maximitch, go, and God be with you. Peter Andreitch, Maximitch will conduct you to your quarters.”
I bowed and took my departure. The orderly conducted me to a hut, situated on the steep bank of the river, at the extreme end of the fortress. One half of the hut was occupied by the family of Simon Kouzoff; the other was given up to me. It consisted of one room, of tolerable cleanliness, and was divided into two by a partition.
Savelitch began to set the room in order, and I looked out of the narrow window. Before me stretched a gloomy steppe. On one side stood a few huts, and two or three fowls were wandering about the street. An old woman, standing on a doorstep with a trough in her hands, was calling some pigs, which answered her with friendly grunts. And this was the place in which I was condemned to spend my youth! Grief took possession of me; I came, away from the window and lay down to sleep without eating any supper, in spite of the exhortations of Savelitch, who kept repeating in a tone of distress:
“Lord of heaven! he will eat nothing! What will my mistress say if the child falls ill?”—
The next morning I had scarcely begun to dress when the door opened, and a young officer, somewhat short in stature, with a swarthy and rather ill-looking countenance, though distinguished by extraordinary vivacity, entered the room.
“Pardon me,” he said to me in French, “for coming without ceremony to make your acquaintance. I heard yesterday of your arrival, and the desire to see at last a fresh human face took such possession of me, that I could not wait any longer. You will understand this when you have lived here a little while.”