“How in the world did you manage to do that?” laughed the officials as they and Zapoikin drove home from the cemetery together. “Ha! Ha! Ha! A funeral oration for a live man!”
“You made a great mistake, young man!” growled Prokofi Osipitch. “Your speech may have been appropriate enough for a dead man, but for a live one it was—it was simply a joke. Allow me to ask you, what was it you said? ‘Without fear and without reproach; he never took a bribe!’ Why, you couldn’t say a thing like that about a live man unless you were joking! And no one asked you to dwell upon my personal appearance, young gentleman! ‘Ugly and uncouth,’ eh! That may be quite true, but why did you drag it in before every one in the city? I call it an insult!”
IONITCH
If newcomers to the little provincial city of S. complained that life there was monotonous and dull, its inhabitants would answer that, on the contrary, S. was a very amusing place, indeed, that it had a library and a club, that balls were given there, and finally, that very pleasant families lived there with whom one might become acquainted. And they always pointed to the Turkins as the most accomplished and most enlightened family of all.
These Turkins lived in a house of their own, on Main Street, next door to the governor. Ivan Turkin, the father, was a stout, handsome, dark man with side-whiskers. He often organized amateur theatricals for charity, playing the parts of the old generals in them and coughing most amusingly. He knew a lot of funny stories, riddles, and proverbs, and loved to joke and pun with, all the while, such a quaint expression on his face that no one ever knew whether he was serious or jesting. His wife Vera was a thin, rather pretty woman who wore glasses and wrote stories and novels which she liked to read aloud to her guests. Katherine, the daughter, played the piano. In short, each member of the family had his or her special talent. The Turkins always welcomed their guests cordially and showed off their accomplishments to them with cheerful and genial simplicity. The interior of their large stone house was spacious, and, in summer, delightfully cool. Half of its windows looked out upon a shady old garden where, on spring evenings, the nightingales sang. Whenever there were guests in the house a mighty chopping would always begin in the kitchen, and a smell of fried onions would pervade the courtyard. These signs always foretold a sumptuous and appetising supper.
So it came to pass that when Dimitri Ionitch Startseff received his appointment as government doctor, and went to live in Dialij, six miles from S., he too, as an intelligent man, was told that he must not fail to make the Turkins’ acquaintance. Turkin was presented to him on the street one winter’s day; they talked of the weather and the theatre and the cholera, and an invitation from Turkin followed. Next spring, on Ascension Day, after he had received his patients, Startseff went into town for a little holiday, and to make some purchases. He strolled along at a leisurely pace (he had no horse of his own yet), and as he walked he sang to himself:
“Before I had drunk those tears from Life’s cup——”
After dining in town he sauntered through the public gardens, and the memory of Turkin’s invitation somehow came into his mind. He decided to go to their house and see for himself what sort of people they were.
“Be welcome, if you please!” cried Turkin, meeting him on the front steps. “I am delighted, delighted to see such a welcome guest! Come, let me introduce you to the missus. I told him, Vera,” he continued, presenting the doctor to his wife, “I told him that no law of the Medes and Persians allows him to shut himself up in his hospital as he does. He ought to give society the benefit of his leisure hours, oughtn’t he, dearest?”
“Sit down here,” said Madame Turkin, beckoning him to a seat at her side. “You may flirt with me, if you like. My husband is jealous, a regular Othello, but we’ll try to behave so that he shan’t notice anything.”