“For twice twenty-four hours I had not slept, and I drank … I don't know how much I drank.”
Having sent Polycarp away, I began to dress and describe to the doctor what I had lately experienced of “Nights of madness, nights of gladness” which are so delightful and sentimental in the songs and so unsightly in reality. In my description I tried not to go beyond the bounds of “light genre,” to keep to facts and not to deviate into moralizing, although all this was contrary to the nature of a man who entertained a passion for inferences and results.… I spoke with an air as if I was speaking about trifles that did not trouble me in the slightest degree. In order to spare the chaste ears of Pavel Ivanovich, and knowing his dislike of the Count, I suppressed much, touched lightly on a great deal but nevertheless, despite the playfulness of my tone and the style of caricature I gave to my narrative during the whole course of it, the doctor looked into my face seriously, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders impatiently from time to time. He never once smiled. It was evident that my “light genre” produced on him far from a light effect.
“Why don't you laugh, Screwy?” I asked when I had finished my description.
“If it had not been you who had told me all this, and if there had not been a certain circumstance, I would not have believed a word of it. It's all too abnormal, my friend!”
“Of what circumstance are you speaking?”
“Last evening the muzhik whom you had belaboured in such an indelicate way with an oar, came to me … Ivan Osipov.…”
“Ivan Osipov?…” I shrugged my shoulders. “It's the first time I hear his name!”
“A tall, red-haired man … with a freckled face.… Try to remember! You struck him on the head with an oar.”
“I can't remember anything! I don't know an Osipov.… I struck nobody with an oar.… You've dreamed it all, uncle!”
“God grant that I dreamed it.… He came to me with a report from the Karnéev district administration and asked me for a medical certificate.… In the report it was stated that the wound was given him by you, and he does not lie.… Can you remember now? The wound he had received was above the forehead, just where the hair begins.… You got to the bone, my dear sir!”