Moshkin stopped in front of her, put out his empty palm, and said: “That’s all I have.”
He said nothing about his last three-rouble note. The landlady hissed: “I’m not hard on you, but I need money. Wood’s seven roubles a load now, how am I to pay it? You can’t live on nothing. Can’t you find some one to look after you? You’re a young man of ability, and you have quite a charming appearance. You can always get hold of some goose or other. But how am I to pay? Whichever way you turn you’ve got to put down money.”
Moshkin replied: “Don’t worry, Praskovya Petrovna, I am getting a job to-night, and I’ll pay what I owe you.”
He began to pace the room again, making a flapping noise with his slippers.
The landlady paused at the door, and kept on with her grumbling. When she went at last, she cried out: “Another in my place would have shown you the door long ago.”
For some time after she had left there still remained in his memory her strange, erect figure, with relaxed arms; her broad, yellow forehead, shaped like a triangle under her smoothly-oiled hair; her worn yellow dress, cut away like a narrow triangle, and her red, sniffling nose shaped like a small triangle. Three triangles in all.
All day long Moshkin was hungry, cheerful, and indignant. He walked aimlessly in the streets. He looked at the girls, and they all seemed to him to be lovable, happy, and accessible—to the rich. He stopped before the shop windows, where expensive goods were displayed. The glimmer of hunger in his eyes grew keener and keener.
He bought a newspaper. He read as he sat on a form in the square, where the children laughed and ran, where the nurses tried to look fashionable, where there was a smell of dust and of consumptive trees—and where the smells of the street and of the garden mingled unpleasantly, reminding him of the smell of gutta-percha. Moshkin was very much struck by an account in the newspaper of a hungry fanatic who had slashed a picture by a celebrated artist in the museum.
“Now that’s something I can understand!”
Moshkin walked briskly along the path. He repeated: “Now that’s something I can understand!”