Paklin threatened him with his finger.
“Oh! I see, you can be wicked too if you like! However, you are also coming to Golushkin’s, are you not?”
“Of course I am. I have wasted the day as it is.”
“Well then, en avant, marchons! To the twentieth century! To the twentieth century! Nejdanov, you are an advanced man, lead the way!”
“Very well, come along; only don’t keep on repeating the same jokes lest we should think you are running short.”
“I have still enough left for you, my dear friends,” Paklin said gaily and went on ahead, not by leaping, but by limping, as he said.
“What an amusing man!” Solomin remarked as he was walking along arm-in-arm with Nejdanov; “if we should ever be sent to Siberia, which Heaven forbid, there will be someone to entertain us at any rate.”
Markelov walked in silence behind the others.
Meanwhile great preparations were going on at Golushkin’s to produce a “chic” dinner. (Golushkin, as a man of the highest European culture, kept a French cook, who had formerly been dismissed from a club for dirtiness.) A nasty, greasy fish soup was prepared, various pâtés chauds and fricassés and, most important of all, several bottles of champagne had been procured and put into ice.
The host met the young people with his characteristic awkwardness, bustle, and much giggling. He was delighted to see Paklin as the latter had predicted and asked of him, “Is he one of us? Of course he is! I need not have asked,” he said, without waiting for a reply. He began telling them how he had just come from that “old fogey” the governor, and how the latter worried him to death about some sort of charity institution. It was difficult to say what satisfied Golushkin most, the fact that he was received at the governor’s, or that he was able to abuse that worthy before these advanced, young men. Then he introduced them to the promised proselyte, who turned out to be no other than the sleek consumptive individual with the long neck whom they had seen in the morning, Vasia, Golushkin’s clerk. “He hasn’t much to say,” Golushkin declared, “but is devoted heart and soul to our cause.” To this Vasia bowed, blushed, blinked his eyes, and grinned in such a manner that it was impossible to say whether he was merely a vulgar fool or an out-and-out knave and blackguard.