“Where do you live?” the Italian countess asked suddenly in Russian. “I’m in a hurry.”
“In this very street; in that grey three-storied house over there. It’s so nice of you not to have snubbed me! Give me your hand, come on. Have you been here long? How do you come to be a countess? Have you married an Italian count?”
Mashurina had not married an Italian count. She had been provided with a passport made out in the name of a certain Countess Rocca di Santo Fiume, who had died a short time ago, and had come quite calmly to Russia, though she did not know a single word of Italian and had the most typical of Russian faces.
Paklin brought her to his humble little lodging. His humpbacked sister who shared it with him came out to greet them from behind the partition dividing the kitchen from the passage.
“Here, Snapotchka,” he said, “let me introduce you to a great friend of mine. We should like some tea as soon as you can get it.”
Mashurina, who would on no account have come had not Paklin mentioned Nejdanov, bowed, then taking off her hat and passing her masculine hand through her closely cropped hair, sat down in silence. She had scarcely changed at all; even her dress was the same she had worn two years ago; only her eyes wore a fixed, sad expression, giving a pathetic look to her usually hard face. Snandulia went out for the samovar, while Paklin sat down opposite Mashurina and stroked her knee sympathetically. His head dropped on his breast, he could not speak from choking, and the tears glistened in his eyes. Mashurina sat erect and motionless, gazing severely to one side.
“Those were times!” Paklin began at last. “As I look at you everything comes back to me, the living and the dead. Even my little poll-parrots are no more.... I don’t think you knew them, by the way. They both died on the same day, as I always predicted they would. And Nejdanov ... poor Nejdanov! I suppose you know—”
“Yes, I know,” Mashurina interrupted him, still looking away.
“And do you know about Ostrodumov too?”
Mashurina merely nodded her head. She wanted him to go on talking about Nejdanov, but could not bring herself to ask him. He understood her, however.