“Wait a moment! I forgot to tell you; their voices, too, are exactly alike; close your eyes and you can hardly tell which is speaking. Fomishka, perhaps, speaks just a little more expressively. You are about to enter on a great undertaking, my dear friends; may be on a terrible conflict.... Why not, before plunging into the stormy deep, take a dip in to—”
“Stagnant water,” Markelov put in.
“Stagnant if you like, but not putrid. There are ponds in the steppes which never get putrid, although there is no stream flowing through them, because they have springs at the bottom. My old people have their springs flowing in the depths of their hearts, as pure and as fresh as can be. The question is this: do you want to see how people lived a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago? If so, then make haste and follow me. Or soon the day, the hour will come—it’s bound to be the same hour for them both—when my little parrots will be thrown off their little perches—and everything antique will end with them. The squat little house will tumble down and the place where it stood will be overgrown with that which, according to my grandmother, always grows over the spot where man’s handiwork has been—that is, nettles, burdock, thistles, wormwood, and dock leaves. The very street will cease to be—other people will come and never will they see anything like it again, never, through all the long ages!”
“Well,” Nejdanov exclaimed, “let us go at once!”
“With the greatest of pleasure,” Solomin added. “That sort of thing is not in my line, still it will be interesting, and if Mr. Paklin really thinks that we shall not be putting anyone out by our visit ... then ... why not—”
“You may be at ease on that score!” Paklin exclaimed in his turn. “They will be delighted to see you—and nothing more. You need not be on ceremony. I told you—they were blessed ones. We will get them to sing to us! Will you come too, Mr. Markelov?”
Markelov shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“You can hardly leave me here alone! We may as well go, I suppose.” The young people rose from the seat.
“What a forbidding individual that is you have with you,” Paklin whispered to Nejdanov, indicating Markelov. “The very image of John the Baptist eating locusts ... only locusts, without the honey! But the other is splendid!” he added, with a nod of the head in Solomin’s direction. “What a delightful smile he has! I’ve noticed that people smile like that only when they are far above others, but without knowing it themselves.”
“Are there really such people?” Nejdanov asked.