When he turned with difficulty his aching, heavy head on the pillow, Foma noticed a small, swarthy man, who sat by the table hastily scratching with his pen over the paper, shaking his round head approvingly, wagging it from side to side, shrugging his shoulders, and, with all his small body clothed in night garments only, constantly moving about in his chair, as though he were sitting on fire, and could not get up for some reason or other. His left hand, lean and thin, was now firmly rubbing his forehead, now making certain incomprehensible signs in the air; his bare feet scraped along the floor, a certain vein quivered on his neck, and even his ears were moving. When he turned toward Foma, Foma saw his thin lips whispering something, his sharp-pointed nose turned down to his thin moustache, which twitched upward each time the little man smiled. His face was yellow, bloated, wrinkled, and his black, vivacious small sparkling eyes did not seem to belong to him.
Having grown tired of looking at him, Foma slowly began to examine the room with his eyes. On the large nails, driven into the walls, hung piles of newspapers, which made the walls look as though covered with swellings. The ceiling was pasted with paper which had been white once upon a time; now it was puffed up like bladders, torn here and there, peeled off and hanging in dirty scraps; clothing, boots, books, torn pieces of paper lay scattered on the floor. Altogether the room gave one the impression that it had been scalded with boiling water.
The little man dropped the pen, bent over the table, drummed briskly on its edge with his fingers and began to sing softly in a faint voice:
“Take the drum and fear not,—And kiss the sutler girl aloud—That’s the sense of learning—And that’s philosophy.”
Foma heaved a deed sigh and said:
“May I have some seltzer?”
“Ah!” exclaimed the little man, and jumping up from his chair, appeared at the wide oilcloth-covered lounge, where Foma lay. “How do you do, comrade! Seltzer? Of course! With cognac or plain?”
“Better with cognac,” said Foma, shaking the lean, burning hand which was outstretched to him, and staring fixedly into the face of the little man.
“Yegorovna!” cried the latter at the door, and turning to Foma, asked: “Don’t you recognise me, Foma Ignatyevich?”
“I remember something. It seems to me we had met somewhere before.”