"You stupid goose!" cried Grigori roughly, throwing an angry look at her. "What a lot of foolish people you are, all of you! It is ignorance and stupidity, nothing else! One can stick here all one's days in blind ignorance—understanding nothing!"
He pulled the cup of tea, which Matrona had just poured out for him, violently towards him, and was silent.
"I should like to know where you get all your great wisdom?" said Matrona mockingly.
Orloff did not pay the least attention to her words. He grew as silent as before, and appeared quite unapproachable. The samovar was nearly extinguished, only a simmering sound escaping from it. There came into the windows from across the yard a smell of oil-paints, carbolic, and dirty slops. This smell, blending with the twilight of evening, and the monotonous singing of the samovar, awoke in the narrow close cellar a sensation, which lay with the weight of a nightmare on its occupants. The black ghastly mouth of the stove seemed to look at them menacingly, as if about to devour them. For a long time the Orloffs sat there in silence, nibbling sugar, gulping down mouthfuls of tea, and fidgeting with the tea-things. Matrona sighed, and Grigori drummed with his fingers on the tea-table.
"I never saw such cleanliness as reigns there!—never saw anything like it!" Grischka broke in suddenly on the silence.
"Every one of the attendants wears white linen clothes; the sick people have baths as often as it is necessary—and they get wine to drink at five and a half roubles a bottle! And the food!... The smell is almost enough for one; it's so delicious! There is such care—such attention! —no mother could be kinder to a child. Yes, yes! when one comes to think of it! Here we live, and not a soul bothers his head about us, asks us how we are, or how we are getting on;—whether we are happy or unhappy—whether we have anything to put in our mouths or not But as soon as it's a case of dying, then they can't do enough for one, they will go to any expense. These infirmaries, for instance—and the wine—five and a half roubles the bottle! Don't the fellows reason then, what all that is going to cost them? They had better have spent it in helping the living every year a little."
Matrona did not trouble to try and follow what he was saying. It was sufficient for her that his thoughts had taken a new direction, and that now her relations with Grigori would be on a different footing. She was quite convinced that this would be the result, and foresaw only too quickly what the consequences of this spiritual change would be to her. Fear and hope moved her, together with a feeling of enmity against her husband.
"They'll know very well what to do without you," she said ironically, drawing down the corners of her mouth.
Grigori shrugged his shoulders, glancing askance at her; then continued to speak in still more meaning tones, this time watching her attentively.
"Whether they know it or not that is their business.... But if I have to die without seeing something of life, then I shall be the first to whom such a thing happens!... Understand then, this time of torment must come to an end! I won't sit here any longer, and wait till the cholera comes to me as it did to the accordion-player, and carries me off to the grave. No, I won't, I can't! I would rather go boldly and meet it.... Peter, the student, said to me—'If Fate is against you, just show that you also can oppose Fate. You can but try which is the stronger.... It's simply a battle—nothing more.' You ask what is the matter with me?... I mean to go as an attendant in the Infirmary! do you understand?... I will crawl right into the jaws that threaten, and they may swallow me up, but at least I will defend myself with my hands and my feet!... I shan't be so badly off there; I shall get twenty roubles a month, besides tips, and my keep. It's just possible that I shall die there; but that might happen here!... At any rate it's a change in one's life."