"Absolutely unfit for settlement is this country" he continued as he glanced around him. "It is fit only to do nothing in. For that matter, one doesn't WANT to do anything in it, save to live with one's eyes bulging like a drunkard's—for the climate is too hot, and the place smells like a chemist's shop or a hospital."
Nevertheless, for the past eight years had he been roaming this "too hot" country, as though fascinated!
"Why not return to Riazan?" I suggested.
"Nothing would there be there for me to do," he replied through his teeth, and with an odd division of his words.
My first encounter with him had been at the railway station at Armavir, where, purple in the face with excitement, he had been stamping like a horse, and, with distended eyes, hissing, or, rather, snarling, at a couple of Greeks:
"I'll tear the flesh from your bones!"
Meanwhile the two lean, withered, ragged, identically similar denizens of Hellas had been baring their sharp white teeth at intervals, and saying apologetically:
"What has angered you, sir?"
Finally, regardless of the Greeks' words, the ex-soldier had beat his breast like a drum, and shouted in accents of increased venom:
"Now, where are you living? In Russia, do you say? Then who is supporting you there? Aha-a-a! Russia, it is said, is a good foster-mother. I expect you say the same."