"What is going to come of it, grandma? Is it possible that we shall be left just so, without anything?" grumbled Anninka.
"How silly uncle is," Lubinka chimed in.
About midday, Arina Petrovna decided to go to her dying son. Stepping softly she climbed the stairs and groped in the dark till she found the door leading into the rooms. The entresol was buried in deepest gloom. The windows were darkened by green shades, through which the light could scarcely filter. A sickening mixture of odors pervaded the room, which had not been ventilated for a long while. There was the smell of berries, plaster, oil from the image-lamp, and those peculiar odors which bespeak the presence of sickness and death. There were only two rooms. In the first one sat Ulita, cleaning berries. The flies swarmed about the heap of gooseberries and impudently attacked her nose and lips, and she would keep driving them off in exasperation. Through the half-closed door of the adjoining room came the sound of incessant coughing which every now and then ended in painful expectoration. Arina Petrovna stopped in an uncertain pose, searching the gloom and waiting for the course of action that Ulita would take in view of her arrival. But Ulita never moved an eyelash, entirely confident that every attempt to influence the sick man would be fruitless. Her lips merely twitched in resentment, and Arina Petrovna heard the word "hag" pronounced under her breath.
"You had better go down, my dear," said Arina Petrovna, turning to Ulita.
"Where did you get that idea from?" snapped the latter.
"I have to talk to Pavel Vladimirych. Go down."
"Excuse me, madam, how can I leave the master? What if something should happen? There's no one to serve him and attend to him."
"What's the matter?" a hollow voice called from the bedroom.
"Order Ulita to go downstairs, my friend. I have matters to talk over with you."
This time Arina Petrovna pressed her point so persistently that she was victorious. She crossed herself and entered the room. The patient's bed stood near the inner wall far from the window. He lay on his back, covered with a white blanket, smoking a cigarette, though almost half unconscious. Notwithstanding the smoke, the flies pestered him with peculiar persistence, so that he had continually to pass his hand over his face. His arms were so weak, so bare of muscle, that they showed the bones, of almost equal thickness from wrist to shoulder, in clear outline. His head nestled despondently in the pillow. His whole body and face burned in a dry fever. His large round eyes were sunken and gazed aimlessly about, as if looking for something. The lines of his nose had grown longer and sharper. His mouth was half open. He had stopped coughing, but he breathed with such difficulty that it seemed as if all his vital energy were concentrated in his chest.