An acquaintance of mine once told me the following story:
“While still a student at Moscow I happened to be living alongside one of those—well, she was a Polish woman, Teresa by name. A tall, powerfully built brunette with heavy, bushy eyebrows, and a large coarse, vulgar face, as if carved out with an ax—the animal gleam of her eyes, the deep bass voice, the gait and manners of a cabman, and her immense strength like that of a market-woman, inspired me with an inexpressible horror. I lived in the garret of the house, and her room was opposite mine. I never opened my door when I knew that she was in. But this, of course, happened very rarely. Sometimes I chanced to meet her on the landing, staircase, or in the yard, and she would look at me with a smile which seemed to me cynical and rapacious. Occasionally I saw her in her cups, with bleary eyes, her hair and clothes in disorder and with a particularly loathsome smile. On such occasions she would meet my eye with an impudent stare and say:
“‘How are you, Pan Student?’[10]
“And her stupid laugh would increase my dislike for her still more. I would have liked nothing better than to change my quarters in order to get rid of her proximity, but my room was so nice, and the view from my window was so fine, the street below so quiet and peaceful, that I concluded to endure it.
“One morning after I had dressed and was sprawling on the cot, trying to invent some sort of an excuse for not attending my classes, the door of my room suddenly opened, and the disgusting bass voice of the Polish woman sounded from the threshold:
“‘Good morning, Pan Student!’
“‘What is it you wish?’ I asked her. I saw she looked confused and had in her face a kind of pleading expression, something unusual with her.
“‘You see, Pan Student, I came to beg you to do me a great favor. Don’t refuse me, please!’
“Lying there on my cot I thought that it was just some pretext or other to make my further acquaintance. Take care, my boy!
“‘You see, I have to send a letter to my native country,’ she continued in a supplicating, low, tremulous voice.