“Yes, Gavrilo....”
“That’s right, that’s right. Gavrilo, a little fellow with white eyebrows? Yes? That’s right.... I remember I liked to look at his face: such a good-natured snout. I almost thought the master was part workman.... Who is he? Is he always that way?”
Pavel Semenovich said nothing for a few minutes. He then looked at his companion with some embarrassment and replied:
“Y-yes, you’re right.... That actually happened.... Semen Nikolayevich ... and Gavrilo.... Both together....”
“Yes, I remember....”
“He was a fine man for our city.... Educated, independent, with ideas.... He went to the university but never finished because of some escapade.... He once spoke of it as if he had made an unfortunate venture into love. ‘My heart was broken,’ he said. On the other hand I know that he corresponded with a friend in some outlandish place. That shows there was something behind it.... His father, he said, was a usurer, but not a malicious one. This caused a row between father and son. The young student didn’t approve of it and wouldn’t touch the money, but lived by teaching.... When the father died, Semen Nikolayevich came and inherited the property. He said to some one: ‘I don’t want it.... This is owed to society.’ Then I don’t know what happened.... The house, land, long-term leases, a lawsuit.... He carried it on one, two, three years, and then got to like it. Many still remember how he said: ‘I’ll finish the lawsuit with these curs and settle up.... I won’t stay a day longer in this confounded hole.’ ... But it’s the usual story.... We had a teacher once, a zoölogist, who came to our gymnasium and said bluntly: ‘As soon as I write my dissertation, I’ll get out of the swamp!’”
“That’s Kallistov, isn’t it?” asked the mathematician, with great interest. The narrator waved assent.
“He’s still writing it. He married; had three children.... That’s just the way with Semen Nikolayevich Budnikov. He’s been making a dissertation of his life, so to speak. He began to enjoy this lawsuit. Challenges, protests, cassation, the whole game.... And he kept writing himself without consulting lawyers.... Then, after a while, he commenced to build a new house. When I got to know him, he was already a lucky, middle-aged bachelor, with a reddish face, and such a pleasant, quiet, substantial and sleepy voice. Then he had a few peculiarities. He sometimes used to come to see me, especially when it was time to pay my rent.... This was due on the twentieth. That meant that on the twentieth he used to come at eight o’clock in the evening and drink two cups of tea with rum in it. No more, no less! In each cup two spoonfuls of rum and one of sugar. I got to look at this as an addition to my rent. He did the same with all his lodgers,—only some with and some without rum. The rents were all different, about twenty in his four houses (one in the city was quite large).... That made forty cups of tea.... He seemed as if he had included that in his budget and marked it down.... Sometimes, ‘I didn’t find so and so at home, but he brought the money the next day. Still owing, two cups of tea.’”
“Really?” laughed Petr Petrovich. “He never reasoned that way! Why do you think so?”
“For this reason. At first this was an unexpected characteristic, but it got to be believed, although in your time maybe it didn’t exist. The tenants began to say: you know M. Budnikov is an economical man. That was meant well and even as a sign of approval. But it suddenly reacted on Budnikov.... You understand? The unintelligible man began to develop a special intelligible trait.... It became clearer and clearer. All believed, for example, that M. Budnikov kept no servants. Gavrilo was the porter of the house where I lived; he used to clean the clothes of the different people, fix the samovars, and run errands. Sometimes the master and servant used to sit side by side and clean shoes, the porter for the tenants, Budnikov for himself. Then M. Budnikov got a horse. No special need for him to do it. As a luxury, he’d ride twice a week to a farm near the city. The rest of the time the horse was free. Gavrilo wasn’t busy all the time either.... The result was—the horse was put at Gavrilo’s disposal, and he used to ride down town. Gavrilo had nothing against this arrangement, because he considered incessant work his special duty. You know there’s a sort of talent for everything, and I thought once that Gavrilo was a kind of genius in the field of muscular labor.... Easy motioned,—unwearied freshness. Sometimes at night he wouldn’t sleep. Look out of the window and you’d see Gavrilo sweeping the street or cleaning the ditches. It meant—he’d gone to bed and then remembered he hadn’t swept all the pavement the last thing. So he’d go and clean it. And this was really beautiful.”