M I
KHA
I L- :lOS
HCH -EtH(:O
mattress.
He is
not friendly. He does not even turn towards
me.
lIe stare!! at the ceiling.
.
"Where do you work?" I ask.
'~Only
.asses and horses work" he says. "I don't work myself
and don't intend to. So write that down on your lousy papers: ..
y'<?u
can add that I go to the club and play cards...."
He's annoyed. Perhaps he's sick. I want to go on to the
neighbors.
As
I leave, I look at him. I've seen
him
somewhere
before.
"Alyosha!" I say.
He sits up on the bunk. He has an unshaven, gloomy face.
I see before me Alyosha N., a school friend. He was one
grade ahead of me. He was a sissy, a teacher's pet, first in the
class and a mommy's darling....
"What happened, Alyosha?" I mutter.
- -"Absolutely nothing happened," he says. And I see
an_
-
noyance on his face.
_. -"Maybe I can help you?"
I
"I need absolutely nothing," he says. "Incidentally, if you
have any money, give me five rubles, I'll run down to the club."
I offer much more, but he takes only five.
A few minutes later I'm sitting on his bunk and we're talk–
ing as we used to ten years before.
-"Really a very commonplace business," he says. "My wife
wen:t -off with some heel. I began drinking. I drank everything
I had. I lost my job. I began playing cards .at the club, and now,
you understand, I don't want to go back to the past. I could,
but I don't want to. Everything is rubbish, rot, comedy, nonsense,
smoke...."
I make him promise to visit me.
At Night
There are letters to the
Red Gazette
on my pillow. They
are complaints about inefficiency in the public baths. I am sup–
posed to write a
feuilleton
about it.
