"Checkov, Anton - The Wife And Other Stories" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chekhov Anton)

will try single-handed. Let us hope that my campaign against the
famine will be more successful than my campaign against
indifference."

"I am expected downstairs," said Natalya Gavrilovna.

She got up from the table and turned to Ivan Ivanitch.

"So you will look in upon me downstairs for a minute? I won't say
good-bye to you."

And she went away.

Ivan Ivanitch was now drinking his seventh glass of tea, choking,
smacking his lips, and sucking sometimes his moustache, sometimes
the lemon. He was muttering something drowsily and listlessly,
and I did not listen but waited for him to go. At last, with an
expression that suggested that he had only come to me to take a
cup of tea, he got up and began to take leave. As I saw him out I
said:

"And so you have given me no advice."

"Eh? I am a feeble, stupid old man," he answered. "What use would
my advice be? You shouldn't worry yourself. . . . I really don't
know why you worry yourself. Don't disturb yourself, my dear
fellow! Upon my word, there's no need," he whispered genuinely
and affectionately, soothing me as though I were a child. "Upon
my word, there's no need."

"No need? Why, the peasants are pulling the thatch off their
huts, and they say there is typhus somewhere already."

"Well, what of it? If there are good crops next year, they'll
thatch them again, and if we die of typhus others will live after
us. Anyway, we have to die -- if not now, later. Don't worry
yourself, my dear."

"I can't help worrying myself," I said irritably.

We were standing in the dimly lighted vestibule. Ivan Ivanitch
suddenly took me by the elbow, and, preparing to say something
evidently very important, looked at me in silence for a couple of
minutes.

"Pavel Andreitch!" he said softly, and suddenly in his puffy, set
face and dark eyes there was a gleam of the expression for which
he had once been famous and which was truly charming. "Pavel
Andreitch, I speak to you as a friend: try to be different! One
is ill at ease with you, my dear fellow, one really is!"