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

With the familiarity of a man laughing at his own fatness, he put
his arms round my waist and laid on my breast his big soft head,
with the hair combed down on the forehead like a Little
Russian's, and went off into a thin, aged laugh.

"And you go on getting younger," he said through his laugh. "I
wonder what dye you use for your hair and beard; you might let me
have some of it." Sniffing and gasping, he embraced me and kissed
me on the cheek. "You might give me some of it," he repeated.
"Why, you are not forty, are you?"

"Alas, I am forty-six!" I said, laughing.

Ivan Ivanitch smelt of tallow candles and cooking, and that
suited him. His big, puffy, slow-moving body was swathed in a
long frock-coat like a coachman's full coat, with a high waist,
and with hooks and eyes instead of buttons, and it would have
been strange if he had smelt of eau-de-Cologne, for instance. In
his long, unshaven, bluish double chin, which looked like a
thistle, his goggle eyes, his shortness of breath, and in the
whole of his clumsy, slovenly figure, in his voice, his laugh,
and his words, it was difficult to recognize the graceful,
interesting talker who used in old days to make the husbands of
the district jealous on account of their wives.

"I am in great need of your assistance, my friend," I said, when
we were sitting in the dining-room, drinking tea. "I want to
organize relief for the starving peasants, and I don't know how
to set about it. So perhaps you will be so kind as to advise me."

"Yes, yes, yes," said Ivan Ivanitch, sighing. "To be sure, to be
sure, to be sure. . . ."

"I would not have worried you, my dear fellow, but really there
is no one here but you I can appeal to. You know what people are
like about here."

"To be sure, to be sure, to be sure. . . . Yes."

I thought that as we were going to have a serious, business
consultation in which any one might take part, regardless of
their position or personal relations, why should I not invite
Natalya Gavrilovna.

"_Tres faciunt collegium_," I said gaily. "What if we were to ask
Natalya Gavrilovna? What do you think? Fenya," I said, turning to
the maid, "ask Natalya Gavrilovna to come upstairs to us, if
possible at once. Tell her it's a very important matter."

A little later Natalya Gavrilovna came in. I got up to meet her