LITMIR.BIZ

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to begin straightaway with action. Having completed this introduction, he begins.

      Towards six o’clock on New Year’s Eve Shumkov returned home. Arkady Ivanovitch, who was lying on the bed, woke up and looked at his friend with half-closed eyes. He saw that Vasya had on his very best trousers and a very clean shirt front. That, of course, struck him. “Where had Vasya to go like that? And he had not dined at home either!” Meanwhile, Shumkov had lighted a candle, and Arkady Ivanovitch guessed immediately that his friend was intending to wake him accidentally. Vasya did, in fact, clear his throat twice, walked twice up and down the room, and at last, quite accidentally, let the pipe, which he had begun filling in the corner by the stove, slip out of his hands. Arkady Ivanovitch laughed to himself.

      “Vasya, give over pretending!” he said.

      “Arkasha, you are not asleep?”

      “I really cannot say for certain; it seems to me I am not.”

      “Oh, Arkasha! How are you, dear boy? Well, brother! Well, brother! … You don’t know what I have to tell you!”

      “I certainly don’t know; come here.”

      As though expecting this, Vasya went up to him at once, not at all anticipating, however, treachery from Arkady Ivanovitch. The other seized him very adroitly by the arms, turned him over, held him down, and began, as it is called, “strangling” his victim, and apparently this proceeding afforded the lighthearted Arkady Ivanovitch great satisfaction.

      “Caught!” he cried. “Caught!”

      “Arkasha, Arkasha, what are you about? Let me go. For goodness sake, let me go, I shall crumple my dress coat!”

      “As though that mattered! What do you want with a dress coat? Why were you so confiding as to put yourself in my hands? Tell me, where have you been? Where have you dined?”

      “Arkasha, for goodness sake, let me go!”

      “Where have you dined?”

      “Why, it’s about that I want to tell you.”

      “Tell away, then.”

      “But first let me go.”

      “Not a bit of it, I won’t let you go till you tell me!”

      “Arkasha! Arkasha! But do you understand, I can’t it is utterly impossible!” cried Vasya, helplessly wriggling out of his friend’s powerful clutches, “you know there are subjects!”

      “How subjects?” …

      “Why, subjects that you can’t talk about in such a position without losing your dignity; it’s utterly impossible; it would make it ridiculous, and this is not a ridiculous matter, it is important.”

      “Here, he’s going in for being important! That’s a new idea! You tell me so as to make me laugh, that’s how you must tell me; I don’t want anything important; or else you are no true friend of mine. Do you call yourself a friend? Eh?”

      “Arkasha, I really can’t!”

      “Well, I don’t want to hear… .”

      “Well, Arkasha! “ began Vasya, lying across the bed and doing his utmost to put all the dignity possible into his words.” Arkasha! If you like, I will tell you; only …”

      “Well, what? …”

      “Well, I am engaged to be married!”

      Without uttering another word Arkady Ivanovitch took Vasya up in his arms like a baby, though the latter was by no means short, but rather long and thin, and began dexterously carrying him up and down the room, pretending that he was hushing him to sleep.

      “I’ll put you in your swaddling clothes, Master Bridegroom,” he kept saying. But seeing that Vasya lay in his arms, not stirring or uttering a word, he thought better of it at once, and reflecting that the joke had gone too far, set him down in the middle of the room and kissed him on the cheek in the most genuine and friendly way.

      “Vasya, you are not angry?”

      “Arkasha, listen. …”

      “Come, it’s New Year’s Eve.”

      “Oh, I’m all right; but why are you such a madman, such a scatterbrain? How many times I have told you: Arkasha, it’s really not funny, not funny at all!”

      “Oh, well, you are not angry?”

      “Oh, I’m all right; am I ever angry with any one! But you have wounded me, do you understand?”

      “But how have I wounded you? In what way?”

      “I come to you as to a friend, with a full heart, to pour out my soul to you, to tell you of my happiness …”

      “What happiness? Why don’t you speak? …”

      “Oh, well, I am going to get married!” Vasya answered with vexation, for he really was a little exasperated.

      “You! You are going to get married! So you really mean it?” Arkasha cried at the top of his voice.” No, no … but what’s this? He talks like this and his tears are flowing… . Vasya, my little Vasya, don’t, my little son! Is it true, really?”

      And Arkady Ivanovitch flew to hug him again.

      “Well, do you see, how it is now?” said Vasya. “You are kind, of course, you are a friend, I know that. I come to you with such joy, such rapture, and all of a sudden I have to disclose all the joy of my heart, all my rapture struggling across the bed, in an undignified way… . You understand, Arkasha,” Vasya went on, half laughing. “You see, it made it seem comic: and in a sense I did not belong to myself at that minute. I could not let this be slighted… What’s more, if you had asked me her name, I swear, I would sooner you killed me than have answered you.”

      “But, Vasya, why did you not speak! You should have told me all about it sooner and I would not have played the fool!” cried Arkady Ivanovitch in genuine despair.

      “Come, that’s enough, that’s enough! Of course, that’s how it is… . You know what it all comes from from my having a good heart. What vexes me is, that I could not tell you as I wanted to, making you glad and happy, telling you nicely and initiating you into my secret properly… . Really, Arkasha, I love you so much that I believe if it were not for you I shouldn’t be getting married, and, in fact, I shouldn’t be living in this world at all!”

      Arkady Ivanovitch, who was excessively sentimental, cried and laughed at once as he listened to Vasya. Vasya did the same. Both flew to embrace one another again and forgot the past.

      “How is it how is it? Tell me all about it, Vasya! I am astonished, excuse me, brother, but I am utterly astonished; it’s a perfect thunderbolt, by Jove! Nonsense, nonsense, brother, you have made it up, you’ve really made it up, you are telling fibs!” cried Arkady Ivanovitch, and he actually looked into Vasya’s face with genuine uncertainty, but seeing in it the radiant confirmation of a positive intention of being married as soon as possible, threw himself on the bed and began rolling from side to side in ecstasy till the walls shook.

      “Vasya, sit here,” he said at last, sitting down on the bed.

      “I really don’t know, brother, where to begin!”

      They looked at one another in joyful excitement.

      “Who is she, Vasya?”

      “The Artemyevs! …” Vasya pronounced, in a voice weak with emotion.

      “No?”

      “Well, I did buzz into your ears about them at first, and then I shut up, and you noticed nothing. Ah, Arkasha, if you knew how hard it was to keep it from you; but I was afraid, afraid to speak! I thought it would all go wrong, and you know I was in love, Arkasha! My God! My God! You see this was the trouble,” he began, pausing continually from agitation, “she had a suitor a year ago, but he was suddenly ordered

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