ANOTHER MAN'S WIFE AND A HUSBAND UNDER THE BED by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Author:Fyodor Dostoyevsky [Dostoyevsky, Fyodor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9788027217809
Publisher: Musaicum Books
Published: 2013-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Well, don’t babble then, but lie as flat as a pancake! Most likely you will stay the night here and get out somehow tomorrow; no one will notice you. If one creeps out, it is not likely they would think there was another one here. There might as well be a dozen. Though you are as good as a dozen by yourself. Move a little, or I’ll get out.”

“You wound me, young man…. What if I have a fit of coughing? One has to think of everything.”

“Hush!”

“What’s that? I fancy I hear something going on upstairs again,” said the old gentleman, who seemed to have had a nap in the interval.

“Upstairs?”

“Do you hear, young man? I shall get out.”

“Well, I hear.”

“My goodness! Young man, I am going.”

“Oh, well, I am not, then! I don’t care. If there is an upset I don’t mind! But do you know what I suspect? I believe you are an injured husband — so there.”

“Good heavens, what cynicism!… Can you possibly suspect that? Why a husband?… I am not married.”

“Not married? Fiddlesticks!”

“I may be a lover myself!”

“A nice lover.”

“My dear sir, my dear sir! Oh, very well, I will tell you the whole story. Listen to my desperate story. It is not I — I am not married. I am a bachelor like you. It is my friend, a companion of my youth…. I am a lover…. He told me that he was an unhappy man. ‘I am drinking the cup of bitterness,’ he said; ‘I suspect my wife.’ ‘Well,’ I said to him reasonably, ‘why do you suspect her?’… But you are not listening to me. Listen, listen! ‘Jealousy is ridiculous,’ I said to him; ‘jealousy is a vice!’… ‘No,’ he said; ‘I am an unhappy man! I am drinking … that is, I suspect my wife.’ ‘You are my friend,’ I said; ‘you are the companion of my tender youth. Together we culled the flowers of happiness, together we rolled in featherbeds of pleasure.’ My goodness, I don’t know what I am saying. You keep laughing, young man. You’ll drive me crazy.”

“But you are crazy now….”

“There, I knew you would say that … when I talked of being crazy. Laugh away, laugh away, young man. I did the same in my day; I, too, went astray! Ah, I shall have inflammation of the brain!”

“What is it, my love? I thought I heard some one sneeze,” the old man chanted. “Was that you sneezed, my love?”

“Oh, goodness!” said his wife.

“Tch!” sounded from under the bed.

“They must be making a noise upstairs,” said his wife, alarmed, for there certainly was a noise under the bed.

“Yes, upstairs!” said the husband. “Upstairs, I told you just now, I met a … khee-khee … that I met a young swell with moustaches — oh, dear, my spine! — a young swell with moustaches.”

“With moustaches! My goodness, that must have been you,” whispered Ivan Andreyitch.

“Merciful heavens, what a man! Why, I am here, lying here with you! How could he have met me? But don’t take hold of my face.

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