Notes from Underground [Transl. Pevear & Volokhonsky] by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Classics
ISBN: 1400041910
Publisher: Treebeard
Published: 2011-01-09T19:06:39+00:00

Come bold and free into my house.’[41]

“And then we begin living happily ever after, go abroad, etc., etc.” In short, I felt vile and would end by sticking my tongue out at myself.

“They won't even let the 'slut' come!” I thought. “They don't seem to allow them out much, especially in the evening” (for some reason it seemed certain to me that she must come in the evening, and precisely at seven o'clock). “Though she said she's not completely bound to them yet, she has some special privileges there; so – hm! Devil take it, she'll come, she's sure to come!”

It was a good thing Apollon diverted me at that time with his rudeness. Drove me out of all patience! He was my thorn, a scourge visited upon me by Providence. He and I had been in constant altercation for several years on end, and I hated him. My God, how I hated him! I think I've never in my life hated anyone as I did him, especially at certain moments. He was an elderly, imposing man, who occupied himself part of the time with tailoring. I don't know why, but he despised me even beyond all measure and looked at me with an insufferable haughtiness. But then he looked at everyone with haughtiness. One glance at that pale-haired, slicked-down head, at the quiff he fluffed up on his forehead and oiled with vegetable oil, at that serious mouth forever pursed in a V – and you immediately sensed before you a being who never doubted himself. He was in the highest degree a pedant, and the most enormous pedant of any I've ever met on earth; and this was accompanied by a vanity perhaps befitting only Alexander of Macedon. He was in love with his every button, his every fingernail – absolutely in love, and he looked it! He treated me quite despotically, spoke extremely little with me, and if he chanced to let his eyes rest on me, he did so with a firm, majestically self-confident, and permanently mocking look, which sometimes drove me to fury. He fulfilled his duties with such an air as if he were bestowing the highest favor upon me. However, he did almost exactly nothing for me, and did not even consider himself obliged to do anything. There was no doubting that he considered me the most complete fool in the whole world, and if he “kept me around,” it was solely because he could get his wages from me every month. He agreed to “do nothing” in my service for seven roubles a month. Many sins will be forgiven me for him. It sometimes reached such hatred that I'd be all but thrown into convulsions by his gait alone. But I loathed his lisp especially. His tongue was a bit longer than it should have been, or something like that, which caused him to be forever lisping and sissing, and he was apparently terribly proud of it, imagining that it lent him a great deal of dignity.

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