Page:Dostoyevsky - The House of the Dead, Collected Edition, 1915.djvu/172

 was the most truthful and honourable of men, and what is more, had done nothing wrong, and he clung to this conviction to the end. He spoke to me first; he began questioning me with curiosity, and described to me in some detail the external routine of the hospital. First of all, of course, he told me that he was the son of a captain. He was very anxious to make himself out a nobleman, or at least “of good family.”

The next one who approached me was a patient from the disciplinary battalion, and he began to assure me that he knew many of the “gentleman” exiles, mentioning them by their names. He was a grey-headed soldier; one could see from his face that he was romancing. His name was Tchekunov. He was evidently trying to make up to me, probably suspecting I had money. Noticing that I had a parcel containing tea and sugar, he at once proferred his services in getting a teapot and making tea. M. had promised to send me a teapot next day from prison by one of the convicts who came to the hospital to work. But Tchekunov managed all right. He got hold of an iron pot and even a cup, boiled the water, made the tea, in fact waited on me with extraordinary zeal, which at once called forth some malignant jeers at his expense from a patient lying opposite me. This was a man called Ustyantsev, a soldier under sentence, who from fear of corporal punishment had drunk a jug of vodka after steeping snuff in it, and had brought on consumption by so doing; I have mentioned him already. Till that moment he had been lying silent, breathing painfully, looking at me intently and earnestly and watching Tchekunov with indignation. His extraordinarily bitter intensity gave a comic flavour to his indignation. At last he could stand it no longer:

“Ugh, the flunkey! He’s found a master!” he said gasping, his voice broken with emotion. He was within a few days of his death.

Tchekunov turned to him indignantly.

“Who’s the flunkey?” he brought out, looking contemptuously at Ustyantsev.

“You are a flunkey!” the other replied in a self-confident tone, as though he had a full right to call Tchekunov over the coals, and in fact had been appointed to that duty.

“Me a flunkey?”

“That’s what you are. Do you hear, good people, he doesn’t believe it! He is surprised!”