Virgin Soil | Page 6

father's name."
Mashurina shrugged her shoulders.
"There is no need for you to know it. I think you know my surname.
What more do you want? And why do you always keep on asking how
I am? You see that I am still in the land of the living!"
"Of course!" Paklin exclaimed, his face twitching nervously. "If you
had been elsewhere, your humble servant would not have had the
pleasure of seeing you here, and of talking to you! My curiosity is due
to a bad, old-fashioned habit. But with regard to your name, it is
awkward, somehow, simply to say Mashurina. I know that even in
letters you only sign yourself Bonaparte! I beg pardon, Mashurina, but

in conversation, however--"
"And who asks you to talk to me, pray?"
Paklin gave a nervous, gulpy laugh.
"Well, never mind, my dear. Give me your hand. Don't be cross. I
know you mean well, and so do I... Well?
Paklin extended his hand, Mashurina looked at him severely and
extended her own.
"If you really want to know my name," she said with the same
expression of severity on her face, "I am called Fiekla."
"And I, Pemien," Ostrodumov added in his bass voice.
"How very instructive! Then tell me, 0h Fiekla! and you, Oh Pemien!
why you are so unfriendly, so persistently unfriendly to me when I--"
"Mashurina thinks," Ostrodumov interrupted him, "and not only
Mashurina, that you are not to be depended upon, because you always
laugh at everything."
Paklin turned round on his heels.
"That is the usual mistake people make about me, my dear Pemien! In
the first place, I am not always laughing, and even if I were, that is no
reason why you should not trust me. In the second, I have been flattered
with your confidence on more than one occasion before now, a
convincing proof of my trustworthiness. I am an honest man, my dear
Pemien."
Ostrodumov muttered something between his teeth, but Paklin
continued without the slightest trace of a smile on his face.
"No, I am not always laughing! I am not at all a cheerful person. You
have only to look at me!"
Ostrodumov looked at him. And really, when Paklin was not laughing,
when he was silent, his face assumed a dejected, almost scared
expression; it became funny and rather sarcastic only when he opened
his lips. Ostrodumov did not say anything, however, and Paklin turned
to Mashurina again.
"Well? And how are your studies getting on? Have you made any
progress in your truly philanthropical art? Is it very hard to help an
inexperienced citizen on his first appearance in this world?
"It is not at all hard if he happens to be no bigger than you are!"
Mashurina retorted with a self-satisfied smile. (She had quite recently
passed her examination as a midwife. Coming from a poor aristocratic

family, she had left her home in the south of Russia about two years
before, and with about twelve shillings in her pocket had arrived in
Moscow, where she had entered a lying- in institution and had worked
very hard to gain the necessary certificate. She was unmarried and very
chaste. "No wonder!" some sceptics may say ( bearing in mind the
description of her personal appearance; but we will permit ourselves to
say that it was wonderful and rare).
Paklin laughed at her retort.
"Well done, my dear! I feel quite crushed! But it serves me right for
being such a dwarf! I wonder where our host has got to?"
Paklin purposely changed the subject of conversation, which was rather
a sore one to him. He could never resign himself to his small stature,
nor indeed to the whole of his unprepossessing figure. He felt it all the
more because he was passionately fond of women and would have
given anything to be attractive to them. The consciousness of his pitiful
appearance was a much sorer point with him than his low origin and
unenviable position in society. His father, a member of the lower
middle class, had, through all sorts of dishonest means, attained the
rank of titular councillor. He had been fairly successful as an
intermediary in legal matters, and managed estates and house property.
He had made a moderate fortune, but had taken to drink towards the
end of his life and had left nothing after his death.
Young Paklin, he was called Sila--Sila Samsonitch, [Meaning strength,
son of Samson] and always regarded this name as a joke against
himself, was educated in a commercial school, where he had acquired a
good knowledge of German. After a great many difficulties he had
entered an office, where he received a salary of five hundred roubles a
year, out of which he had to keep himself, an invalid