The Cossacks Read Online Free PDF Page B

remembered his farming venture in the village, but in this memory too there was nothing he could dwell on with pleasure.
    “I wonder how long they’ll be talking about my leaving?” he suddenly thought but was not clear about who “they” might be. The following thought, which made him knit his brow, was of his tailor, Monsieur Cappelle, and the 678 rubles that Olenin still owed him. He recalled the words with which he had asked the tailor to wait another year to be paid, and the expression of bewilderment and resignation on the tailor’s face. “O God, o God!” Olenin said, screwing up his eyes and trying to chase away the unbearable thought. “And yet, in spite of everything, she did love me!” he mumbled, thinking of the young woman he and his friend had mentioned during their farewell. “If I had married her I would have been able to pay off all my debts, and now I also owe so much money to Vasilyev.” He thought of how he had played cards with Vasilyev the night before at the club, to which he had gone directly after seeing her, and how he had then humiliated himself by begging to play on after his money had run out, and Vasilyev’s cold refusal. “A year of thrift and I will pay everything off, and then they can all go to Hell!” But despite this reassurance he again began to count up the debts he still owed, their terms, and when they were due.
    “And I owe Morel quite a bit of money, too,” he remembered, thinking of the long night in which he had piled up that substantial debt. It had been a night of wild carousing (there had even been a gypsy orchestra), organized by a group of aristocrats from St. Petersburg: Sashka B., an aide-de-camp to the Czar, and Prince D.—another elderly gentleman of some importance. “Though one wonders why those gentlemen are so pleased with themselves,” Olenin thought. “And thearrogance with which they have set up their little circle, which one is supposed to feel so flattered to join! Just because they’re high-ranking officers? It’s terrible how foolish and vulgar they think everyone else is. I showed them in no uncertain terms that I had little if any interest in being part of all that—though I am sure that my steward Andrei would be quite stunned to hear me address a gentleman like Sashka B., a real colonel and an aide-de-camp to the Czar, as ‘my dear fellow.’ That evening nobody drank more than I did. I taught the gypsies a new song, and everyone sat listening to it. Even if I’ve done a lot of foolish things in my life I am, after all, a very, very impressive young man,” Olenin thought.
    Morning found Olenin at the third post stage. He drank tea, surprised Vanyusha by helping him reload the bundles and trunks, and then sat stiff-backed in the sleigh among his belongings, organized, punctilious, and extremely pleased at knowing where everything was. He knew where his money was and how much he had, where his passport and traveling papers were, and everything seemed to him set up so practically and so nicely organized that he became quite cheerful and saw the long journey ahead as nothing more than an extended jaunt.
    Throughout the morning and well into the day he was immersed in calculations: how many versts * he had traveled, how many remained to the next post stage, how many to the first town, how many till lunch, till evening tea, till Stavropol, and what fraction of the whole journey he had already put behind him. He also calculated how much money he had: how much was left, how much was needed to pay off all his debts, and what part of his income he could live on every month. By evening, as he drank his tea, he had calculated that the road to Stavropol was seven-elevenths of the whole journey, that these debts amounted to one-eighth of his assets, and that with some economizing he could pay them off within seven months. He complacently wrapped himself in his coat, made himself comfortable in the sleigh, and dozed off.
    His imagination now dwelt