On their side were always Ivan Bukin,
with the round head and the white eyebrows and lashes, who looked
as if he had been hung out to dry, or washed out with lye; and the
curly-headed, lofty-browed Fedya Mazin. Modest Yakob Somov, always
smoothly combed and clean, spoke little and briefly, with a quiet,
serious voice, and always took sides with Pavel and the Little Russian.
Sometimes, instead of Natasha, Alexey Ivanovich, a native of some
remote government, came from the city. He wore eyeglasses, his
beard was shiny, and he spoke with a peculiar singing voice. He
produced the impression of a stranger from a far-distant land.
He spoke about simple matters--about family life, about children,
about commerce, the police, the price of bread and meat--about
everything by which people live from day to day; and in everything
he discovered fraud, confusion, and stupidity, sometimes setting
these matters in a humorous light, but always showing their decided
disadvantage to the people.
To the mother, too, it seemed that he had come from far away, from
another country, where all the people lived a simple, honest, easy
life; and that here everything was strange to him, that he could not
get accustomed to this life and accept it as inevitable, that it
displeased him, and that it aroused in him a calm determination to
rearrange it after his own model.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71