7@LRU>RPoPoPoPoPoP}PPPQ Q(QAQA<Q}xPQ RR+*RUPo Papa Hit the Nail on the Head They sit down in our corners to overhear! . . . . . . Mama isin thrownabout feelings: she sat down under the screen, by the little closet; she opened up the little doors of red wood with her little hand, filling the room with the smell of stuffy spirits; a little drawer rode out blindingly, smelling of lacquered cleanliness and sparkling, from that which filled it: a dried little flower, a scented little handkerchief, a little glass dragon, a cut-glass little flagon: flagon behind flagon, gleaming of orange, faceted glass, of frosted glasses of the wiped ground-in stoppers, gritting at the turns, sparkled para-disiacally; rock crystal, bugles; bangles and beads in cardboard boxes, two agrments: all of this was arranged in a little row on the blinding wood, languid from the smell, spread from a salmon-colored sachet, where a little pile of tiny handkerchiefs was kept, orange, rose; small bundles: of blue, lilaceous ribbons, clearly proclaiming themselves with the sound of little bells (from the cotillion); here are fanslace ones, cut-out ones: of kidskin, of ivory,with finely sharpened handles; there are little boxes with powder; truly, there is nothing to rewipe: Mamochka rewipes all this! Risking being chased out, I steal along the little wall into the gleam of cut-glass little flagons, into the world of smells I see myself from the mercurial surface of the toilette mirror, blown up lacelike, in very light bluish bows: before the bed is tossed out a little screen like a lacquered, bluish field; on itgolden reliefs of spreadwinged storks in the air, hanging eternally in the heavens; beyond the heavensthe bed, where on its quilted, shiny azure blanketlittle pillows have been fluffed up under the lace; Mama in an azurish pouf, complicating one leg over another leg (her legs arebare) in a whitening blouse, in a slantingly put-on and strawcolored skirt (her underskirt), is wiping a flagon with her little towel, pressing to her knees the wiped ground-in stopper: a powder compact, cut-glass from crystal; there isa powderpuff: puff-puff-puff-puff; andI pow-dered myself: I am powdered! Here there should be another little corner: I would have stuck out my mustache and nibbled: to crunch my teeth and show a black tongue to Henrietta Martynovna: Ach, was wird sagen M a m a? But Mamais here; and does not see: she is rewiping the little flagons; it seems: everything has been rewiped and rewound; but here with a hand she raises up under her little nose a little flagon, sniffs it, screwing up her little eyes, she keeps looking at a speck of dust; and, grabbing the little towel, she presses it to her silkrustling, yellow knees; and wipes: she rewipes everything anew: in the same order; words, like babbling flies, fly from her little tongue into... the quietude of the study with a buzzing: up to Papas ear; for this she had purposely opened the door to the study: thus a fly flock buzzes under the ear into the sun; you wave a hand: itjerks, sparkling shiningly, like a little emerald of little backs; andit dances anew under the ear: buzzing awfully: buzz-buzz and buzz-buzznot at anyone personally; just so, in the air! Let, let, let: those, who can hear, hear about those, who Those, who think, that theyve taken over science, but in life they stayed babblers,yes!.. To have a brow with a bump and to beat the walls with it does not necessarily mean to be a clever person Tfou! Well, tfou to you! A big brow? a rewiped little flagon is placed back; another, unwiped, is taken; and iswiped and rewiped; and there gives out a submissive: Hm! behind the little alcove, from the door; its those, who silently sat down in their own study; February is overtaking us already; itsa windywintry month: outpouring winds are wrapped in slowpoke snows, they walk along roofs; the day is a windbag, a white whistler: a smokeflight burst off from the roofs into a rotaryflight, curling into all the crossroads of Moscow, blowing about hems and fur coats in the white air, splashing snowy slush; yes; and throughwinds were borne into the windchasing days, when the darkening middays were shadowed by misty melancholy; a damp raw, multidropped gutter begins to drip: drips, drips, drips!.. . . . . . . Mamochka spreads apart her hands (with the towelone and with a flagon the other); andbows her head onto her knees: Yes, this is something I understand: an apartment of twelve and more rooms; others havean apartment of twelve and more rooms, we have a cut-glass little flagon is put back; there is takena cut-glass little dragon! Yes, this is something I understand: society balls!.. But what do we have? Deadly mould is collecting: bald mould Whom can we tempt? Not even a moth Yes! Having complicated their hands on their bellies, they begin run-ning finger against finger, like this Bobynin Doesnt give a tinkers dam? Bigbrows! Pave the roadway with brows? There are stones for that purpose. But the hair has been eaten up by moths: should you sprinkle naphthalene on the mould? Even the flies freeze to death from the tedium,let alone me, poor one . . . . . . . . In Papas roomgray-leaden dusk; grayish Papa, blind and deaf, in the gray overhanging the dust of a cloth of unpleasant, gray-green color, begins to honk his nose, quietly raises his eyes and withdraws with his eyes along roofs: into the gloom of firesmokes; andagain he begins to go through the little leaves with a pencil stub; from the roof, under the cloud a very cruel oculus puffed up: of a cyclops; andit burst with blood; and it poured downward: the blackbrowed heavens in the window: Others here, make use of very lucrative official apartments,yes, academicians! If you really had a brow, and not some stone, we would have long since not been living here: on Vasilievsky! Yes, thatswhat I say Chebyshev isan academician, and for Yanzhulthey are preparing a place; for Yanzhul someone is going to great lengths. From Pieter Book heaps throw from the windows onto Papochka a shadow, as if they were hands; and here is a curtain with which the shelves are covered, it was let down like a lamina (if you glance in on Papa, he is not an academician, butnaphthalene mould); it let itself down, just as if gooselike, or, more exactly a lizard puss,not a lamina a green dragon, residing here, on the shelves, letting down its goose puss from the shelf, for sure resolved to glance in on Papochka, what he is doing there over the integral. The stooped shoulders do not tremble: only a chair squeaked, and a leg twitched imperceptibly: Ima martyress: the Marshall of the Nobility Ball is at hand, and what am I going to go out in? In the lace one, in the altered one? There are those, who suppose, that it is so: cut up carelessly some rags, and go Mrs. Lepyokhinsewed We are notLepyokhin! Tearing himself away from the dusty papers, he submissively fixed his ear to the door, displaying his good, his doggy, slightly careworn profile: Listen, Lizochek: Lepyokhin is a man of action Dont disturb, my friend, my calculations,and he shows his stooping back, having buried himself in the paper; but Mamochka, in a whitish blouse, leaps up, completely come apart; and she stamps from the screen into the blind study, fluttering with her hand the towel with a highly upheld cut-glass little flagon: But? Are you working? What business is it of mine? Lepyokhin works too, but he does itfor the family; the Lepyokhins have chances to go outand she begins to put under the stream of the hand washstand the red facets of a cut glass little bot-tom: the water splashes a cold, pearly spray; and the pedal of the hand washstand jangles resoundingly; her bustle is placed up against Papa. Dropping his pencil, he leaps up; andjerks in an unhurried movement toward the lamp; andthe lamp with its glasses loudly exclaimed ding-a-ling; and a match goes chiffuchir; and a rusty-orange light leapt up, unlacing the interlacing of flying mice; mice flittered into the corner (not mice, but shadows); but the match went out: Ah, damn it! Andfrom corners flying mice fly out over Papa, who hunch-backed is swept about along the table: one solid back! Just as if try-ing to cover himself up from loud reproaches; but Mamochka, stamping her foot, turns a fluttering about little blouse, exposing an open breast with an uncombed hat of half-undone braids, sprinkling hairpins; and the lamp flared up (a lampshade is put on); andthe orange color began to run along the cloth, laying down in stripes on the yellow, waxed little squares of the floor; and the former gray-lead and gray-green now turns into a shiny everything: into chocolate-orange and into green-orange (the wallpaper, the shelves are chocolate colored; on the shelvesthe curtain is of green color; the cloth of green color ison the table); and I see the stooping back of shaggy Papa; and I see the back of his head, stubborn with a difficult resolution: to keep silent no matter what, orto burst; and I hear: from the loud little mouth against the back strikes a buzzing of yellow-orange wasps: There are such, those, who Having neither heart, nor feeling, sit, plunged into these foolish calculations The fingers begin to drum along the edge of the table tararach-tachtachtach! Very impertinently and firmly: a despairing challenge; but stamp-stamp-stamp very firm little legs began running to the back, and, sticking out a proud tummy, purposely stood so bowlegged; the elbows took a walk, the ground-in stopper had been rewiped at the heart; the little mouth foamed from sobs and screams: Take that: thats for you! And she spit on the floor . . . . Aha: fine! the face turned with very malicious, slanting eyes, with an all of a sudden very dishevelled head: just like a dog: if you chase him into a dog house, heobediently turns, putting his puss under his tail; but there, in the dog house, dont tease him: hell toss himself with a loud bark yes: the face turned with very malicious, slanting little eyes, with a head seething with rage; andthe face with very malicious little Tatar eyes fell apart in wrinkles; it became exactly like a morel, threatening with its prickly bristles; and it became a hole, out of which gushed: th o s e wh o!!. . . . . . . Ah! Youtyrants! Youdespots! I see: Mamas right strand of hair has become unwound; andit hangs like a curled ring; and the left strand snaked out on the little shoulder; the mouthwas stretched out from fear and malice; a facial spota medusa which smacks; stings; the lipsbitten, the lips bloodily puffed up; shesteps back from Papa, whose red mask of a face, decomposing, greened; whose fivefingered paw is extended: If you dont be silent I Will make you be silent. Igive you five minutes and the heavyweighted onionshaped hourglass is placed: at the edge of the hand washstand . . . . Mamochka concealed herself in the shadow, snapping off to the alcove and howling from there like a dog which has been kicked: Youre not allowed to wash yourself, you brute forcer: its mine, my hand washstandnot yours! But someone responds with precise malice: So! It wasnt I who put the washstand in my room! . . . . . . . Oh, I know, what will happen: it will be horrible! Those, who fear nothing, who break ministers and stamp on the administrator of the surrounding district and turn Pafnuty Lvovich simply into a cutlet (raw and red), th osss sss sss wh ooo ooo ooo like the terrifying Lawgiver, the Sinai one ooo ooo roar, peace, yelp, others fear the shade of the mon-strous rusty cloud, secreting in itself spherical looking lightning, which sends not thunder, but straight behind the red lightningbash, splintering the pines around the house, and I am horrified by the silence of the five quietly crawling past minutes (I give you five minutes!) where a second is eternity; andI cover, squatting, my earsuntil until until until what?.. Meanwhile: until until until until that (that very!): those, who: having flown up into the air, they let fall the jacket weightily to the side, to the left, the face, laid out by a black wrinkle, a gap of Chinese ink, and shading, an old deadman of lifeless face with a mouth spread-open to the ears, and screwed up slanting little eyes, decorated with red lead, re-minding one of the mask of the face of a Samurai, waving his saber, Hokusai showed him! This mask of the face of the Samurai, waving his saber is the countenance of Papa, with nose fallen to the hand, pressing a rusted-orange nail, in order to strike the nail deafeningly: into the tin plate of the hand washstand! He had thought up this device; a device for subduing shrewishness, which at the sound of the nail plunges into a faint: with its head onto the pillows; anddrowns in tears . . . . . The minutes flow by until the terrible bash, and the darkness bangs into the red-orange color of the study, from open doors, where the precise-yellow lace of a malicious, lantern light lies like a sala-mander; Mama curses from there (she doesnt have much time!) everyone: mathematicians, Granny, Grandpa (Papa and Mama arenot Mamas: Papas) all four of my aunts and sixteen nephews; I stop up from horror my ears and little nose with my hands, falling on my little knees to the floor; and I bow down: Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord: youbear us through this, bear us through, bear us through! Save us and have mercy on us, save us and have mercy on us, o, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord! suddenly: I, waved a-bout by clouds of dust from the rusty horror of Chinese typhoons,I hear through the fingers, with which the ears have been stopped up: There arefifteen seconds left!.. O! O! O! . . . . . I open an eye; I see bash! a leg falls, a head and an arm; the legonto the floor; the armto the hand washstand; and a rusted over until it was yellow nail strikes against the tin plate of the wash hand stand: Bash! From a mouth come-apart a bloody tongue runs out with its bent end; the spectacles fly into the air; and in an arc a handkerchief flies up from a pocket; he runs like one solid back, spins around and around, waves his arms, and beats the orange-rusted nail along the iron bed, along the washbasin, along the tin plate; grabbing the lighted lamp with his fivefingered hand, he stands with this lamp, trying to smash to smithereens the lamp against the floor and crack the lampglass, fanning up the black-bloody flame and soot, in order to push through into the flame, to disappear in the clouds of soot The lamp is placed down by the hand again on the desk; and for sure: there is no study: the wall flew apart in red circles: and Papa; growing savage with a lance, sharply squeezing in with his legs a hairy horse, on a collected hide, into the expanse of the far away past he chases offlike a bent Scythian: after a Persian; more accurately: after the hide of a Persian! And the sun burst in a flame; and the steppes smoke where they have been burned; and the Persian makes off away from him; pressing his head to the mane of the horse, tossing behind the neck his shaggy hand with a shield covered with hide, on which suddenly sounded the strike of a weighty lance, smashing the shield and sewing the Persian to the nape of the stumbling horse: by his pierced neck . . . . . . . . When I came to: thenthe study was locked; and there was silence: only in the chimney was this wind carrying on, again a drone beginning to buzz: again this pipe-playing was carrying on: amid the blowing days we are flying: into into the little spindles of days and shadows: without fires!..  The Christened Chinaman Papa Hit the Nail on the Head  vxp up from horror my ears and little nose with my hands, falling on my little knees to the floor; and I bow down: Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord: youbear us through this, bear us through, bear us through! 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