his request, they had kept silent so long as he was among us. Then our little circle learned that he had stipendiaries, and also learned the larger part of his personal doings, which I have already told. We learned a great deal about his adventures, which, however, did not explain everything; in fact, explained nothing at all, but only made Rakhmétof a still more mysterious person for the whole circle; adventures, which, by their strangeness, surprised us, or entirely contradicted the opinion, which the circle entertained of him as a man who was entirely hard-hearted as far as personal feeling went; one who had not, if I may use the expression, a personal heart, beating with the sensation of personal life. To relate all of these adventures would not be in place here; I shall only quote two of them of two different kinds: one of a savage order; the other of a stamp which contradicted the former ideas entertained by the circle in his regard. I will select these histories from those told by Kirsánof.
About a year before he left Petersburg for the second, and probably the last, time, Rakhmétof said to Kirsánof, "Give me a good quantity of plaster for curing wounds from sharp weapons." Kirsánof gave him a big jar, supposing that Rakhmétof wanted to take this medicament to some society of carpenters or other laborers, who are frequently subjected to cuts. On the next morning, Rakhmétof's landlady came in great alarm to Kirsánof: "Bátiushka! doctor, I don't know what has happened to my tenant; he has not been out of his room for a long time; he has locked the door; I peeked through the crack; he was lying all in blood. I began to scream, and he says to me, says he, 'It's nothing, Agrafyéna Antonovna.' What does he mean by nothing? Save him bátiushka, doctor; I'm afraid it's suicide: he is so unmerciful to himself!"
Kirsánof ran in all haste. Rakhmétof opened the door with a melancholy broad smile; the caller saw the thing from which not Agrafyéna Antonovna alone might have been frightened; the back and shoulders of his underclothes (he was dressed only in his underclothes) were soaked with blood; there was blood on the bed; the straw bed on which he slept was also covered with blood; in the straw were thousands of little nails with heads down and points up; they penetrated out from the bag almost an inch:[1] Rakhmétof had been lying on them all night long.
- ↑ Half a vershók.
