Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 20
“Come, tell me; this is silly!” said Vronsky smiling.
“I have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about.”
“Come, enough fooling! Where is the letter?”
“No, I’ve forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a bit! But what’s the
use of getting in a rage. If you’d drunk four bottles yesterday as I did you’d forget
where you were lying. Wait a bit, I’ll remember!”
Petritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.
“Wait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was standing. Yes–
yes–yes.... Here it is!”–and Petritsky pulled a letter out from under the mattress,
where he had hidden it.
Vronsky took the letter and his brother’s note. It was the letter he was expecting–
from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to see her–and the note was
from his brother to say that he must have a little talk with him. Vronsky knew that it
was all about the same thing. “What business is it of theirs!” thought Vronsky, and
crumpling up the letters he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to read
them carefully on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two officers; one
of his regiment and one of another.
Vronsky’s quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.
“Where are you off to?”
“I must go to Peterhof.”
“Has the mare come from Tsarskoe?”
“Yes, but I’ve not seen her yet.”
“They say Mahotin’s Gladiator’s lame.”
“Nonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?” said
the other.
“Here are my saviors!” cried Petritsky, seeing them come in. Before him stood the
orderly with a tray of brandy and salted cucumbers. “Here’s Yashvin ordering me
to drink a pick-me-up.”
“Well, you did give it to us yesterday,” said one of those who had come in; “you
didn’t let us get a wink of sleep all night.”
“Oh, didn’t we make a pretty finish!” said Petritsky. “Volkov climbed onto the
roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said: ‘Let’s have music, the funeral
march!’ He fairly dropped asleep on the roof over the funeral march.”
“Drink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then seltzer water and
a lot of lemon,” said Yashvin, standing over Petritsky like a mother making a child
take medicine, “and then a little champagne–just a small bottle.”
“Come, there’s some sense in that. Stop a bit, Vronsky. We’ll all have a drink.”
“No; good-bye all of you. I’m not going to drink today.”
“Why, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone. Give us the
seltzer water and lemon.”
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