Chapter 15

I AM FETED AT DINNER

Dubkoff and Woloda knew every one at the restaurant by name, and
every one, from the waiters to the proprietor, paid them great
respect. No time was lost in allotting us a private room, where a
bottle of iced champagne-upon which I tried to look with as much
indifference as I could--stood ready waiting for us, and where we
were served with a most wonderful repast selected by Dubkoff from
the French menu. The meal went off most gaily and agreeably,
notwithstanding that Dubkoff, as usual, told us blood-curdling
tales of doubtful veracity (among others, a tale of how his
grandmother once shot dead three robbers who were attacking her--
a recital at which I blushed, closed my eyes, and turned away
from the narrator), and that Woloda reddened visibly whenever I
opened my mouth to speak--which was the more uncalled for on his
part, seeing that never once, so far as I can remember, did I say
anything shameful. After we had been given champagne, every one
congratulated me, and I drank "hands across" with Dimitri and
Dubkoff, and wished them joy. Since, however, I did not know to
whom the bottle of champagne belonged (it was explained to me
later that it was common property), I considered that, in return,
I ought to treat my friends out of the money which I had never
ceased to finger in my pocket. Accordingly, I stealthily extracted
a ten-rouble note, and, beckoning the waiter to my side, handed
him the money, and told him in a whisper (yet not so softly but
that every one could hear me, seeing that every one was staring
at me in dead silence) to "bring, if you please, a half-bottle of
champagne." At this Woloda reddened again, and began to fidget so
violently, and to gaze upon myself and every one else with such a
distracted air, that I felt sure I had somehow put my foot in it.
However, the half-bottle came, and we drank it with great gusto.
After that, things went on merrily. Dubkoff continued his
unending fairy tales, while Woloda also told funny stories--and
told them well, too--in a way I should never have credited him: so
that our laughter rang long and loud. Their best efforts lay in
imitation, and in variants of a certain well-known saw. "Have you
ever been abroad?" one would say to the other, for instance.
"No," the one interrogated would reply, "but my brother plays the
fiddle." Such perfection had the pair attained in this species of
comic absurdity that they could answer any question by its means,
while they would also endeavour to unite two absolutely
unconnected matters without a previous question having been asked
at all, yet say everything with a perfectly serious face and
produce a most comic effect. I too began to