The zoologist and the deacon sat on a bench near the little table, but Samoylenko cascaded into a wicker armchair with a broad, sloping back. The valet brought tea, preserves and a bottle of syrup.

It was very hot, nearly thirty degrees in the shade. The sultry air was stagnant, immobile, and a long spider’s web that had been strung from the chestnut tree to the ground weakly hung there and did not stir.

The deacon picked up the guitar that perpetually lay on the ground near the table, tuned it and began to sing softly, in a thin voice, “The lads from the seminary are lining up at the tavern …” but immediately fell silent from the heat, whipping sweat from his brow and glancing up at the hot, blue sky. Samoylenko began to dream. He slackened and grew inebriated from the swelter, the quiet and the sweet post-dinner drowsiness, which quickly overtook all his limbs. His hands dropped to his sides. His eyes became very small. His chin rested on his chest. With teary-eyed tenderness he surveyed Von Koren and the deacon and muttered:

“The younger generation … A star of science and the light of the church … Just look, a priest will burst forth from this long-hemmed hallelujah. It’s all well and good, we may have to kiss his hand … What of it … It’s God’s will …”

Soon, snoring could be heard. Von Koren and the deacon finished drinking their tea and exited out onto the street.

“Are you set on returning to your goby fishing?” the zoologist asked.

“No, it’s a little too hot.”

“Come over to my place. You can pack up some things that need to be shipped and some incidentals need to be rewritten. By the way, we can knock around ideas about how to occupy your time. You need to work, Deacon. You can’t just keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

“Your words are fair and logical,” the deacon said, “but my laziness finds excuses in the circumstance surrounding my true calling. You yourself know that an indeterminate situation certainly contributes to people’s apathetic states. Whether I’ve been sent here temporarily or permanently, God alone knows. I live here in uncertainty as my deaconess vegetates at her father’s and longs for me. And, to confess, my brain has spoiled from being left out in the heat.”

“That’s nonsense,” said the zoologist. “You can get used to the heat, and you can get used to being without your deaconess. It’s not worth it to let yourself go. You need to get a hold of yourself.”

V

Nadezhda Fyodorovna was on her way for a morning swim, and behind her with a pitcher, a copper basin, with sheets and a sponge followed her scullery maid, Olga. Off in the harbor stood two unfamiliar steamships with dirty white pipes, evidently foreign cargo ships. Random men in white with white work shoes walked along the wharf and yelled loudly in French, and responses were yelled to them from the steamships. In the town’s small church the bells rang sprightly.

“Today’s Sunday!” Nadezhda Fyodorovna remembered with satisfaction.

She felt herself to be in total good health and was in a cheerful, festive mood. In a spacious new dress, made of rough pongee intended for men’s clothing, and a big straw hat, the wide scope of which was severely bent at the ears, so that her face looked as though it were in a box, she appeared very cute to herself. Her thoughts were on how in the entire town there was but one young, attractive, intelligent woman—that’s her, and that she alone knew how to dress affordably, stylishly and with good taste. For instance, this dress cost only twenty-two rubles, and besides that, it’s adorable! In the entire town, only she was comely, and there were many men, and for this reason they all, willing or not, must envy Laevsky.

She rejoiced that Laevsky had been cold to her in the recent past, maintaining civility though occasionally becoming petulant and rude; previously, she would respond to all his high-jinks and contempt, either cold or strange incomprehensible glares, with tears, reproach and threaten to leave him or starve herself to death; now in reply she would only blush red, look guiltily at him and rejoice that he wasn’t tender to her. If he would scold or threaten her, that would be even better and more pleasant, seeing as how she felt herself to be thoroughly guilty before him. It seemed to her that she was to blame, first, in that she didn’t share his vision of a life of toil, for which he had cast off Petersburg and traveled here to the Caucasus, and she was convinced that he’d been angry with her in the immediate past namely for this reason.