When this was written he
read it aloud whilst Vasilissa
thought of how she would
like to write that there had
been a famine last year, and
that their flour had not even
lasted until Christmas, so that
they had been obliged to sell
their cow; that the old man
was often ill, and must soon
surrender his soul to God;
that they needed money--but
how could she put all this
into words? What should she
say first and what last?
"What grandchildren?" asked
the old woman crossly.
"Perhaps there are no
grandchildren."
"No grandchildren? But
perhaps there are! Who
knows?"
"And from this you may
deduce," Yegor hurried on,
"which is an internal, and
which is a foreign enemy.
Our greatest internal enemy
is Bacehus--"
The pen scraped and
scratched, and drew long,
curly lines like fish-hooks
across the paper. Yegor wrote
at full speed and underlined
each sentence two or three
times. He was sitting on a
stool with his legs stretched
far apart under the table, a
fat, lusty creature with a fiery
nape and the face of a
bulldog. He was the very
essence of coarse, arrogant,
stiff-necked vulgarity, proud
to have been born and bred in
a pot-house, and Vasilissa
"Turn your attention to the
fifth volume of military
definitions," Yegor wrote.
"The word soldier is a
general appellation, a
distinguishing term. Both the
commander-in-chief of an
army and the last infantryman
in the ranks are alike called
soldiers--"
The old man's lips moved and
he said in a low voice:
"I should like to see my little
grandchildren!"
84