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Chapter 10
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Chapter 10 Things were going very badly in the Bizyukin household that morning: the tax collector’s wife had noticed that the expensive diamond necklace she had worn the night before was missing and could find it nowhere. All the servants were scurrying about; so were their masters. They searched the whole house as well as the summerhouse for the missing necklace and found no trace of it. Bornovolokov began his inspection, while Termosesov was desperately occupied with something else; he kept fussing around by the trunk of the tarantass, where he kept his belongings. After removing several portraits of members of the royal family from his photograph collection, Termosesov used a penknife and an eraser to clean up those he thought looked soiled and then, after putting them in an envelope, he began writing a letter to a nonexistent friend in St. Petersburg. This is impossible to understand without knowing Termosesov’s plans. In the letter he described the local beauty of nature, the pinkish yellow hue of the clouds, his friendship with Bornovolokov, his bright hopes for a career in government service, and the property he stood to inherit in Samara Province , and at the end he added a light sketch of Old Town society as he had seen it the previous evening, criticizing it mercilessly and making an exception only for the postmaster’s wife. “This woman,” he wrote, “fully deserves to be singled out. Just imagine, there even seems to be something fateful about our meeting; as soon as I saw her, I felt a kind of filial attachment to her. Let me simply say that if she wished to flog me, I believe I would kiss her hand in gratitude . But actually I don’t even know myself how this will all end—she has two daughters. One of them is the perfect image of her mother, and the other one will likely turn out just as well. Who knows, my friend, for what purpose the inscrutable fates have brought me into contact with the family of this highly respected woman? Perhaps I will have to sing, ‘Good-bye, farewell, sweet freedom.’ Don’t think ill of me, my friend; rather, stop by here for a week yourself on your way home! Who knows, my friend, what will happen to you, too, when you see them. Living alone is no fun, you know, especially when you and I don’t have to worry about our daily bread and can also help other people! So good-bye for now. I will probably write to you again soon, however, because I intend to do a literary sketch based on this venerable postmaster’s wife and I’ll send it to you to have it published in the very best journal. Yours, Termosesov.” 222 PART III After addressing the letter to Nikolay Ivanovich Ivanov, Termosesov bent the sealed envelope between thumb and forefinger to make sure that the entire postscript about the postmaster’s wife could be read that way, then cleared his throat and said, “Now then, let’s see if Prepotensky was telling the truth yesterday when he said that she opens letters. If that’s true, then I’m all set.” With that he took the letter and photos and headed for the post office . In addition to the letter, Termosesov had in his pocket another composition , which he had written during the same early hour when he had sent Tuberozov the summons. That missive contained the following: “The complot [conspiracy] of democratic socialists masquerading as patriots is everywhere, and here it is made up of extremely diverse elements , and what is most nocuous of all is that the clergy participate in this complot to quite a significant extent—this element is extremely close to the common folk and therefore very dangerous. Here the results of the lamentable blunders of liberal tolerance are immeasureable and incalculable. I can say one thing: ever since certain newspapers were permitted to comment upon the importance of the Russian clergy in Galicia, many of our priests are evidently striving to imitate the Galician clergymen. They are no longer content merely to perform church rites, but are agitating for a church free of control and for Russian nationalism. “Old Town’s archpriest, Savely Tuberozov, who has already attracted the authorities’ attention more than once by his fierce and insolent temperament and pernicious way of thinking, has been repeatedly restrained from inadmissible conduct, but he nonetheless shows all too little evidence...