The Petty Demon by Fyodor Sologub Page B

said.
    “Vile,” Peredonov repeated and cast an angry glance at the sugar.
    “As you wish,” Vershina said and in the same voice began to talk about something else without pausing or making any transition.
     “Cherepnin is getting to be a bore,” she said and laughed.
    Marta laughed as well. Peredonov looked on with indifference. He never took part in the affairs of others. He didn’t like
     people, he never thought about them other than in connection with what benefits or pleasures he might derive from them. Vershina
     smiled complacently and said:
    “He thinks that I’m going to marry him.”
    “Terribly insolent of him,” Marta said, not because she herself thought so but because she wanted to please and flatter Vershina.
    “He was spying at the window yesterday,” Vershina related. “He sneaked into the garden when we were having dinner. There’s
     a barrel under the window, we put it there to catch the rain and it was completely full. It was covered with a board and you
     couldn’t see the water He crawled up on the barrel and was looking through the window. The lamp was burning where we were,
     so he could see us but we couldn’t see him. Suddenly weheard a noise. At first we were frightened, we ran outside. And there he had tumbled into the water. But he crawled out and
     ran off completely wet. There was a wet trail along the path. But we recognized him from the back.”
    Marta gave a delicate, cheerful laugh, the way well-mannered children laugh. Vershina related everything quickly and casually
     as though she were simply pouring it out (she always talked that way) and all at once she stopped, sat there and smiled with
     the corner of her mouth, which made her whole swarthy and dry face fall into wrinkles and slightly revealed teeth that were
     blackened from smoking. Peredonov thought for a while and suddenly burst into laughter. He never reacted immediately to what
     seemed amusing to him. His faculties were dull and slow.
    Vershina was smoking one cigarette after the other. She couldn’t live without tobacco smoke before her nose.
    “We’ll soon be neighbors,” Peredonov announced.
    Vershina threw a quick glance at Marta. The latter blushed slightly, looked at Peredonov in timid expectation and immediately
     averted her eyes once more into the garden.
    “Are you moving?” Vershina asked. “What for?”
    “It’s a long way to the gymnasium,” Peredonov explained.
    Vershina smiled mistrustfully. She thought that it was more likely that he wanted to be closer to Marta.
    “But you’ve been living there for a long while, several years now,” she said.
    “And the landlady is a bitch,” Peredonov said angrily.
    “Really?” Vershina asked mistrustfully and smiled crookedly.
    Peredonov grew somewhat animated.
    “She put up new wallpaper and it’s disgusting,” he explained. “The pieces don’t match. Suddenly in the dining room there’s
     a completely different pattern above the door, the entire room is done in a free pattern and small flowers and then over the
     door are stripes and polka dots. And the color is all wrong. We might not have noticed but Falastov came and laughed. And
     everyone is laughing.”
    “Imagine, what a disgrace,” Vershina agreed.
    “Only we’re not telling her that we’re moving out,” Peredonov said, lowering his voice. “We’ll find an apartment and just
     go, but we’re not telling her.”
    “Naturally,” Vershina said.
    “Otherwise, to be sure, she’ll cause a scandal,” Peredonov said and a fearful anxiety was mirrored in his eyes. “And on top
     of it, why pay her for a month, for that kind of vileness?”
    Peredonov burst into laughter over the happy thought that he would move out of the apartment and not pay for it.
    “She’ll demand the money,” Vershina noted.
    “Let her, I won’t pay,” Peredonov said angrily. “We made a trip to St. Petersburg, so we weren’t using the apartment at the
     time.”
    “Still, the apartment