nose—from hay fever in summer and from an
ordinary cold in winter.
Klavdiya, the mother, a plain, skinny wom-
an with short thick legs, saw herself as a victim
and martyr and nagged away at her husband
from morning till night. to bring about peace,
the old woman would intervene on behalf of
her son-in-law with the conciliatory words,
“Well, what do you expect from the fool?”
Klavdiya, who had dreamed in her youth
of becoming a ballerina, believed that marriage
to Strokotov had been her undoing. So as to
bring a little solace to her life of sacrifice, she
told people to call her “Kate.” This name was
pronounced by the family with a soft vowel,
Russian-style: “Kyate.”
nature had set herself a very particular goal,
one might say, in engendering the members of
this family. The husband was intended for the role
c. 175: dalmatia
inheritance
from my grandfather Verus, nobility of character and evenness of temper.
from the reputation of my father and what i
remember of him, modesty and manliness.
from my mother, piety and generosity, and to
abstain not only from doing wrong but even
from contemplating it; and the simplicity, too,
of her way of life, far removed from that of
the rich.
from my great-grandfather, that i never had
to attend the public schools but had the use
of good teachers at home, and to have come
to realize that this is a matter on which one
should spare no expense.
Marcus Aurelius, from meditations. At the time
of Aurelius’ birth in 121, his paternal grandfather
was consul, his maternal grandmother was heiress
to one of Rome’s largest fortunes, and an aunt was
married to the future emperor Antoninus Pius.
Under the tutelage of the rhetorician Junius Rusticus,
Aurelius as a young man became acquainted with
the Stoic philosophy of Epictetus, a former slave,
whose worldview he reiterates in his book, originally
written in Greek and titled to myself. He served
as emperor of Rome from 161 to 180.
of a sheep, Kyate for that of an old spinster and
seamstress, while the old woman was meant to
be a peaceful lover of coffee and gossip. But fate,
like a third-rate director, had allotted everyone
the wrong role, raised the curtain, played some
little jingle, and set her machine in motion.
Strokotov wore himself out, unable to live
up to the role of destroyer of lives; Kyate was
all too obviously no snake charmer; while the
old woman seemed to be struggling with a role
a bit like that of a King lear [England, page
43] with no Cordelia: “Blow, winds, and crack
your cheeks!”
Strokotov got so exhausted dragging all the
suitcases, as well as the basket for the journey,
that he even (quite unprecedentedly) began
to answer back. This was somehow as absurd
and even horrifying as if a guinea pig under a
vivisector’s scalpel were to look up indignantly
and say, “Why are you cutting my belly open,
you bastard?”
On very hot days, railwaymen like to tem-
per their rolling stock in the sun, so that a car-
riage feels like a red-hot iron by the time the
train leaves the station.
little Petya did not want to look out
through the window; instead he got straight
to work on the pies. The old woman began
mournfully listing the things they had forgotten and that were therefore sure to be devoured
by moths.
