A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [43]
The wives of the local authorities, the “mistresses of the waters,” so to speak, were more gracious. They have lorgnettes, they pay less attention to uniform, and they are accustomed in the Caucasus to meeting ardent hearts beneath numbered buttons and educated minds under white military caps. These ladies are very charming and remain so for a long time! Every year their admirers are relieved by new ones, and this is perhaps the secret of their inexhaustible graciousness. Climbing the narrow path to the Elizabeth Spring, I overtook a crowd of men, civilian and military, which, as I later learned, comprised a particular class of people among those hoping to benefit from the action of the waters. They drink (but not the waters); they promenade little; they flirt but only in passing; they gamble; and they complain of boredom. They are dandies: they adopt academic poses as they lower their wickered glasses into the well of sulfurous water. The civilians among them wear light-blue neckcloths, and the military turn out the frills of their collars. They profess deep disdain toward provincial houses and long for the aristocratic drawing rooms of the capital where they wouldn’t be admitted.
Finally, the well . . . In the little square next to it there is a small house with a red roof built over baths, and beyond that is a gallery where people promenade during rainstorms. A few injured officers sat on a bench, their crutches tucked up—pale, sad. A few ladies were walking to and fro with quick steps around the square, awaiting the effects of the water. There were two or three lovely little faces among them. Under the alley of vines obscuring the slope of Mount Mashuk, I could see the occasional flashings of a colorful hat, which must have belonged to persons who loved company in their solitude, since there was always a military cap, or one of those ugly round hats next to it. In a pavilion called the Aeolian Harp, which was built above a steep rock-face, the lovers of views hung about and directed a telescope at Mount Elbrus. Among them were two tutors with their pupils, come to be cured of scrofula.
I stopped, out of breath, on the edge of the hill and, leaning on the corner of a little house, I started to examine the picturesque environs, when suddenly I heard a familiar voice behind me:
“Pechorin! Have you been here long?”
I turn around: Grushnitsky! We embraced. I had met him on active service. He had been wounded by a bullet in the leg and had come to the waters a week before me.
Grushnitsky is a cadet. After just a year in service, he wears a heavy soldier’s greatcoat—a particular kind of dandyism. He has the St. George’s Cross for soldiers. He is well-built, has black hair and a dark complexion. He looks as though he is twenty-five years old, but he is barely twenty-one. He throws his head back when he talks and he twists his mustache with his left hand all the time, while the right hand leans on his crutch. His speech is quick and fanciful: he is one of those people who have a flamboyant phrase ready for any situation, who aren’t touched by the simply beautiful, and who grandly drape themselves with extraordinary feelings, sublime passions and exceptional suffering. They delight in producing an effect. They are madly fancied by romantic provincial girls. Toward old age, they become either peaceful landowners, or drunks—and sometimes both. There are often many good attributes to their souls, but not a half-kopeck piece of poetry. Grushnitsky’s passion was to declaim: he bespattered you with words as soon as the conversation left the arena of usual understanding; I could never argue with him. He doesn’t answer objections, he doesn’t listen to you. As soon as you stop, he begins a long tirade, which seemingly has some sort of connection to what you have just said, but which in fact is only a continuation of his own speech.
He is fairly sharp: his