This reporter
had for long aroused in Boris some blind and prickling irritation.
That he was not one of his own herd really meant nothing. But
Boris, like many students (and also officers, junkers, and high-
school boys) had grown accustomed to the fact that the outside
"civilian" people, who accidentally fell into a company of
students on a spree, should hold themselves somewhat subordinately
and with servility in it, flatter the studying youths, be struck
with its daring, laugh at its jokes, admire its self-admiration,
recall their own student years with a sigh of suppressed envy. But
in Platonov there not only was none of this customary wagging of
the tail before youth, but, on the contrary, there was to be felt
a certain abstracted, calm and polite indifference.
Besides that, Sobashnikov was angered--and angered with a petty,
jealous vexation--by that simple and yet anticipatory attention
which was shown to the reporter by everybody in the establishment,
beginning with the porter and ending with the fleshy, taciturn
Katie. This attention was shown in the way he was listened to, in
that triumphal carefulness with which Tamara filled his glass, and
in the way Little White Manka pared a pear for him solicitously,
and in the delight of Zoe, who had caught the case skillfully
thrown to her across the table by the reporter, when she had
vainly asked for a cigarette from her two neighbors, who were lost
in conversation; and in the way none of the girls begged either
chocolate or fruits from him, in the lively gratitude for his
little services and his treating.
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