Status Updates From Offshore, Human Voices, The...

When he arrived at the Alexandervoksal he found at first only Dolly. Ben had gone to the engine cleaning shed, Annushka was counting the money with the attendant in the 1st class ladies lavatory. Dolly was standing alone outside the stationmaster's office. She clung to him fiercely, sniffing at his spring overcoat, just out of store, like an animal. The two of them clung together.

Tvyordov's face was not designed to show much expression, but a kind of iron or wooden disapproval could be detected now.

Tvyordov's face was not designed to show much expression, but a kind of iron or wooden disapproval could be detected now.

The Sachs was not convenient, & not in good repair. The passionate affection which Dolly & Ben felt for it suggested that, after all, children and adults were hardly of the same species.

'Oh, but you're quite wrong Frank Albertovich,' said Volodya eagerly. He was young enough to speak clearly with his mouth full. 'I did mean to kill you. That's what I hadn't explained. I meant to shoot you, but unfortunately there was something wrong with the automatic.'
'I don't know what you mean by "unfortunately" in this connection,'said Frank

'why is it better now for women than it was 10 years ago?' asked Ben.
'It is better,' said Frank. 'But perhaps Lisa would explain why.'
Lisa never changed colour, but now she put down her spoon and said, 'I haven't much practise in explaining. It's unkind to ask anyone for more than they have to give.'
'unkind!' said Frank, aghast.

'I don't have electricity here,' he said, 'or tea, I mean tea as such. I make an infusion of the nine herbs of healing - buttercup, rattray, marguerite, dead nettle, wild parsley, St. John's wort, clover, balsam and grass. I gather them in summertime, and dry them out on my return.'
'those herbs of healing are for sick cows,' said Dolly.

'What's he saying now?' Asked Charlie.
'He's saying that a man who has drink vodka is like a child: what is in his heart comes straight to his lips.'
'Is that a traditional saying?'
' it may be,' said Bernov, 'I've never lived in a village & I'm not familar with traditional sayings.'

The merchant Kuriatin is keen to show Frank's brother-in-law a good time "ordinarily he would have done this by taking a taxi to the gipsy brothels in Petrovsky park. Where there good ghost brothels in Norbury? Frank reassured him on this point"

'I haven't any secrets, ' said Frank. 'Everyone in Moscow knows everything I do'.
- this seems to be true, more interesting maybe is that there are people in the novel whose doings seen to be unknown or over looked.

' The poor always cause trouble, my father was a country curate & we were as poor as diet.'
- Mrs Graham the chaplin's wife is a bit of a trouble maker

'& he's a vegetarian, too, like George Bernard Shaw. But She's isn't a post. It must be easier for him, writing price, to sustain himself on vegetables.'
- 😂

'I tell Frank that in his house it's more like the Arabian nights.'
'I'm glad, Frank, that your house has become like something out of the Arabian nights.'
😂

Lisa also smiled, & said to Frank in Russian, 'please don't think I intended to sit down here. I know you want to talk to your brother-in-law'.
' No, I don't want to talk to him,' Frank answered in English.
'Stay here, I'm in love with you.'
'Pardon, I didn't quite catch that,' said Charlie.
Lisa went silently away.

If I had to describe her, I'd say she was half-asleep, like a woman dreaming.
- and in Spring everything and everyone wakes up

'But we mustn't consider what money they deserve,' said Selwyn. 'Consider only whether we, the men of business, deserve to have money to give them.'
Bernov's face, so much more expressive than was good for him, crumpled up a little.

Clean-shaven, sharp-glancing, quick on the uptake, he had been impatient with his place there as head clerk, but his ideas - if they were his - were geared, perhaps irretrievably, to a large firm. He saw the business, any business, as an undeclared war against every employee below the ran of cost accountant.

He accepted a glass of vodka flavoured with caraway seeds, which was kept in the office exclusively for the police.

From downstairs a voice called out: 'sir, shots have been heard coming from your premises.'
It was the nightwatchman. Nothing on earth would bring him upstairs if there was a chance of being fired at. Altogether he was a sensible fellow.

'Come to Rusalochka's,' repeated Kuriatin, we will settle out business there once & for all."
Frank tried as far as possible to avoid this place, which conflicted with his idea of what was sensible & his preference for a quiet life.

Lisa had cut off her hair. Perhaps she had got someone else to cut it for her, because it seemed to have fallen acceptably into shape.
'That's how my teacher's hair is cut,' said Dolly. Frank was not sure whether the resemblance frightened her, or not.

Like all merchants & peasants, kuriatin was obsessed with the chance to cut down trees.
- echos of Uncle Vanya & the cherry orchard

Watching the breaking ice from the bridges was one of Moscow's favourite occupations. The Gazeta-kopeika said that a pair of dead lovers, clutched together, had floated by, frozen into the ice. The Gazeta repeated this story every spring.

He wrote to her regularly (his cousin) , as he did to all of them, but hadn't this month, & the slight physical sensation, not of guilt, but of feeling he ought to feel guilty, turned into a considerable irritation.

Miss Kinsman was dowdy, another of the words that couldn't be translated into Russian, because there was no way of suggesting a dismal unfashionableness which was not intentional, not slovenly, not disreputable, but simply Miss Kinsman's way of looking like herself.
- miss kinsman naturally seems to have neither kin nor a man

'Not only does she look like a dismissed governess, but it's clear that she was born looking like one' Mrs Graham had hold him. ' And that I consider unusually hard on her.'