Chapter Part One: II "Maxim Maximych" of A Hero of our Time - Study Guide by Mikhail Lermontov

Part One: II "Maxim Maximych"

The second part of the story of Pechorin continues when the author / narrator of "Bela" finds himself stuck unexpectedly in a hotel in Vladikavkaz for a few days shortly after parting company with Maxim Maximych, while he waits for the military detachment that accompanies convoys travelling through Kabarda to arrive. A day after he arrives, Maxim Maximych happens to stop at the same place and the narrator offers to share his room at the inn with him. That evening a smart carriage of foreign manufacture arrives which turns out to belong to Pechorin. Maxim is overjoyed and waits by the gate for Pechorin to return from supper, which he is so long in doing that Maxim finally gives up.

The next morning while Maxim is seeing the town commandant Pechorin returns. At this point the reader is given the only detailed description of Pechorin's physical appearance, which is observed by the narrator. The narrator sends a message to Maxim and he comes running back only to be very coldly greeted by his old comrade and given an equally cold farewell after being told that Pechorin is heading to Persia. As his carriage leaves Maxim asks him what he should do with papers of his that he has been lugging round on the off chance that they might meet again. Pechorin answers that he does not care and it is thus that the narrator comes into the possession of Pechorin's journals, which Maxim says that he would otherwise use for cartridge wadding. Maxim is upset by his encounter with Pechorin and parts rather sourly with the narrator, who leaves alone.