would stammer with an effort--he began every sentence with
'Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo, some scissors, some scissors,' ... and the word
scissors meant bread.... My father, he hated with all the strength left
him--he attributed all his misfortunes to my father's curse and called
him alternately the butcher and the diamond-merchant. 'Tchoo, tchoo,
don't you dare to go to the butcher's, Vassilyevna.' This was what he
called his daughter though his own name was Martinyan. Every day he
became more exacting; his needs increased.... And how were those needs
to be satisfied? Where could the money be found? Sorrow soon makes one
old: but it was horrible to hear some words on the lips of a girl of
seventeen.
XIII
I remember I happened to be present at a
conversation with David over the fence, on the
very day of her mother's death.
'Mother died this morning at daybreak,' she
said, first looking round with her dark expressive eyes and then
fixing them on the ground.
'Cook undertook to get a coffin cheap but she's not to be trusted; she
may spend the money on drink, even. You might come and look after her,
Davidushka, she's afraid of you.'
'I will come,' answered David. 'I will see to it. And how's your
father?'
'He cries; he says: 'you must spoil me, too.' Spoil must mean bury.
Now he has gone to sleep.' Raissa suddenly gave a deep sigh. 'Oh,
Davidushka, Davidushka!' She passed her half-clenched fist over her
forehead and her eyebrows, and the action was so bitter ... and as
sincere and beautiful as all her actions.
'You must take care of yourself, though,' David observed; 'you haven't
slept at all, I expect.... And what's the use of crying? It doesn't
help trouble.'
'I have no time for crying,' answered Raissa.
'That's a luxury for the rich, crying,' observed David.
Raissa was going, but she turned back.
'The yellow shawl's being sold, you know; part of mother's dowry. They
are giving us twelve roubles; I think that is not much.'
'It certainly is not much.'
'We shouldn't sell it,' Raissa said after a brief pause, 'but you see
we must have money for the funeral.'
'Of course you must. Only you mustn't spend money at random. Those
priests are awful! But I say, wait a minute. I'll come. Are you going?
I'll be with you soon. Goodbye, darling.'
'Good-bye, Davidushka, darling.'
'Mind now, don't cry!'
'As though I should cry! It's either cooking the dinner or crying. One
or the other.'
'What! does she cook the dinner?' I said to David, as soon as Raissa
was out of hearing, 'does she do the cooking herself?'
'Why, you heard that the cook has gone to buy a coffin.'
'She cooks the dinner,' I thought, 'and her hands are always so clean
and her clothes so neat.... I should like to see her there at work in
the kitchen.... She is an extraordinary girl!'
I remember another conversation at the fence. That time Raissa brought
with her her little deaf and dumb sister. She was a pretty child with
immense, astonished-looking eyes and a perfect mass of dull, black
hair on her little, head (Raissa's hair, too, was black and hers, too,
was without lustre). Latkin had by then been struck down by paralysis.
'I really don't know what to do,' Raissa began. 'The doctor has
written a prescription. We must go to the chemist's; and our peasant
(Latkin had still one serf) has brought us wood from the village and a
