'Don't you like that?' David called after him and put his tongue out.
Then he tried to get up but could not.
'I must have hurt myself somehow,' he said, gasping and frowning. 'I
remember the water dashed me against a post.'
'Did you see Raissa?' he added suddenly.
'No. I did not.... Stay, stay, stay! Now I remember, wasn't it she
standing on the bank by the bridge? ... Yes ... yes ... a dark dress...
a yellow kerchief on her head, yes it must have been Raissa.'
'Well, and afterwards.... Did you see her?'
'Afterwards ... I don't know, I had no thought to spare for her....
You jumped in ...'
David was suddenly roused. 'Alyosha, darling, go to her at once, tell
her I am all right, that there's nothing the matter with me. Tomorrow
I shall be with them. Go as quickly as you can, brother, for my sake!'
David held out both hands to me.... His red hair, by now dry, stuck up
in amusing tufts.... But the softened expression of his face seemed
the more genuine for that. I took my cap and went out of the house,
trying to avoid meeting my father and reminding him of his promise.
XXI
'Yes, indeed,' I reflected as I walked towards the Latkins', 'how was
it that I did not notice Raissa? What became of her? She must have
seen....'
And all at once I remembered that the very moment of David's fall, a
terrible piercing shriek had rung in my ears.
'Was not that Raissa? But how was it I did not see her afterwards?'
Before the little house in which Latkin lodged there stretched a
waste-ground overgrown with nettles and surrounded by a broken hurdle.
I had scarcely clambered over the hurdle (there was no gate anywhere)
when the following sight met my eyes: Raissa, with her elbows on her
knees and her chin propped on her clasped hands, was sitting on the
lowest step in front of the house; she was looking fixedly straight
before her; near her stood her little dumb sister with the utmost
composure brandishing a little whip, while, facing the steps with his
back to me, old Latkin, in torn and shabby drawers and high felt
boots, was trotting and prancing up and down, capering and jerking his
elbows. Hearing my footsteps he suddenly turned round and squatted
on his heels--then at once, skipping up to me, began speaking
very rapidly in a trembling voice, incessantly repeating,
'Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo!' I was dumbfoundered. I had not seen him for a
long time and should not, of course, have known him if I had met him
anywhere else. That red, wrinkled, toothless face, those lustreless
round eyes and touzled grey hair, those jerks and capers, that
senseless halting speech! What did it mean? What inhuman despair was
torturing this unhappy creature? What dance of death was this?
'Tchoo--tchoo,' he muttered, wriggling incessantly. 'See Vassilyevna
here came in tchoo--tchoo, just now.... Do you hear? With a trough on
the roof' (he slapped himself on the head with his hand), 'and there
she sits like a spade, and she is cross-eyed, cross-eyed, like
Andryushka; Vassilyevna is cross-eyed' (he probably meant to say
dumb), 'tchoo! My Vassilyevna is cross-eyed! They are both on the same
cork now. You may wonder, good Christians! I have only these two
little boats! Eh?'
Latkin was evidently conscious that he was not saying the right thing
and made terrible efforts to explain to me what was the matter. Raissa
did not seem to hear what her father was saying and the little sister
went on lashing the whip.
'Good-bye, diamond-merchant, good-bye, good-bye,' Latkin drawled
