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"Brother!" exclaimed this weak voice "Christian souls!" We all turned round. Before us, in the same dress in which I had just seen him, stood Latkin, looking like a ghost, thin, haggard and sad. "God," he said in a somewhat childish way, raising his trembling, bent figure and gazing feebly at my father "God has punished, and I have come for Wa for Ra yes, yes, for Raissa. What choo what ails me?
Then my father turned to everyone in the room, to David, to Raissa and to me: "Do as you like, act as you think best," he brought out in a soft and mournful voice, and he withdrew. My aunt was running up to him, but he cried out sharply and gruffly to her. He was overwhelmed. "Me, oh, Lor ... me, oh, Lor ... mercy!" Latkin repeated. "I am a man."
Next morning David got up as though nothing were the matter and not long after, on the same day, two important events occurred: in the morning old Latkin died, and towards evening my uncle, Yegor, David's father, arrived in Ryazan. Without sending any letter in advance, without warning anyone, he descended on us like snow on our heads.
Then he turned and bowed so low that his hand nearly touched the floor, and said, "Do you also forgive me, Martinian Gavrilitsch," and he kissed his shoulder. Latkin answered by kissing in the air and winking his eyes: he evidently hardly knew what he was doing. Then my father turned to all who were in the room to David, Raissa and me.
But in that case why did I not see her? Before the hovel in which Latkin lived was an empty space covered with nettles and surrounded by a broken, tottering fence.
David's father still did not come and did not even send a letter. It had long been summer and June was drawing to its end. We were wearing ourselves out in suspense. Meanwhile there began to be rumours that Latkin had suddenly become much worse, and that his family were likely to die of hunger or else the house would fall in and crush them all under the roof.
The year advanced; we were well into the summer; it was near the end of June. We grew tired of waiting. Meanwhile, rumors grew thick that Latkin was growing worse, and that his family, as might have been expected, were starving, and that their hovel might at anytime fall to pieces and bury them all in its ruins.
"Good-bye, diamond-merchant, good-bye, good-bye," Latkin drawled several times in succession, making a low bow, seeming delighted at having at last got hold of an intelligible word. My head began to go round. "What does it all mean?" I asked of an old woman who was looking out of the window of the little house.
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