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Updated: June 25, 2025
Ignat was about to put a piece of bread with caviar into his mouth, but his hand stopped, held back by his son's exclamation; he looked interrogatively at Foma's drooping head and asked: "You mean Yefim, don't you?" "Yes, he was bleeding. And how he walked afterward, how he cried," said the boy in a low voice. "Mm," roared Ignat, chewing a bite. "Well, are you sorry for him?"
It seemed that there was no end to the road and that something dark, inexhaustible and suffocating was slowly flowing along it in the distance. Ookhtishchev's kind, suasive voice rang monotonously in Foma's ears, and though he was not listening to his words, he felt that they were tenacious in their way; that they adhered to him, and that he was involuntarily memorizing them.
The light of the sun fell in thin stripes through the branches of the trees upon the white figure of the old man clad in his night-garments. There was such a profound silence in the garden that even the rustle of a branch, accidentally touched by Foma's clothes, seemed to him like a loud sound and he shuddered.
As for his father and Mayakin, who were watching him vigilantly, this uncertainty of Foma's character inspired them with serious apprehensions. "I cannot understand him!" Ignat would say with contrite heart. "He does not lead a dissipated life, he does not seem to run after the women, treats me and you with respect, listens to everything he is more like a pretty girl than a fellow!
He shook his head, and, raising his shoulders, announced calmly: "But if any one of you dare to touch me, even with a finger, I'll kill him! I swear it by the Lord. I'll kill as many as I can!" The crowd of people that stood opposite him swayed back, even as bushes rocked by the wind. They began to talk in agitated whispers. Foma's face grew darker, his eyes became round.
His bow evidently afforded great pleasure to Mayakin. The old man somehow coiled himself up, stamped his feet, and his face seemed beaming with a malicious smile. "The little boy will get money for nuts, it seems!" Sasha teased Foma. Her words together with his godfather's smile seemed to have kindled a fire in Foma's breast.
Foma stared at his lips and thought that the old man was surely such as he was said to be. "As a boy you looked more like your father," said Shchurov suddenly, and sighed. Then, after a moment's silence, he asked: "Do you remember your father? Do you ever pray for him? You must, you must pray!" he went on, after he heard Foma's brief answer.
A crowd had gathered around Yakov Tarasovitch Mayakin, and listened to his quiet speech with anger, and nodded their heads affirmatively. "Act, Yakov!" said Robustov, loudly. "We are all witnesses. Go ahead!" And above the general tumult of voices rang out Foma's loud, accusing voice: "It was not life that you have built you have made a cesspool! You have bred filth and putrefaction by your deeds!
Thanks to Mayakin's important position in town and to his extensive acquaintance on the Volga, business was splendid, but Mayakin's zealous interest in his affairs strengthened Foma's suspicions that his godfather was firmly resolved to marry him to Luba, and this made the old man more repulsive to him. He liked Luba, but at the same time she seemed suspicious and dangerous for him.
Foma's eyes, which flashed wildly, and his face distorted with wrath, suggested to the captain the happy thought to leave his master as soon as possible and, turning around quickly, he walked off. "Pshaw! How terrible! As it seems the apple did not fall too far from the tree," he muttered sneeringly, walking on the deck.
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