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How can you act so? Take the money! Would you give the watch away?" "Be still, you chatterbox!" repeated Trofimytsch. "When did one ever see such a sight? A woman reasoning! ha! Her husband is the head, and she disputes! Petka, don't mutter, or I'll kill you. There's the watch." Trofimytsch held out the watch toward me, but would not let go of it.
"How foolish!" he said at last with a rough, toothless bass voice. "Do fine young men behave like that? If Petka did not steal the watch, that is one thing; but if he did, then I'll give it to him with the stick, as they used to do in the regiment. What is that? 'What a pity! The stick, that's all. Pshaw!"
In the meantime, Nicolka goes through the streets of ill fame, and comes back and tells Petka all his experiences. The precocious knowledge of Nicolka astonishes the child, whose one ambition is to be like his friend one of these days. While waiting, he dreams of a vague country, but he cannot guess its location nor its character. And no one comes to take him there.
Petka the hero of "Petka in the Country" is, at ten years of age, a barber's apprentice. He does not yet smoke as does his thirteen year old friend Nicolka, whom he wants to equal in everything. Petka's principal occupation, in the rare moments when the shop is empty, is to look out of the window at the poorly dressed men and women who are sitting on the benches of the boulevard.
Petka, don't budge, I'll kill you.... Here's the watch!" Trofimitch held out the watch to me, but did not let go of it. He pondered, looked down, then fixed the same intent, stupid stare upon me. Then all at once bawled at the top of his voice: "Where is it? Where's your rouble?" "Here it is, here it is," I responded hurriedly and I snatched the coin out of my pocket.
"Is that the way gentlemen behave? And if Petka really did not steal the watch then I'll give him one for that! To teach him not to play the fool with little gentlemen! And if he did steal it, then I would give it to him in a very different style, whack, whack, whack! With the flat of a sword; in horseguard's fashion! No need to think twice about it! What's the meaning of it? Eh?
From morning till evening he always hears the same jerky cry: "Some water, boy!" But one morning his mother, the cook Nadezhda, tells the barber that her master and mistress have told her to take Petka to the country for a few days. Then begins for him an enchanted existence. He goes in bathing four times a day, fishes, goes on long walks, climbs trees, rolls in the grass.
In the mind of Liubka quickly flashed the images of her former mates, Jennka and Tamara, so proud, so brave and resourceful oh, far brainier than these maidens and she, almost unexpectedly for herself, suddenly said sharply: "There was a lot of them. I've already forgotten. Kolka, Mitka, Volodka, Serejka, Jorjik, Troshka, Petka, and also Kuzka and Guska with a party. But why are you interested?"
On one of our visits to Ragusa we stayed at the Hotel Petka at Gravosa, and in front of the windows a flotilla of torpedo-boats lay at anchor with steam up. It was interesting to see the men doing everything to word of command.
This sensibility, this attachment to existence, form the theme of four touching stories: "He Was," "Petka in the Country," "The Cellar," and "The Angel." The action of "He Was" takes place in a hospital, where a deacon, a foolishly debonair man, who is attached to his stunted existence, and a pessimistic merchant, thoroughly satiated, are at the point of death.
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