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Updated: May 11, 2025
He looked about him, and noticed that the faint light which filled the room proceeded from a night-light, screened by a sheet of paper, and placed in one corner, probably by Platósha while he was asleep. He even detected the odour of incense also, in all probability, the work of her hands. He hastily dressed himself. Remaining in bed, sleeping, was not to be thought of.
And Platosha made Kupfer welcome; it is true she thought him at times excessively unceremonious, but instinctively perceiving and realising that he was sincerely attached to her precious Yasha, she not only put up with the noisy guest, but felt kindly towards him.
'Though by now, he pursued his reflections, 'it's all over, of course.... I must have seemed absurd to her.... This idea was disagreeable to him, and again he was angry ... both with her ... and with himself. On reaching home, he shut himself up in his study. He did not want to see Platosha.
"I shall return at the end of a week," replied Arátoff, as he stood half-turned away from his aunt, who was still sitting on the floor. Platósha tried to remonstrate again, but Arátoff shouted at her in an utterly unexpected and unusual manner: "I am not a baby," he yelled, turning pale all over, while his lips quivered and his eyes flashed viciously. "I am six-and-twenty years of age.
It was exactly as though something had scorched and illuminated him. "Yes," he said aloud, "she was unsullied and I am unsullied.... That is what has given her this power!" Thoughts concerning the immortality of the soul, the life beyond the grave, again visited him. He wanted to look up the place where those words were to be found.... He had no Bible; he went to borrow one from Platósha.
Platosha ceased speaking, and left the room.... She had hardly ever uttered such a long and animated speech in her life.... While Aratov thought, 'Auntie's right, I dare say.... I'm not used to it; that's all ... it actually was the first time his attention had ever happened to be drawn to a person of the female sex ... at least he had never noticed it before 'I mustn't give way to it.
'I'm twenty-six, I know what I'm about, I'm free to do what I like! I suffer no one ... Give me the money for the journey, pack my box with my clothes and linen ... and don't torture me! I'll be back in a week, Platosha, he added, in a somewhat softer tone. Platosha got up, sighing and groaning, and, without further protest, crawled to her room. Yasha had alarmed her.
Again Arátoff gazed intently at his aunt, and burst into a loud laugh.... The figure of the kind old woman in nightcap and wrapper, with her frightened, long-drawn face, really was extremely comical. All that mysterious something which had surrounded him, had stifled him, all those delusions dispersed on the instant. "No, Platósha, my dear, it is not necessary," he said.
These reflections occupied Arátoff to such a degree that at tea he suddenly asked Platósha whether she believed in the immortality of the soul. She did not understand at first what it was he had asked; but afterward she crossed herself and replied, "of course. How could the soul be otherwise than immortal?" "But if that is so, can it act after death?" Arátoff put a second question.
They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable, rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and truth. Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.
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