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Updated: June 24, 2025
He longs to call the boy, to comfort him, to beg his forgiveness, to promise him on his word of honour, to call his dead mother to witness, but instead of words, sobs break from him. It is a grey, cold morning. When he reaches the town school Vassya untwists his granny's shawl, and goes into the school with nothing over his jacket for fear the boys should say he looks like a woman.
And without a voice I am like a workman without hands." "That's true," Panteley agreed. "I think of myself as a ruined man and nothing more." At that moment Vassya chanced to catch sight of Yegorushka. His eyes grew moist and smaller than ever. "There's a little gentleman driving with us," and he covered his nose with his sleeve as though he were bashful. "What a grand driver!
"You might, perhaps, but . . . you had better lie in bed another day." "She is awfully depressed," Vassya whispers in his ear, "such gloomy thoughts, such pessimism. I am dreadfully uneasy about her." The doctor sits down to the little table, and rubbing his forehead, prescribes bromide of potassium for Lizotchka, then makes his bow, and promising to look in again in the evening, departs.
By the stove, the granny is pouring out the children's tea. Only the eldest, Vassya, drinks out of a glass, for the others the tea is poured out into saucers. Yegoritch is squatting on his heels before the stove, thrusting a bit of iron into the fire. His head is heavy and his eyes are lustreless from yesterday's drinking-bout; he sighs and groans, trembles and coughs.
"Oh, I don't care for it, . . ." answered Vassya. "How is it your chin is swollen?" "It's bad. . . . I used to work at the match factory, little sir. . . . The doctor used to say that it would make my jaw rot. The air is not healthy there. There were three chaps beside me who had their jaws swollen, and with one of them it rotted away altogether." Styopka soon came back with the net.
The waggoner in the reddish-brown coat and the spongy swelling on his face, who was conducting an unseen choir, stopped. Hearing his name, and waiting till Panteley and Vassya came up to him, he walked beside them. "What are you talking about?" he asked in a husky muffled voice. "Why, Vassya here is angry," said Panteley.
Towards night, Yegoritch and Putohin go out, and in the morning Vassya cannot find granny's shawl. That is the drama that took place in that flat. After selling the shawl for drink, Putohin did not come home again. Where he disappeared to I don't know. After he disappeared, the old woman first got drunk, then took to her bed.
"Every man to his own taste. . . . You drink out of the pail well, drink, and may it do you good. . . ." "You darling, you beauty!" Vassya said suddenly, in a caressing, plaintive voice. "You darling!" His eyes were fixed on the distance; they were moist and smiling, and his face wore the same expression as when he had looked at Yegorushka. "Who is it you are talking to?" asked Kiruha.
While the dry twigs and stems were burning up, Kiruha and Vassya went off somewhere to get water from a creek; they vanished into the darkness, but could be heard all the time talking and clinking their pails; so the creek was not far away. The light from the fire lay a great flickering patch on the earth; though the moon was bright, yet everything seemed impenetrably black beyond that red patch.
Do you know, Vassya, it's awfully stupid of you not to take part in amateur theatricals! You have a remarkable talent! You are much better than Sysunov. There was an amateur called Sysunov who played with us in It's My Birthday. A first-class comic talent, only fancy: a nose as thick as a parsnip, green eyes, and he walks like a crane. . . . We all roared; stay, I will show you how he walks."
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