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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.
"But I haven't got it, your watch," answered the boy in an angry and tearful voice; "my father saw it and took it away from me; and he was for thrashing me, too. 'You must have stolen it from somewhere, he said. 'What fool is going to make you a present of a watch?" "And who is your father?" "My father? Trofimitch." "But what is he? What's his trade?" "He is an old soldier, a sergeant.
"Well!" growled Trofimitch, still amazed and, from old habit, devouring me with his eyes as though I were his superior officer. "It's a queer business, eh? Well, there it is, no understanding it. Ulyana, hold your tongue!" he snapped out at his wife who was opening her mouth.
They lived in a smoky hut in the back-yard of a factory, which had long ago been burnt down and not rebuilt. We found both Trofimitch and his wife at home. The discharged sergeant was a tall old man, erect and sinewy, with yellowish grey whiskers, an unshaven chin and a perfect network of wrinkles on his cheeks and forehead. His wife looked older than he.
"Here's the watch," he added, opening the table drawer; "if it really is yours, take it by all means; but what's the rouble for? Eh?" "Take the rouble, Trofimitch, you senseless man," wailed his wife. "You have gone crazy in your old age! We have not a half-rouble between us, and then you stand on your dignity!
Her red eyes, which looked buried in her unhealthily puffy face, kept blinking dejectedly. Some sort of dark rags hung about them by way of clothes. I explained to Trofimitch what I wanted and why I had come. He listened to me in silence without once winking or moving from me his stupid and strained typically soldierly eyes. "Whims and fancies!" he brought out at last in a husky, toothless bass.
It was no good their cutting off your pigtail, you are a regular old woman just the same! How can you go on like that when you know nothing about it? ... Take the money, if you have a fancy to give back the watch!" "Ulyana, hold your tongue, you dirty slut!" Trofimitch repeated. "Whoever heard of such a thing, talking away? Eh? The husband is the head; and yet she talks!
Grandfather Trofimitch, who knew all the pedigrees of all the house-serfs in the direct line to the fourth generation, had once indeed been known to say that he remembered that Styopushka was related to a Turkish woman whom the late master, the brigadier Alexy Romanitch had been pleased to bring home from a campaign in the baggage waggon.
"And what, your honour, Ivan Ivanitch, do you want with the herb that cleaves all things?" "The tomb weighs on me; it weighs on me, Trofimitch: I want to get away away." 'My word! observed Fedya, 'he didn't enjoy his life enough, I suppose. 'What a marvel! said Kosyta. 'I thought one could only see the departed on All Hallows' day.
Once grandfather Trofimitch met him. "What," says he, "your honour, Ivan Ivanitch, are you pleased to look for on the ground?" 'He asked him? put in Fedya in amazement. 'Yes, he asked him. 'Well, I call Trofimitch a brave fellow after that.... Well, what did he say? "I am looking for the herb that cleaves all things," says he. But he speaks so thickly, so thickly.
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