“I tried to arrange for you to be set free from the shop, and given over to the workshop, but it was no good.
Kouzma would not have it.
You are very much out of favor with him.”
I had an enemy in the house, too — the shopman’s fiancee, an immoderately sportive damsel. All the young fellows in the workshop played about with her; they used to wait for her in the vestibule and embrace her. This did not offend her; she only squeaked like a little dog.
She was chewing something from morning to night; her pockets were always full of ginger — bread or buns; her jaws moved ceaselessly. To look at her vacant face with its restless gray eyes was unpleasant.
She used to ask Pavl and me riddles which always concealed some coarse obscenity, and repeated catchwords which, being said very quickly, became improper words.
One day one of the elderly workmen said to her:
“You are a shameless hussy, my girl!”
To which she answered swiftly, in the words of a ribald song:
“If a maiden is too modest, She’ll never be a woman worth having.”
It was the first time I had ever seen such a girl. She disgusted and frightened me with her coarse playfulness, and seeing that her antics were not agreeable to me, she became more and more spiteful toward me.
Once when Pavl and I were in the cellar helping her to steam out the casks of kvass and cucumbers she suggested:
“Would you like me to teach you how to kiss, boys?”
“I know how to kiss better than you do” Pavl answered, and I told her to go and kiss her future hus — band. I did not say it very politely, either.
She was angry.
“Oh, you coarse creature!
A young lady makes herself agreeable to him and he turns up his nose. Well, I never! What a ninny!”
And she added, shaking a threatening finger at me:
“You just wait. I will remember that of you!”
But Pavl said to her, taking my part:
“Your young man would give you something if he knew about your behavior!”
She screwed up her pimply face contemptuously.
“I am not afraid of him!
I have a dowry. I am much better than he is!
A girl only has the time till she is married to amuse herself.”
She began to play about with Pavl, and from that time I found in her an unwearying calumniator.
My life in the shop became harder and harder. I read church books all the time. The disputes and conversations of the valuers had ceased to amuse me, for they were always talking over the same things in the same old way.
Petr Vassilich alone still interested me, with his knowledge of the dark side of hu — man life, and his power of speaking interestingly and enthusiastically.
Sometimes I thought he must be the prophet Elias walking the earth, solitary and vindictive.
But each time that I spoke to the old man frankly about people, or about my own thoughts, he repeated all that I had said to the shopman, who either ridiculed me offensively, or abused me angrily.
One day I told the old man that I sometimes wrote his sayings in the note-book in which I had copied various poems taken out of books. This greatly alarmed the valuer, who limped towards me swiftly, asking anxiously:
“What did you do that for?
It is not worth while, my lad.
So that you may remember?
No; you just give it up.
What a boy you are!
Now you will give me what you have written, won’t you?”
He tried long and earnestly to persuade me to either give him the notebook, or to burn it, and then he began to whisper angrily with the shopman.
As we were going home, the latter said to me:
“You have been taking notes? That has got to be” stopped!
Do you hear?
Only detectives do that sort of thing!”
Then I asked incautiously:
“And what about Sitanov?
He also takes notes.”
“Also.
That long fool?”
He was silent for a long time, and then with unusual gentleness he said:
“Listen; if you show me your note-book and Sitanov’s, too, I will give you half a ruble!
Only do it on the quiet, so that Sitanov does not see.”