Allow me to tender my humble thanks for your hospitality...."
He went out of the room without extending his hand.
Then it was that Katya, always so silent and lamblike, almost shouted, clenching her-fists:
"Vadim, wait a moment, please...." (He turned, raising his eyebrows.) "Vadim, you're in the" wrong, this time...." (She flushed violently.) "Nobody can live with your feelings, with your views...."
"Oh, indeed!" said Roshchin menacingly.
"My congratulations."
"Vadim, you have never asked me what I thought and I demanded nothing, never interfered in your affairs. I believed in you. But do understand, Vadim, dear one, what you think is not right.
I've been longing to tell you for ages. Something quite different must be done. Not that for which you came here.... First you've got to understand. And only then, if you are quite sure..." (dropping her hands in excitement, she cracked the joints under the table). "If you are sure your conscience will allow you—then go out and kill...."
"Katya!" cried Roshchin harshly, wincing as from a blow.
"Kindly hold your tongue!"
"I won't!
I'm saying this because I love you dearly. You mustn't be a murderer, you mustn't, you mustn't...."
Tetkin, not venturing to rush up to either of them, kept whispering:
"My friends, my friends, let's talk it all over. We'll agree in the end."
But it was too late to come to an agreement.
The furious hate which had been accumulating in Roshchin for the last few months, suddenly burst out violently.
He stood in the doorway, his neck craned, his teeth bared, and looked at Katya.
"I hate you!" he hissed.
"Go to the devil!
You and your love! Find yourself a Yid ... a Bolshevik! Go to the devil!"
From his throat came the same painful sound Katya had heard in the railway carriage.
He seemed to be on the verge of breakdown, and the air was heavy with catastrophe.... (Tetkin actually moved up to get in front of Katya), but Roshchin, his eyes slowly narrowing, went away.
Semyon Krasilnikov, sitting up in his hospital cot, listened sombrely to his brother Alexei.
The presents sent by Matryona—lard, poultry, pies—lay at the foot of the bed.
Semyon did not so much as look at them.
He was lean, his face sickly, unshaven, his hair unkempt from lying so long, his legs in the yellow calico underdrawers, thin.
He was rolling a red egg from one hand to the other.
His brother Alexei, tanned, his beard tinged with gold, sat on a stool, his legs in their good boots wide apart; he was speaking kindly and pleasantly, but at every word Semyon's heart became more and more estranged from him.
"The peasants have their own line, brother, and the workers have theirs," Alexei was saying.
"The workers went down into the
'Deep Mine,' and it was flooded, the machinery out of order, the engineers all run away.
And we've got to eat, haven't we?
So all the workers went into the Red Guard.
It means it's to their interest to drive the revolution deeper, doesn't it?
But our peasant revolution is—ten inches deep of good soil.
And we must deepen it by ploughing, sowing, reaping.
Am I right?
If we all go and fight, who's going to do the work?
The women?
It's a lot if they can manage the cattle all by themselves!
And the earth requires care and cherishing.
That's how it is, brother.
We'll go home and you'll recover quicker on our own food.
We have land of our own now.
And there's no one to work.
To harrow, to sow, to harvest—how can Matryona and I manage alone?
We have eighteen boars now, and I have my eye on a second cow.
And hands are needed for all this."
Alexei drew from his pocket a pouch filled with home-grown tobacco.
Semyon declined to smoke with a shake of the head.