that my

family were angry with me for having given away the watch—and that if

he would consent to give it back to me I would gladly pay him for

it…. To be ready for any emergency, I had brought with me an

old-fashioned rouble of the reign of Elizabeth, which represented the

whole of my fortune.

«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. And he has no trade at all. He

mends old shoes, he re-soles them. That’s all his trade. That’s what

he lives by.»

«Where do you live? Take me to him.»

«To be sure I will. You tell my father that you gave me the watch. For

he keeps pitching into me, and calling me a thief! And my mother, too.

‘Who is it you are taking after,’ she says, ‘to be a thief?'»

I set off with the boy to his home. 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. 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. «Is that the way gentlemen behave? And if Petka really did not

steal the watch—then I’ll give him one for that! To teach him not to

play the fool with little gentlemen! And if he did steal it, then I

would give it to him in a very different style, whack, whack, whack!

With the flat of a sword; in horseguard’s fashion! No need to think

twice about it! What’s the meaning of it? Eh? Go for them with sabres!

Here’s a nice business! Tfoo!»

This last interjection Trofimitch pronounced in a falsetto. He was

obviously perplexed.

«If you are willing to restore the watch to me,» I explained to him—I

did not dare to address him familiarly in spite of his being a

soldier—«I will with pleasure pay you this rouble here. The watch is

not worth more, I imagine.»

«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. «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! 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! 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 he did not take it, he still stared at me. I laid the rouble on

the table. He suddenly brushed it into the drawer, thrust the watch

into my hand and wheeling to the left with a loud stamp, he hissed at

his wife and his son:

«Get along, you low wretches!»

Ulyana muttered something, but I had already dashed out into the yard

and into the street. Thrusting the watch to the very bottom of my

pocket and clutching it tightly in my hand, I hurried home.

VI

I had regained the possession of my watch but it afforded me no

satisfaction whatever. I did not venture to wear it, it was above all

necessary to conceal from David what I had done. What would he think

of me, of my lack of will? I could not even lock up the luckless watch

in a drawer: we had all our drawers in common. I had to hide it,

sometimes on the top of the cupboard, sometimes under my mattress,

sometimes behind the stove…. And yet I did not succeed in

hoodwinking David.

One day I took the watch from under a plank in the floor of our room

and proceeded to rub the silver case with an old chamois leather

glove. David had gone off somewhere in the town; I did not at all

expect him to be back quickly…. Suddenly he was in the doorway.

I was so overcome that I almost dropped the watch, and, utterly

disconcerted, my face painfully flushing crimson, I fell to fumbling

about my waistcoat with it, unable to find my pocket.

David looked at me and, as usual, smiled without speaking.

«What’s the matter?» he brought out at last. «You imagined I didn’t

know you had your watch again? I saw it the very day you brought it

back.»

«I assure you,» I began, almost on the point of tears….

David shrugged his shoulders.

«The watch is yours, you are free to do what you like with it.»

Saying these cruel words, he went out.

I was overwhelmed with despair. This time there could be no doubt!

David certainly despised me.

I could not leave it so.

«I will show him,» I thought, clenching my teeth, and at once with a

firm step I went into the passage, found our page-boy, Yushka, and

presented him with the watch!

Yushka would have refused it, but I declared that if he did not take

the watch from me I would smash it that very minute, trample it under

foot, break it to bits and throw it in the cesspool! He thought a

moment, giggled, and took the watch. I went back to our room and

seeing David reading there, I told him what I had done.

David did not take his eyes off the page and, again shrugging his

shoulder and smiling to himself, repeated that the watch was mine and

that I was free to do what I liked with it.

But it seemed to me that he already despised me a little less.

I was fully persuaded that I should never again expose myself to the

reproach of weakness of character, for the watch, the disgusting

present from my disgusting godfather, had suddenly grown so

distasteful to me that I was quite incapable of understanding how I

could have regretted it, how I could have begged for it back from the

wretched Trofimitch, who had, moreover, the right to think that he had

treated me with generosity.

Several days passed…. I remember that on one of them the great news

reached our town that the Emperor Paul was dead and his son Alexandr,

of whose graciousness and humanity there were such favourable rumours,

had ascended the throne. This news excited David intensely: the

possibility of seeing—of shortly seeing—his father occurred to him

at once. My father was delighted, too.

«They will bring back all the exiles from Siberia now and I expect

brother Yegor will not be forgotten,» he kept repeating, rubbing his

hands, coughing and, at the same time, seeming rather nervous.

David and I at once gave up working and going to the high school; we

did not even go for walks but sat in a corner counting and reckoning

in how many months, in how many weeks, in how many days «brother

Yegor» ought to come back and where to write to him and how to go to

meet him and in what way we should begin to live afterwards. «Brother

Yegor» was an architect: David and I decided that he ought to settle

in Moscow and there build big schools for poor people and we would go

to be his assistants. The watch, of course, we had completely

forgotten; besides, David had new cares…. Of them I will speak

later, but the watch was destined to remind us of its existence again.

VII

One morning we had only just finished lunch—I was sitting alone by

the window thinking of my uncle’s release—outside there was the steam

and glitter of an April thaw—when all at once my aunt, Pelageya

Petrovna, walked into the room. She was at all times restless and

fidgetty, she spoke in a shrill voice and was always waving her arms

about; on this occasion she simply pounced on me.

«Go along, go to your father at once, sir!» she snapped out. «What

pranks have you been up to, you shameless boy! You will catch it, both

of you. Nastasey Nastasyeitch has shown up all your tricks! Go along,

your father wants you…. Go along this very minute.»

Understanding nothing, I followed my aunt, and, as I crossed the

threshold of the drawing-room, I saw my father, striding up and down

and ruffling up his hair, Yushka in tears by the door and, sitting on

a chair in the corner, my godfather, Nastasey Nastasyeitch, with an

expression of peculiar malignancy in his distended nostrils and in his

fiery, slanting eyes.

My father swooped down upon me as soon as I walked in.

«Did you give your watch to Yushka? Tell me!»

I glanced at Yushka.

«Tell me,»