Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Part 32

At once I was pushed back and dragged away; everyone rushed up to him.

"Roll him, roll him," voices clamoured.

"No, no, stay," shouted Va.s.sily. "Take him home.... Take him home!"

"Take him home," Trankvillitatin himself chimed in.

"We will bring him to. We can see better there," Va.s.sily went on....

(I have liked him from that day.) "Lads, haven't you a sack? If not we must take him by his head and his feet...."

"Stay! Here's a sack! Lay him on it! Catch hold! Start! That's fine.

As though he were driving in a chaise."

A few minutes later David, borne in triumph on the sack, crossed the threshold of our house again.

XX

He was undressed and put to bed. He began to give signs of life while in the street, moaned, moved his hands.... Indoors he came to himself completely. But as soon as all anxiety for his life was over and there was no reason to worry about him, indignation got the upper hand again: everyone shunned him, as though he were a leper.

"May G.o.d chastise him! May G.o.d chastise him!" my aunt shrieked, to be heard all over the house. "Get rid of him, somehow, Porfiry Petrovitch, or he will do some mischief beyond all bearing."

"Upon my word, he is a viper; he is possessed with a devil,"

Trankvillitatin chimed in.

"The wickedness, the wickedness!" cackled my aunt, going close to the door of our room so that David might be sure to hear her. "First of all he stole the watch and then flung it into the water ... as though to say, no one should get it...."

Everyone, everyone was indignant.

"David," I asked him as soon as we were left alone, "what did you do it for?"

"So you are after that, too," he answered in a voice that was still weak; his lips were blue and he looked as though he were swollen all over. "What did I do?"

"But what did you jump into the water for?"

"Jump! I lost my balance on the parapet, that was all. If I had known how to swim I should have jumped on purpose. I shall certainly learn.

But the watch now--ah...."

But at that moment my father walked with a majestic step into our room.

"You, my fine fellow," he said, addressing me, "I shall certainly whip, you need have no doubt about that, though you are too big to lie on the bench now."

Then he went up to the bed on which David was lying. "In Siberia," he began in an impressive and dignified tone, "in Siberia, sir, in penal servitude, in the mines, there are people living and dying who are less guilty, less criminal than you. Are you a suicide or simply a thief or altogether a fool? Be so kind as to tell me just that!"

"I am not a suicide and I am not a thief," answered David, "but the truth's the truth: there are good men in Siberia, better than you or I ... who should know that, if not you?"

My father gave a subdued gasp, drew back a step, looked intently at David, spat on the floor and, slowly crossing himself, walked away.

"Don't you like that?" David called after him and put his tongue out.

Then he tried to get up but could not.

"I must have hurt myself somehow," he said, gasping and frowning. "I remember the water dashed me against a post."

"Did you see Raissa?" he added suddenly.

"No. I did not.... Stay, stay, stay! Now I remember, wasn't it she standing on the bank by the bridge? ... Yes ... yes ... a dark dress ... a yellow kerchief on her head, yes it must have been Raissa."

"Well, and afterwards.... Did you see her?"

"Afterwards ... I don't know, I had no thought to spare for her....

You jumped in ..."

David was suddenly roused. "Alyosha, darling, go to her at once, tell her I am all right, that there's nothing the matter with me. Tomorrow I shall be with them. Go as quickly as you can, brother, for my sake!"

David held out both hands to me.... His red hair, by now dry, stuck up in amusing tufts.... But the softened expression of his face seemed the more genuine for that. I took my cap and went out of the house, trying to avoid meeting my father and reminding him of his promise.

XXI

"Yes, indeed," I reflected as I walked towards the Latkins', "how was it that I did not notice Raissa? What became of her? She must have seen...."

And all at once I remembered that the very moment of David's fall, a terrible piercing shriek had rung in my ears.

"Was not that Raissa? But how was it I did not see her afterwards?"

Before the little house in which Latkin lodged there stretched a waste-ground overgrown with nettles and surrounded by a broken hurdle.

I had scarcely clambered over the hurdle (there was no gate anywhere) when the following sight met my eyes: Raissa, with her elbows on her knees and her chin propped on her clasped hands, was sitting on the lowest step in front of the house; she was looking fixedly straight before her; near her stood her little dumb sister with the utmost composure brandis.h.i.+ng a little whip, while, facing the steps with his back to me, old Latkin, in torn and shabby drawers and high felt boots, was trotting and prancing up and down, capering and jerking his elbows. Hearing my footsteps he suddenly turned round and squatted on his heels--then at once, skipping up to me, began speaking very rapidly in a trembling voice, incessantly repeating, "Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo!" I was dumbfoundered. I had not seen him for a long time and should not, of course, have known him if I had met him anywhere else. That red, wrinkled, toothless face, those l.u.s.treless round eyes and touzled grey hair, those jerks and capers, that senseless halting speech! What did it mean? What inhuman despair was torturing this unhappy creature? What dance of death was this?

"Tchoo--tchoo," he muttered, wriggling incessantly. "See Va.s.silyevna here came in tchoo--tchoo, just now.... Do you hear? With a trough on the roof" (he slapped himself on the head with his hand), "and there she sits like a spade, and she is cross-eyed, cross-eyed, like Andryushka; Va.s.silyevna is cross-eyed" (he probably meant to say dumb), "tchoo! My Va.s.silyevna is cross-eyed! They are both on the same cork now. You may wonder, good Christians! I have only these two little boats! Eh?"

Latkin was evidently conscious that he was not saying the right thing and made terrible efforts to explain to me what was the matter. Raissa did not seem to hear what her father was saying and the little sister went on las.h.i.+ng the whip.

"Good-bye, diamond-merchant, good-bye, good-bye," Latkin drawled several times in succession, making a low bow, seeming delighted at having at last got hold of an intelligible word.

My head began to go round.

"What does it all mean?" I asked of an old woman who was looking out of the window of the little house.

"Well, my good gentleman," she answered in a sing-song voice, "they say some man--the Lord only knows who--went and drowned himself and she saw it. Well, it gave her a fright or something; when she came home she seemed all right though; but when she sat down on the step--here, she has been sitting ever since like an image, it's no good talking to her. I suppose she has lost her speech, too. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!"

"Good-bye, good-bye," Latkin kept repeating, still with the same bow.

I went up to Raissa and stood directly facing her.

"Raissa, dear, what's the matter with you?"

She made no answer, she seemed not to notice me. Her face had not grown pale, had not changed--but had turned somehow stony and there was a look in it as though she were just falling asleep.

"She is cross-eyed, cross-eyed," Latkin muttered in my ear.

I took Raissa by the hand. "David is alive," I cried, more loudly than before. "Alive and well; David's alive, do you understand? He was pulled out of the water; he is at home now and told me to say that he will come to you to-morrow; he is alive!" As it were with effort Raissa turned her eyes on me; she blinked several times, opening them wider and wider, then leaned her head on one side and flushed slightly all over while her lips parted ... she slowly drew in a deep breath, winced as though in pain and with fearful effort articulated: