"Go, dear one. I am tired; I need a rest," she said to him, as she rose without looking at him. He went away submissively.
For some time after this incident her attitude toward him was stricter and more sincere, as though she pitied him, but later their relations assumed the old form of the cat-and-mouse play.
Foma's relation toward Medinskaya could not escape his godfather's notice, and one day the old man asked him, with a malicious grimace:
"Foma! You had better feel your head more often so that you may not lose it by accident.""What do you mean?" asked Foma.
"I speak of Sonka. You are going to see her too often.""What has that to do with you?" said Foma, rather rudely. "And why do you call her Sonka?""It's nothing to me. I would lose nothing if you should be fleeced. And as to calling her Sonka--everybody knows that is her name. So does everybody know that she likes to rake up the fire with other people's hands.""She is clever!" announced Foma, firmly, frowning and hiding his hands in his pockets. "She is intelligent.""Clever, that's true! How cleverly she arranged that entertainment;there was an income of two thousand four hundred roubles, the expenses--one thousand nine hundred; the expenses really did not even amount to a thousand roubles, for everybody does everything for her for nothing. Intelligent! She will educate you, and especially will those idlers that run around her.""They're not idlers, they are clever people!" replied Foma, angrily, contradicting himself now. "And I learn from them. What am I? I know nothing. What was I taught? While there they speak of everything--and each one has his word to say. Do not hinder me from being like a man.""Pooh! How you've learned to speak! With so much anger, like the hail striking against the roof! Very well, be like a man, but in order to be like a man it might be less dangerous for you to go to the tavern; the people there are after all better than Sophya's people. And you, young man, you should have learned to discriminate one person from another.
Take Sophya, for instance: What does she represent? An insect for the adornment of nature and nothing more!"Intensely agitated, Foma set his teeth together and walked away from Mayakin, thrusting his hands still deeper into his pockets. But the old man soon started again a conversation about Medinskaya.
They were on their way back from the bay after an inspection of the steamers, and seated in a big and commodious sledge, they were enthusiastically discussing business matters in a friendly way. It was in March. The water under the sledge-runners was bubbling, the snow was already covered with a rather dirty fleece, and the sun shone warmly and merrily in the clear sky.
"Will you go to your lady as soon as we arrive?" asked Mayakin, unexpectedly, interrupting their business talk.
"I will," said Foma, shortly, and with displeasure, "Mm. Tell me, how often do you give her presents?" asked Mayakin, plainly and somewhat intimately.
"What presents? What for?" Foma wondered.
"You make her no presents? You don't say. Does she live with you then merely so, for love's sake?"Foma boiled up with anger and shame, turned abruptly toward the old man and said reproachfully:
"Eh! You are an old man, and yet you speak so that it is a shame to listen to you! To say such a thing! Do you think she would come down to this?"Mayakin smacked his lips and sang out in a mournful voice:
"What a blockhead you are! What a fool!" and suddenly grown angry, he spat out: "Shame upon you! All sorts of brutes drank out of the pot, nothing but the dregs remained, and now a fool has made a god unto himself of this dirty pot. Devil! You just go up to her and tell her plainly: 'I want to be your lover. I am a young man, don't charge me much for it.'""Godfather!" said Foma, sternly, in a threatening voice, "Icannot bear to hear such words. If it were someone else.""But who except myself would caution you? Good God!" Mayakin cried out, clasping his hands. "So she has led you by the nose all winter long! What a nose! What a beast she is!"The old man was agitated; in his voice rang vexation, anger, even tears Foma had never before seen him in such a state, and looking at him, he was involuntarily silent.
"She will ruin you! 0h Lord! The Babylonian prostitute!"Mayakin's eyes were blinking, his lips were trembling, and in rude, cynical words he began to speak of Medinskaya, irritated, with a wrathful jar in his voice.
Foma felt that the old man spoke the truth. He now began to breathe with difficulty and he felt that his mouth had a dry, bitter taste.
"Very well, father, enough," he begged softly and sadly, turning aside from Mayakin.
"Eh, you ought to get married as soon as possible!" exclaimed the old man with alarm.
"For Christ's sake, do not speak," uttered Foma in a dull voice.
Mayakin glanced at his godson and became silent. Foma's face looked drawn; he grew pale, and there was a great deal of painful, bitter stupor in his half-open lips and in his sad look. On the right and on the left of the road a field stretched itself, covered here and there with patches of winter-raiment. Rooks were hopping busily about over the black spots, where the snow had melted. The water under the sledge-runners was splashing, the muddy snow was kicked up by the hoofs of the horses.
"How foolish man is in his youth!" exclaimed Mayakin, in a low voice.
Foma did not look at him.
"Before him stands the stump of a tree, and yet he sees the snout of a beast--that's how he frightens himself. Oh, oh!""Speak more plainly," said Foma, sternly.
"What is there to say? The thing is clear: girls are cream; women are milk; women are near, girls are far. Consequently, go to Sonka, if you cannot do without it, and tell her plainly. That's how the matter stands. Fool! If she is a sinner, you can get her more easily.
Why are you so angry, then? Why so bristled up?""You don't understand," said Foma, in a low voice.
"What is it I do not understand? I understand everything!""The heart. Man has a heart," sighed the youth.
Mayakin winked his eyes and said:
"Then he has no mind."
