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.
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.
