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“So he sets himself up for a saint!” he repeated, trembling all over with anger, his teeth chattering as though he were in a fever. I happened to be in the room and was a witness of this ugly scene. “Good. Amen, from today. It’s all over between us. There’s the ikon and there’s the door! Neither you in my house nor I in yours. You are too honest for us. How can we keep company with you? But may you have no house nor home!”

It was in vain that Latkin entreated my father and bowed down before him; it was in vain that he tried to explain to him what filled his own soul with painful perplexity. “You know it was with no sort of profit to myself, Porfiry Petrovitch,” he faltered: “why, I cut my own throat!” My father remained implacable. Latkin never set foot in our house again. Fate itself seemed determined to carry out my father’s last cruel words. Soon after the rupture (which took place two years before the beginning of my story), Latkin’s wife, who had, it is true, been ill for a long time, died; his second daughter, a child three years old, became deaf and dumb in one day from terror; a swarm of bees had settled on her head; Latkin himself had an apoplectic stroke and sank into extreme and hopeless poverty. How he struggled on, what he lived upon–it is hard to imagine. He lived in a dilapidated hovel at no great distance from our house. His elder daughter Raissa lived with him and kept house, so far as that was possible. This Raissa is the character whom I must now introduce into our story.

XII

When her father was on friendly terms with mine, we used to see her continually. She would sit with us for hours at a time, either sewing, or spinning with her delicate, rapid, clever fingers. She was a well-made, rather thin girl, with intelligent brown eyes and a long, white, oval face. She talked little but sensibly in a soft, musical voice, barely opening her mouth and not showing her teeth. When she laughed–which happened rarely and never lasted long–they were all suddenly displayed, big and white as almonds. I remember her gait, too, light, elastic, with a little skip at each step. It always seemed to me that she was going down a flight of steps, even when she was walking on level ground. She held herself erect with her arms folded tightly over her bosom. And whatever she was doing, whatever she undertook, if she were only threading a needle or ironing a petticoat–the effect was always beautiful and somehow–you may not believe it–touching. Her Christian name was Raissa, but we used to call her Black-lip: she had on her upper lip a birthmark; a little dark-bluish spot, as though she had been eating blackberries; but that did not spoil her: on the contrary. She was just a year older than David. I cherished for her a feeling akin to respect, but we were not great friends. But between her and David a friendship had sprung up, a strange, unchildlike but good friendship. They somehow suited each other.

Sometimes they did not exchange a word for hours together, but both felt that they were happy and happy because they were together. I had never met a girl like her, really. There was something attentive and resolute about her, something honest and mournful and charming. I never heard her say anything very intelligent, but I never heard her say anything commonplace, and I have never seen more intelligent eyes. After the rupture between her family and mine I saw her less frequently: my father sternly forbade my visiting the Latkins, and she did not appear in our house again. But I met her in the street, in church and Black-lip always aroused in me the same feeling–respect and even some wonder, rather than pity. She bore her misfortunes very well indeed. “The girl is flint,” even coarse-witted, Trankvillitatin said about her once, but really she ought to have been pitied: her face acquired a careworn, exhausted expression, her eyes were hollow and sunken, a burden beyond her strength lay on her young shoulders. David saw her much oftener than I did; he used to go to their house. My father gave him up in despair: he knew that David would not obey him, anyway. And from time to time Raissa would appear at the hurdle fence of our garden which looked into a lane and there have an interview with David; she did not come for the sake of conversation, but told him of some new difficulty or trouble and asked his advice. The paralysis that had attacked Latkin was of a rather peculiar kind. His arms and legs had grown feeble, but he had not lost the use of them, and his brain indeed worked perfectly; but his speech was muddled and instead of one word he would pronounce another: one had to guess what it was he wanted to say…. “Tchoo–tchoo–tchoo,” he would stammer with an effort–he began every sentence with “Tchoo–tchoo–tchoo, some scissors, some scissors,” … and the word scissors meant bread…. My father, he hated with all the strength left him–he attributed all his misfortunes to my father’s curse and called him alternately the butcher and the diamond-merchant. “Tchoo, tchoo, don’t you dare to go to the butcher’s, Vassilyevna.” This was what he called his daughter though his own name was Martinyan. Every day he became more exacting; his needs increased…. And how were those needs to be satisfied? Where could the money be found? Sorrow soon makes one old: but it was horrible to hear some words on the lips of a girl of seventeen.