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“Low brute,” Trofimitch’s bass voice rang out.

“But he is alive,” I shouted at the top of my voice and almost with horror. I had put my face near to his. “So that is what the drowned look like,” I thought, with a sinking heart…. And all at once I saw David’s lips stir and a little water oozed from them….

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

“Roll him, roll him,” voices clamoured.

“No, no, stay,” shouted Vassily. “Take him home…. Take him home!”

“Take him home,” Trankvillitatin himself chimed in.

“We will bring him to. We can see better there,” Vassily 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 God chastise him! May God 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.”