"Where on earth did he hide it all?" asked the hunchback thoughtfully
and wonderingly. "I thought we had taken the lot; but perhaps Petrusha
had been there already, eh?"
"I wish you'd stop talking of it!" said Lunev harshly.
"Yes, it's no good now; what's the good of talking?" agreed Terenti
with another deep sigh.
Lunev could not keep his mind off the greed of mankind, and the evil
and miserable meanness practised for money. Then he began to think;
if he possessed all this money, ten thousand, a hundred thousand then
he'd show the world! How they should creep on all fours before him!
Carried away with revengeful feelings, he smashed on the table with his
fist; at the blow he started, glanced at his uncle, and saw that he was
staring with terrified eyes and mouth half open.
"I was thinking of something," he said moodily, and stood up.
"Yes, of course," said his uncle suspiciously, as Ilya passed into
the shop he looked searchingly at Terenti, and saw his lips moving
silently; he felt the suspicious look behind his back, though he could
not see; he had noticed for some time that his uncle followed his
every movement and seemed anxious to find out something, or to ask
something. But this only made Lunev anxious to avoid all conversation;
every day he felt more plainly that his hunchbacked guest troubled the
course of his life, and more and more often he asked himself:
"Will it go on much longer?"
It was as though a cancer were gnawing at his soul; life became daily
more wearisome, and worst of all was the sense that he had no longer
any desire to do anything. Days passed aimlessly, and often his feeling
was that he sank slowly, but every hour deeper, into a bottomless
abyss. Convinced that mankind had deeply injured him, he concentrated
all the strength of his soul on one point--the bitter sense of injury;
he stirred the flames by constant brooding and found therein the
exculpation for every fault he had himself committed.
Shortly after Terenti's arrival, Tatiana Vlassyevna appeared, after a
holiday spent some distance from the town. When she saw the hunchbacked
peasant in brown fustian, she pinched her lips together in disgust and
asked Ilya:
"Is that your uncle?"
"Yes"
"Is he going to live with you?"
"Naturally."
Tatiana perceived dislike and challenge in her partner's answers and
ceased to take any notice of Terenti. But he, who had Gavrik's old
place by the door, twisted his yellow beard and followed the small,
slender woman in grey clothes with eager curious eyes.
Lunev noticed how she hopped about the shop like a sparrow, and waited
silently for further questions, fully prepared to hurl at her rough
ill-tempered words. But she spoke no more, after stealing a glance at
his grim, cold face, standing at the desk, turning over the leaves of
the book of daily sales. She remarked how pleasant it was to spend a
couple of weeks in the country, and live in a village; how cheap it
was, and how good for the health.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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