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inquisitive, and for another, by his comments and questions, which were invariably of a most trivial and incoherent kind, he constantly interfered with his son is studies and would sometimes even turn up drunk. Little by little, the son managed to wean his father away from his vices, his inquisitiveness and his compulsive talking, and finally reached a stage where the old man obeyed him, as though he were an oracle, in all things, and did not dare to open his mouth without his son is permission. The poor old man could not sufficiently admire and dote upon his Petenka (as he called his son). Whenever he called to visit him, he nearly always had a worried, timid look, probably because he did not know how his son would receive him. He would usually spend a long time hesitating whether to come in or not, and if I chanced to be there, he would question me for about twenty minutes, asking me about ‘Petenka’ and how his health was, what kind of mood he was in, whether he was engaged in any important study, what he was actually doing – whether he was writing orabsorbed in reflection. When I had sufficiently raised his spirits and put his mind at rest, the old man would finally make up his mind to come in and very quietly, very gingerly, he would open the door, and begin by putting his head round it; if he saw that his son was not in a bad temper and nodded to him, he would slowly enter the room, take off his overcoat and his hat – which was always squashed, full of holes, and ragged-brimmed – and hang both on a hook, performing the action slowly and inaudibly; then he would sit down carefully on a chair somewhere, never taking his eyes off his son, following his every movement in an attempt to guess the frame of mind his Petenka was in. If his son was even slightly in a bad mood and the old man was able to observe this, he would at once rise from his seat and explain: ‘I only dropped in for a moment, Petenka. I’ve been out for a long walk, I was passing, and looked in to take a rest.’ And then silently and obediently he would take his hat and overcoat, slowly open the door once again and go out, smiling to his son, smiling forcedly in order to keep to himself the misery that seethed within him, and not show it to his son.
    When, on the other hand, his son received his father well, the old man would be beside himself with joy. His pleasure would make itself visible in his face, his gestures, and his movements. If his son said anything to him, the old man would invariably get up slightly from his chair and reply in a quiet, servile tone bordering on reverence, always trying to use the most refined, that is, the most ridiculous expressions. But he had no gift for words: he would always grow confused and lose his nerve, since he did not know where to put his hands or to put himself, and would whisper his side of the conversation to himself for a long time afterwards, as though he were trying to correct himself. If, on the other hand, he had succeeded in answering well, the old man would preen himself, straighten his waistcoat, tie and jacket and assume an air that suggested he knew his own worth. It occasionally happened that he recovered his spirits to such an extent and grew so emboldened that he slowly rose from his chair, went over to the bookshelf, took down a book at random, and read aloud from it right there and then, whatever he had chanced to select. All this he did with an air of pretended indifference and detachment, as though he could always behave in such a lordly fashion with his son’s books, as though he found nothing remarkable about his having been treated kindly by him. I once, however, chanced to witness how frightened the poor man became whenPokrovsky asked him not to touch the books. He grew confused, began to fuss around, replaced the book upside down, then tried to put it back the right way up, turned it round and replaced it with its spine facing inward, smiled, blushed