Read Online Poor Folk and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Free Book Online Page B

and was at a loss how to cover up his crime. By his counselling, Pokrovsky managed to wean the old man away from his self-destructive habits, and as soon as he saw him sober, let us say, on three successive occasions, then the next time the old man visited him he would give on parting a twenty-five copeck piece, a fifty-copeck piece, or more. He would sometimes buy him boots, a tie or a waistcoat. The old man would be as proud as a turkey-cock in his new clothes. Sometimes he would come to our room. He would bring cockerel-shaped honey-cakes, and apples, for Sasha and myself, and would spend all the time telling us about Petenka. He would ask us to study attentively and be obedient, saying that Petenka was a good son, an exemplary son and, what was more, a learned son. As he did so, he would wink at us ridiculously with his left eye and make such comical faces that we were unable to restrain our hilarity and laughed at him for all we were worth. Mother was very fond of him. But the old man hated Anna Fyodorovna, even though in her presence he was as quiet as a mouse.
    Soon I stopped taking lessons with Pokrovsky. He still viewed me as a child, a naughty little girl, on a par with Sasha. This hurt me considerably, as I was doing my utmost to make up for my previous behaviour. But no one paid any attention to that. That irritated me more and more. I practically never spoke to Pokrovsky outside of lessons, nor could I speak. I blushed, was confused, and afterwards wept in a corner from disappointment.
    I do not know how all this would have ended, had not a certain strange circumstance contrived to bring us close to each other. One evening, when Mother was talking to Anna Fyodorovna, I quietly entered Pokrovsky is room. I knew that he was not at home, and I do not really know why I took it into my head to go in. Until that time I had never paid him even the briefest visit, even though we had been living next door to each other for more than a year. On this occasion my heart beat so violently that I thought it might burst out of me. I looked around me with intense curiosity. Pokrovsky’s room was very shabbily furnished; it was not very tidy. Five long bookshelves containing books had been nailed to the walls. The table and the chairs were heaped with papers. Books and papers! Isuddenly had a strange thought, and at the same time a nasty sense of disappointment took hold of me. It seemed that my friendship and my loving heart were of little account to him. He was educated, while I was stupid and knew nothing, had read nothing, not a single book… At this point I cast an envious glance at the long shelves sagging with books. I was seized with disappointment, depression, a kind of rage. I conceived a desire, which I acted on at once, to read his books, every single one of them, as quickly as possible. I am not sure, but perhaps I thought that if I learned everything he knew, I should be more worthy of his friendship. I rushed to the first shelf; without thinking, without hesitating, I seized the first dusty old tome that fell into my hands and, blushing, trembling with fear and agitation, carried the stolen book off to my room, having decided to read it at night, by the glow from the night-light, when mother was asleep.
    Great, however, was my disappointment when, on regaining our room, I hurriedly opened the book and discovered that it was some ancient, semi-decomposed, utterly worm-eaten treatise in Latin. I lost no time in taking it back. Just as I was about to replace the book on its shelf, I heard a noise in the corridor, and someone’s footsteps, quite close. I tried to be as quick as I could, but the wretched book had been so firmly wedged in its row that when I took it out all the others displaced themselves and closed ranks in such a way that there was now no room for their former companion. I had not the strength to squeeze the book back in. But I did push the other books back as hard as I was able. The rusty