Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Complete Novels & Stories (Wisehouse Classics). Fyodor Dostoyevsky

you speaking of Foma Fomitch, uncle?”

      “No, no, my dear, I was speaking of Korovkin, though Foma too, he too... but I am simply talking of Korovkin just now,” he added, for some unknown reason turning crimson, and seeming embarrassed as soon as Foma’s name was mentioned.

      “What sciences is he studying, uncle?”

      “Science, my boy, science, science in general. I can’t tell you which exactly, I only know that it is science. How he speaks about railways! And, you know,” my uncle added in a half whisper, screwing up his right eye significantly, “just a little of the free-thinker. I noticed it, especially when he was speaking of marriage and the family... it’s a pity I did not understand much of it myself (there was no time), I would have told you all about it in detail. And he is a man of the noblest qualities, too! I have invited him to visit me, I am expecting him from hour to hour.”

      Meanwhile the peasants were gazing at me with round eyes and open mouths as though at some marvel.

      “Listen, uncle,” I interrupted him; “I believe I am hindering the peasants. No doubt they have come about something urgent. What do they want? I must own I suspect something, and I should be very glad to hear...”

      Uncle suddenly seemed nervous and flustered.

      “Oh, yes! I had forgotten. Here, you see... what is one to do with them? They have got a notion—and I should very much like to know who first started it—they have got a notion, that I am giving them away together with the whole of Kapitonovko—do you remember Kapitonovko? We used to drive out there in the evenings with dear Katya—the whole of Kapitonovko with the sixty-eight souls in it to Foma Fomitch. ‘We don’t want to leave you,’ they say, and that is all about it.”

      “So it is not true, uncle, you are not giving him Kapitonovko,” I cried, almost rapturously.

      “I never thought of it, it never entered my head! And from whom did you hear it? Once one drops a word, it is all over the place, And why do they so dislike Foma? Wait a little, Sergey, I will introduce you to him,” he added, glancing at me timidly, as though he were aware in me, too, of hostility towards Foma Fomitch. “He is a wonderful man, my boy.”

      “We want no one but you, no one!” the peasants suddenly wailed in chorus. “You are our father, we are your children!”

      “Listen, uncle,” I said. “I have not seen Foma Fomitch yet, but... you see... I have heard something. I must confess that I met Mr. Bahtcheyev to-day. However, I have my own idea on that subject. Anyway, uncle, finish with the peasants and let them go, and let us talk by ourselves without witnesses. I must own, that’s what I have come for...”

      “To be sure, to be sure,” my uncle assented; “to be sure. We’ll dismiss the peasants and then we can have a talk, you know, a friendly, affectionate, thorough talk. Come,” he went on, speaking rapidly and addressing the peasants, “you can go now, my friends. And for the future come to me whenever there is need; straight to me, and come at any time.”

      “You are our father, we are your children! Do not give us to Foma Fomitch for our undoing! All we, poor people, are beseeching you!” the peasants shouted once more.

      “See what fools! But I am not giving you away, I tell you.”

      “Or he’ll never leave off teaching us, your honour. He does nothing but teach the fellows here, so they say.”

      “Why, you don’t mean to say he is teaching you French?” I cried, almost in alarm.

      “No, sir, so far God has had mercy on us!” answered one of the peasants, probably a great talker, a red-haired man with a huge bald patch on the back of his head, with a long, scanty, wedge-shaped beard, which moved as he talked as though it were a separate individual. “No, sir, so far God has had mercy on us.”

      “But what does he teach you?”

      “Well, your honour, what he teaches us, in a manner of speaking, is buying a gold casket to keep a brass farthing in.”

      “How do you mean, a brass farthing?”

      “Seryozha, you are mistaken, it’s a slander!” cried my uncle, turning crimson and looking terribly embarrassed. “The fools have misunderstood what was said to them. He merely... there was nothing about a brass farthing. There is no need for you to understand everything, and shout at the top of your voice,” my uncle continued, addressing the peasant reproachfully. “One wants to do you good and you don’t understand, and make an uproar!”

      “Upon my word, uncle, teaching them French?”

      “That’s for the sake of pronunciation, Seryozha, simply for the pronunciation,” said my uncle in an imploring voice. “He said himself that it was for the sake of the pronunciation... Besides, something special happened in connection with this, which you know nothing about and so you cannot judge. You must investigate first and then blame.... It is easy to find fault!”

      “But what are you about?” I shouted, turning impetuously to the peasants again. “You ought to speak straight out. You should say, ‘This won’t do, Foma Fomitch, this is how it ought to be!’ You have got a tongue, haven’t you?”

      “Where is the mouse who will bell the cat, your honour? ‘I am teaching you, clodhoppers, cleanliness and order,’ he says. ’Why is your shirt not clean?’ Why, one is always in a sweat, that’s why it isn’t clean! One can’t change every day. Cleanliness won’t save you and dirt won’t kill you.”

      “And look here, the other day he came to the threshing floor,” began another peasant, a tall lean fellow all in patches and wearing wretched bark shoes, apparently one of those men who are always discontented about something and always have some vicious venomous word ready in reserve. Till then he had been hidden behind the backs of the other peasants, had been listening in gloomy silence, and had kept all the time on his face an ambiguous, bitterly subtle smile. “He came to the threshing floor. ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘how many miles it is to the sun?’ ‘Why, who can tell? Such learning is not for us but for the gentry.’ ‘No,’ says he; ‘you are a fool, a lout, you don’t understand what is good for you; but I,’ said he, ‘am an astronomer! I know all God’s planets.’”

      “Well, and did he tell you how many miles it is to the sun?” my uncle put in, suddenly reviving and winking gaily at me, as though to say, “See what’s coming!”

      “Yes, he did tell us how many,” the peasant answered reluctantly, not expecting such a question.

      “Well, how many did he say, how many exactly?”

      “Your honour must know best, we live in darkness.”

      “Oh, I know, my boy, but do you remember?”

      “Why, he said it would be so many hundreds or thousands, it was a big number, he said. More than you could carry in three cartloads.”

      “Try and remember, brother! I dare say you thought it would be about a mile, that you could reach up to it with your hand. No, my boy; you see, the earth is like a round ball, do you understand?” my uncle went on, describing a sphere in the air with his hands.

      The peasant smiled bitterly.

      “Yes, like a ball, it hangs in the air of itself and moves round the sun. And the sun stands still, it only seems to you that it moves. There’s a queer thing! And the man who discovered this was Captain Cook, a navigator... devil only knows who did discover it,” he added in a half whisper, turning to me. “I know nothing about it myself, my boy... Do you know how far it is to the sun?”

      “I do, uncle,” I answered, looking with surprise at all this scene. “But this is what I think: of course ignorance means slovenliness; but on the other hand... to teach peasants astronomy...”

      “Just so, just so, slovenliness,” my uncle assented, delighted with my expression, which struck turn as extremely apt. “A noble thought! Slovenliness precisely! That