g
rubbish; I've bent my back toiling for you, I'm worried to death,
and, I may say, I am unhappy, and what do you care? How do you
work?"

"I . . . I do work. All night. . . . You've seen it yourself."

"I prayed to God to take me, but He won't take me, a sinful woman
. . . . You torment! Other people have children like everyone else,
and I've one only and no sense, no comfort out of him. Beat you?
I'd beat you, but where am I to find the strength? Mother of God,
where am I to find the strength?"

The mamma hid her face in the folds of her blouse and broke into
sobs. Vanya wriggled with anguish and pressed his forehead against
the wall. The aunt came in.

"So that's how it is. . . . Just what I expected," she said, at
once guessing what was wrong, turning pale and clasping her hands.
"I've been depressed all the morning. . . . There's trouble coming,
I thought . . . and here it's come. . . ."

"The villain, the torment!"

"Why are you swearing at him?" cried the aunt, nervously pulling
her coffee-coloured kerchief off her head and turning upon the
mother. "It's not his fault! It's your fault! You are to blame! Why
did you send him to that high school? You are a fine lady! You want
to be a lady? A-a-ah! I dare say, as though you'll turn into gentry!
But if you had sent him, as I told you, into business . . . to an
office, like my Kuzya . . . here is Kuzya getting five hundred a
year. . . . Five hundred roubles is worth having, isn't it? And you
are wearing yourself out, and wearing the boy out with this studying,
plague take it! He is thin, he coughs . . . just look at him! He's
thirteen, and he looks no more than ten."

"No, Nastenka, no, my dear! I haven't thrashed him enough, the
torment! He ought to have been thrashed, that's what it is! Ugh
. . . Jesuit, Mahomet, torment!" she shook her fist at her son. "You
want a flogging, but I haven't the strength. They told me years ago
when he was little, 'Whip him, whip him!' I didn't heed them, sinful
woman as I am. And now I am suffering for it. You wait a bit! I'll
flay you! Wait a bit . . . ."

The mamma shook her wet fist, and went weeping into her lodger's
room. The lodger, Yevtihy Kuzmitch Kuporossov, was sitting at his
table, reading "Dancing Self-taught." Yevtihy Kuzmitch was a man
of intelligence and education. He spoke through his nose, washed
with a soap the smell of which made everyone in the house sneeze,
ate meat on fast days, and was on the look-ou