Poor Folk and Other Stories by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Page B

‘the student’. He lived modestly, peacefully, and quietly, and no sound of him could be heard from our room. His appearance was rather odd; so awkwardly did he walk, so awkwardly did he bow, and so strangely did he speak that at first I could not look at him without laughing. Sasha was forever playing pranks on him, especially when he was giving us our lessons. Also, he had an irritabledisposition – heconstantly got angry, losing his temper over the merest trifles, shouted at us, complained about us and frequently went off to his room in a rage, without having completed the lesson. Left to himself, however, he would sit poring over his books for days on end. He had a lot of books, and they were all expensive, rare ones. He gave lessons in a few other places as well, and received some kind of payment for them; as soon as he had any money, he would at once go out and buy books. In time I got to know him better, more intimately. He was the kindest and most worthy of men, better thanany I have ever met. Mother respected him deeply. He eventually became my best friend – after Mother, that is, of course. At first, grown-up girl or not, I caused just as much mischief as Sasha, and for hours on end we would rack our brains trying to think of ways to tease Pokrovsky and wear out his patience. He was really comical when he lost his temper, and for us this was a great source of fun. (I am truly ashamed to remember that now.) On one occasion we tormented him about something almost to the point of tears, and I distinctly heard him whisper: ‘Wicked children!’ I suddenly grew embarrassed; I felt ashamed, and sickened, and sorry for him. I remember that I blushed to the roots of my hair, and with tears in my eyes begged him to calm himself and not be offended by our stupid pranks; but he closed the book, leaving our lesson unfinished, and went off to his room. I spent all that day in an agony of remorse. The thought that we children had reduced him to tears by our cruel behaviour was unbearable to me. I rediance that we had been waiting for him to burst into tears; that was what we had wanted. We had succeeded in exasperating him beyond the limits of his endurance; we had compelled him, poor, unfortunate man, to remember his cruel destiny. I lay awake all night with vexation, sadness and remorse. They say that remorse brings relief to the soul – on the contrary. I do not know how it was, but vanity also managed to get mixed up in my unhappiness. I did not want him to view me as a child. By that time I was already fifteen. From that day onward I began to torture my imagination, creating thousands of plans to make Pokrovsky alter his opinion of me. But now I was afflicted by a chronic timidity and shyness: in my present situation I could not for the life of me make my mind up about anything, and I confined myself to dreams alone (and God knows, what dreams they were!). But I did stop playing pranks with Sasha. Pokrovsky stopped losing his temper with us; but that was not sufficient for my vanity. I shall now say a few words about the strangest, most curious and most pathetic human being of all those it has been my fortune to meet. I speak of him now, at precisely this moment in my notes, because until that time I had scarcely paid him any attention – but now everything that concerned Pokrovsky suddenly acquired a special interest for me. There sometimes used to appear in our household a little old man, grey-haired, shabbily dressed, mud-bespattered, awkward and clumsy – in short, impossibly strange. From a first glance at him one might have thought he was ashamed of something;he looked as though he had something on his conscience. This made him constantly huddle himself up and make faces to himself in a peculiar sort of way; he had such odd mannerisms and made such strange grimaces that one might, without being very much mistaken, have supposed him to be not in his right mind. He would come to our