Petka smiled. Nadejda coming up with tears in her eyes repeated:
“You have to go, sonny.”
“Where?” said Petka in surprise. He had forgotten the city; and the other place, to which he had always so wanted to go away—was found.
“To your master, Osip Abramovich.”
Still Petka failed to understand, though the matter was as clear as daylight. But his mouth felt suddenly dry, and his tongue moved with difficulty as he asked:
“How then can I go fishing to-morrow? Look, here is the rod.”
“But what can one do? He wants you. Prokopy, he says, is ill, and has been taken to the hospital. He says he has not enough hands. Don’t cry! See, he’ll be sure to let you come again. He is kind is Osip Abramovich.”
But Petka was not thinking of crying, and still did not understand. On one side there was the fact, the fishing-rod—on the other the phantom, Osip Abramovich. But gradually Petka’s thoughts began to clear and a strange metamorphosis took place: Osip Abramovich became the fact, and the fishing-rod, which had not yet had time to dry, was changed into the phantom. And then Petka surprised his mother, and distressed the master and his wife, and would have been surprised himself if he had been capable of self-analysis. He did not begin to cry, as town children, thin and half-starved, cry; he simply bawled louder than the strongest-voiced man; and began to roll on the ground, as the drunken women rolled on the boulevard. He clenched his skinny fists, and struck his mother’s hands and the ground, in fact everything he came across, feeling, indeed, the pain caused by the pebbles and sharp stones, but striving, as it were, to increase it.
In course of time Petka became calm again, and the master said to his wife, who was standing before the glass arranging a white rose in her hair:
“You see he has left off. Children’s grief is not long-lived.”