Laughing good-naturedly at their master, and envying him, the men returned to their work at the call of Phoma. It was plain that it was repugnant to him to see Grigori made ridiculous.
"He calls himself master," he muttered. "I have not quite a month's work left to do here. After that I shall go back to the country. I can't stand this."
I felt vexed for Grigori; that girl with the cherries looked so annoyingly absurd beside him.
I often wondered why Grigori Shishlin was the master and Phoma Tuchkov the workman. A strong, fair fellow, with curly hair, an aquiline nose, and gray, clever eyes in his round face, Phoma was not like a peasant. If he had been well-dressed, he might have been the son of a merchant of good family. He was gloomy, taciturn, businesslike. Being well educated, he kept the accounts of the contractor, drew up the estimates, and could set his comrades to work successfully, but he worked unwillingly himself.
"You won't make work last forever," he said calmly. He despised books.
"They can print what they like, but I shall go on thinking as I like," he said. "Books are all nonsense."
But he listened attentively to every one, and if something interested him, he would ask all the details about it, perseveringly, always thinking of it in his own way, measuring it by his own measure.
Once I told Phoma that he ought to be a contractor. He replied indolently:
"If it were a question of turning over thousands, yes. But to worry myself for the sake of making a few copecks, it is not worth while. No, I am just looking about; then I shall go into a monastery in Oranko. I am good-looking, powerful in muscle; I may take the fancy of some merchant's widow! Such things do happen. There was a Sergatzki boy who made his fortune in two years, and married a girl from these parts, from the town. He had to take an icon to her house, and she saw him."
This was an obsession with him; he knew many tales of how taking service in a monastery had led people to an easy life. I did not care for these stories, nor did I like the trend of Phoma's mind, but I felt sure that he would go to a monastery.