“Foma! You had better feel your head more often so that you may not lose it by accident.”
“What do you mean?” asked Foma.
“I speak of Sonka. You are going to see her too often.”
“What has that to do with you?” said Foma, rather rudely. “And why do you call her Sonka?”
“It’s nothing to me. I would lose nothing if you should be fleeced. And as to calling her Sonka—everybody knows that is her name. So does everybody know that she likes to rake up the fire with other people’s hands.”
“She is clever!” announced Foma, firmly, frowning and hiding his hands in his pockets. “She is intelligent.”
“Clever, that’s true! How cleverly she arranged that entertainment; there was an income of two thousand four hundred roubles, the expenses—one thousand nine hundred; the expenses really did not even amount to a thousand roubles, for everybody does everything for her for nothing. Intelligent! She will educate you, and especially will those idlers that run around her.”
“They’re not idlers, they are clever people!” replied Foma, angrily, contradicting himself now. “And I learn from them. What am I? I know nothing. What was I taught? While there they speak of everything—and each one has his word to say. Do not hinder me from being like a man.”
“Pooh! How you’ve learned to speak! With so much anger, like the hail striking against the roof! Very well, be like a man, but in order to be like a man it might be less dangerous for you to go to the tavern; the people there are after all better than Sophya’s people. And you, young man, you should have learned to discriminate one person from another. Take Sophya, for instance: What does she represent? An insect for the adornment of nature and nothing more!”
Intensely agitated, Foma set his teeth together and walked away from Mayakin, thrusting his hands still deeper into his pockets. But the old man soon started again a conversation about Medinskaya.