“Ah! What then? You were not? The devil take them! Then—how was it? Don’t take offence! How could I know? They said you were in Siberia! Well, and there are the galleys!”
“To make an end of this once for all,” said Taras, seriously and impressively, clapping his hand on his knee, “I’ll tell you right now how it all happened. I was banished to Siberia to settle there for six years, and, during all the time of my exile, I lived in the mining region of the Lena. In Moscow I was imprisoned for about nine months. That’s all!”
“So-o! But what does it mean?” muttered Yakov Tarasovich, with confusion and joy.
“And here they circulated that absurd rumour.”
“That’s right—it is absurd indeed!” said the old man, distressed.
“And it did a pretty great deal of harm on a certain occasion.”
“Really? Is that possible?”
“Yes. I was about to go into business for myself, and my credit was ruined on account of—”
“Pshaw!” said Yakov Tarasovich, as he spat angrily. “Oh, devil! Come, come, is that possible?”
Foma sat all this time in his corner, listening to the conversation between the Mayakins, and, blinking perplexedly, he fixedly examined the newcomer. Recalling Lubov’s bearing toward her brother, and influenced, to a certain degree, by her stories about Taras, he expected to see in him something unusual, something unlike the ordinary people. He had thought that Taras would speak in some peculiar way, would dress in a manner peculiar to himself; and in general he would be unlike other people. While before him sat a sedate, stout man, faultlessly dressed, with stern eyes, very much like his father in face, and the only difference between them was that the son had a cigar in his mouth and a black beard. He spoke briefly in a business-like way of everyday things—where was, then, that peculiar something about him? Now he began to tell his father of the profits in the manufacture of soda. He had not been a galley slave—Lubov had lied! And Foma was very much pleased when he pictured to himself how he would speak to Lubov about her brother.