He went off leaving Kouvalda with the agreeable sensation that the merchant was afraid of him. If it were not so he would have turned him out of the doss-house long ago. It was not for the five roubles a month that the Jew let him remain on! ... And the captain watches with pleasure the slowly retreating back of Petounnikoff, as he walks slowly away. Kouvalda's eyes still follow the merchant as he climbs up and down the scaffolding of his new building. He feels an intense desire that the merchant should fall and break his back. How many times has he not conjured up results of this imaginary fall, as he has sat watching Petounnikoff crawling about the scaffolding of his new factory, like a spider crawling about its net. Yesterday he had even imagined that one of the boards had given way under the weight of the merchant; and Kouvalda had jumped out of his seat with excitement—but nothing had come of it.
And to-day, as always, before the eyes of Aristide Kouvalda stands the great red building, so foursquare, so solid, so firmly fixed into the ground, as if already drawing from thence its nourishment. It seemed as if mocking the captain through the cold dark yawning openings in its walls. And the sun poured on its autumn rays with the same prodigality as on the distorted tumble-down little houses of the neighbourhood.
"But what if?" exclaimed the captain to himself, measuring with his eye the factory wall. "What if?"
Aroused and excited by the thought which had come into his mind, Aristide Kouvalda jumped up and hastened over to Vaviloff's vodka shop, smiling, and muttering something to himself. Vaviloff met him at the counter with a friendly exclamation: "How is your Excellency this morning?"
Vaviloff was a man of medium height, with a bald head surrounded by a fringe of grey hair; with clean-shaved cheeks, and moustache bristly as a toothbrush. Upright and active, in a dirty braided jacket, every movement betrayed the old soldier, the former non-commissioned officer.
"Jegor! Have you the deeds and the plan of your house and property?" Kouvalda asked hastily.
"Yes, I have."
And Vaviloff closed his suspicious thievish eyes and scrutinised the captain's face, in which he observed something out of the common.
"Just show them to me!" exclaimed the captain, thumping on the counter with his fist, and dropping on to a stool.
"What for?" asked Vaviloff, who decided, in view of the captain's state of excitement, to be on his guard.