But Stepan seemed altogether indifferent to his mother's kindly words. He kept staring at the candle with his glassy eyes, as if watching the snuff forming on the wick.
"My, my, aren't you a foolish boy?" continued Arina Petrovna, growing kinder and kinder. "Just think what rumors will be spread about your mother because of you. There are enough people who envy her. What will they not say about her? They will say she did not give you food or clothes. My, my, what a foolish boy you are!"
There was the same silence and the same motionless staring glance.
"Was your stay at mother's so bad? Thank God, you don't go hungry or naked. What else do you want? If you are lonesome, don't fret. This is nothing but a village, my boy. We have no entertainments or halls, we sit in our nooks and we hardly know how to while away the time. I, myself, would be glad to dance now and then or sing a song, but you look out upon the road and you lose the desire to go even to church in such weather."
Arina Petrovna paused, hoping that Simple Simon would give utterance to at least some sounds, but he was as dumb as a stone. She was beginning to work up a temper, but restrained herself.
"And if you were discontented with anything, if perhaps you lacked food or linen, could you not explain it frankly to your mother? Could you not say, 'Mamma, darling, won't you have some liver or curd-cakes prepared for me?' Do you think your mother would have refused you? Or if you wanted a drop of vodka, goodness, I wouldn't have begrudged you a glass or two. To think of it, you were not ashamed to beg from a serf, while it was difficult for you to say a word to your own mother."
But her flattering words were of no avail. Simple Simon remained impervious to either emotion (Arina Petrovna had hoped he would kiss her hand) or repentance. In fact, he seemed to have heard nothing.
From that time on he never spoke a single word. All day long he walked up and down his room, his brows knit and his lips moving, apparently never growing tired. At times he halted as if wishing to say something, but he could not find the words. He had not lost the capacity for thinking, but impressions left so slight a trace on his brain that he could not hold them for any appreciable length of time. Consequently his failure to find the necessary words did not even make him impatient. Arina Petrovna, for her part, thought he would surely set the house on fire.
"He does not say a word all day long," she repeated. "Still he must be thinking of something, the blockhead! I am sure he'll set the house on fire one of these days."
But the blockhead did not think of anything at all. He was deeply immersed in absolute darkness, in which there was no room either for reality or the illusory world of imagination. His brain did work, but in a void, disconnected from either the past, the present, or the future. It was as though he was completely wrapt up in a black cloud and all he did was to scan it, to watch its imaginary fluctuations, and, at times, to make a feeble attempt at resisting its sinister sway. The whole physical and spiritual world dwindled down to that enigmatic cloud.