Chapter XI

My father had for many years been on very friendly, even intimate terms with a retired government clerk called Latkin, a lame little man in poor circumstances with queer, timid manners, one of those creatures of whom it is commonly said that they are crushed by God Himself. Like my father and Nastasey, he was engaged in the humbler class of legal work and acted as legal adviser and agent. But possessing neither a presentable appearance nor the gift of words and having little confidence in himself, he did not venture to act independently but attached himself to my father. His handwriting was "regular beadwork," he knew the law thoroughly and had mastered all the intricacies of the jargon of petitions and legal documents. He had managed various cases with my father and had shared with him gains and losses and it seemed as though nothing could shake their friendship, and yet it broke down in one day and forever. My father quarrelled with his colleague for good. If Latkin had snatched a profitable job from my father, after the fashion of Nastasey, who replaced him later on, my father would have been no more indignant with him than with Nastasey, probably less. But Latkin, under the influence of an unexplained, incomprehensible feeling, envy, greed--or perhaps even a momentary fit of honesty--"gave away" my father, betrayed him to their common client, a wealthy young merchant, opening this careless young man's eyes to a certain--well, piece of sharp practice, destined to bring my father considerable profit. It was not the money loss, however great--no--but the betrayal that wounded and infuriated my father; he could not forgive treachery.

"So he sets himself up for a saint!" he repeated, trembling all over with anger, his teeth chattering as though he were in a fever. I happened to be in the room and was a witness of this ugly scene. "Good. Amen, from today. It's all over between us. There's the ikon and there's the door! Neither you in my house nor I in yours. You are too honest for us. How can we keep company with you? But may you have no house nor home!"

It was in vain that Latkin entreated my father and bowed down before him; it was in vain that he tried to explain to him what filled his own soul with painful perplexity. "You know it was with no sort of profit to myself, Porfiry Petrovitch," he faltered: "why, I cut my own throat!" My father remained implacable. Latkin never set foot in our house again. Fate itself seemed determined to carry out my father's last cruel words. Soon after the rupture (which took place two years before the beginning of my story), Latkin's wife, who had, it is true, been ill for a long time, died; his second daughter, a child three years old, became deaf and dumb in one day from terror; a swarm of bees had settled on her head; Latkin himself had an apoplectic stroke and sank into extreme and hopeless poverty. How he struggled on, what he lived upon--it is hard to imagine. He lived in a dilapidated hovel at no great distance from our house. His elder daughter Raissa lived with him and kept house, so far as that was possible. This Raissa is the character whom I must now introduce into our story.