After dinner the schoolboy went back to his own room, took the coupon and the small change out of his pocket and threw them on the desk table. Then he took off his school uniform and put on a jacket. For some time he pored over a battered Latin grammar, then he shut the door and fastened it on the hook, swept the money off the desk top and into a drawer, took some cigarette papers out of the drawer, filled one with tobacco, plugged the cardboard mouthpiece with some cotton wool, and started to smoke.
He spent a further two hours or so sitting over his grammar and his exercise books but without taking anything in, then he stood up and began pacing to and fro across the room, stamping his heels and recalling everything that had passed between him and his father. His father’s abusive words, and above all the spiteful expression on his father’s face, came back to him just as if he was hearing and seeing it now. ‘Good-for-nothing. What you need is a good hiding.’ And the more he remembered, the more furious with his father he became. He remembered his father saying to him ‘I can see how you will end up – as a swindler. Don’t say I didn’t warn you’ – and – ‘You’ll end up as a swindler if you go on like this.’ ‘It’s all right for him,’ he thought, ‘he’s forgotten what it was like when he was young. And what are these crimes I have committed? Just going to the theatre, and running out of money, and borrowing some from Petya Grushetsky. What’s so dreadful about that? Anybody else would have been sympathetic and asked me all about it, but all he does is rage at me and think of nobody but himself. Whenever he doesn’t get what he wants he shouts the house down, but I, I am a swindler. No, my father he may be, but I don’t love him. I don’t know whether all fathers are the same as he is, but I don’t love him.’
The maid knocked at his door. She had brought him a note.
‘They said you were to reply at once.’
The note read: ‘This is the third time I am having to ask you to return the six roubles you borrowed from me, but you keep trying to get out of it. That is not how honourable men behave. I ask you to send the money at once by the bearer of this note. I am extremely hard up myself. Surely you can get it? Your – depending whether you pay me or you don’t – contemptuous or respectful friend, Grushetsky.’
‘Well, what do you make of that? What a swine. He can’t wait for a bit. I shall just have to have another try.’
Mitya went to see his mother. This was his last hope. His mother was a kind-hearted woman who found it hard to refuse him anything, and she might indeed have helped him, but just now she was anxious about the illness of her youngest child, two-year-old Petya. She was annoyed with Mitya for coming in and making a noise, and she turned down his request on the spot.
He muttered something under his breath and started to walk out of the room. Feeling sorry for her son, she called him back.
‘Just a minute, Mitya,’ she said. ‘I haven’t any money at the moment but I can get some tomorrow.’
But Mitya was still seething with bitter anger against his father.
‘What’s the use of telling me “tomorrow”, when I need it right away? You may as well know that I am going to see a friend to ask him for it.’
He went out, banging the door.
‘There’s nothing else to be done. He’ll tell me where I can go to pawn my watch,’ he thought, feeling for the watch which he had in his pocket.
Mitya took the coupon and the change out of the desk drawer, put on his overcoat and set off to see his friend Makhin.
II
Makhin too was a schoolboy, but a sophisticated one. He played cards and knew women, and he always had money. He lived with his aunt. Mitya was aware that Makhin was a bad character, but when he was with him he automatically deferred to Makhin’s authority. Makhin was at home, getting ready to go out to the theatre: his scruffy little room smelt of scented soap and eau de Cologne.
‘It’s the last straw, my friend,’ said Makhin when Mitya had told him his woeful story, shown him the coupon and the fifty copecks, and explained that he was in need of nine roubles. ‘You could actually pawn your watch, but there is an even better way,’ said Makhin, winking his eye.
‘What sort of a better way?’
‘It’s really very simple.’ Makhin took the coupon. ‘You just need to put in a figure one in front of the 2 r.50, and it will read 12 r.50.’
‘But are there coupons for that amount?’
‘Naturally there are, on thousand-rouble bonds. I passed off one myself once.’
‘But surely it’s not possible?’
‘Well, shall we have a go?’ said Makhin, taking a pen and smoothing out the coupon with a finger of his left hand.
‘But it can’t be right.’
‘Oh, what nonsense.’
‘He was quite right,’ thought Mitya, remembering again the bad things his father had said about him: a swindler. ‘I’ll be a swindler now.’ He looked Makhin in the face. Makhin was looking at him and smiling quietly.
‘Well then, shall we have a go?’
‘All right, go ahead.’
Makhin painstakingly traced out a figure one.
