“Nothing,” Kavalov said. “Nothing excepting a lot of idiotic and very pointless trickery and playacting.”
“You can call it anything you want to call it,” a voice grumbled over my shoulder, “but I seen what I seen.”
The voice belonged to one of the men who was waiting on the table, a sallow, youngish man with a narrow, slack-lipped face. He spoke with a subdued sort of stubbornness, and without looking up from the dish he was putting before me.
Since nobody else paid any attention to the servant’s clearly audible remark, I turned my face to Kavalov again. He was trimming the edge of a sand dab with the side of his fork.
“What kind of trickery and playacting?” I asked.
Kavalov put down his fork and rested his wrists on the edge of the table. He rubbed his lips together and leaned over his plate towards me.
“Supposing”—he wrinkled his forehead so that his bald scalp twitched forward—“you have done injury to a man ten years ago.” He turned his wrists quickly, laying his hands palms-up on the white cloth. “You have done this injury in the ordinary business manner—you understand?—for profit. There is not anything personal concerned. You do not hardly know him. And then supposing he came to you after all those ten years and said to you: ‘I have come to watch you die.’ ” He turned his hands over, palms down. “Well, what would you think?”
“I wouldn’t,” I replied, “think I ought to hurry up my dying on his account.”
The earnestness went out of his face, leaving it blank. He blinked at me for a moment and then began eating his fish. When he had chewed and swallowed the last piece of sand dab he looked up at me again. He shook his head slowly, drawing down the corners of his mouth.