“Fiodor Ivanovich spoke to me today,” said the mother quietly, trying to be weighty and heard by her son, though she spoke for some reason to Artiom, “Fiodor Ivanovich says that Osip needs a trip to the mainland to continue his research. And he’s ready to let him go, if I’m willing to promise he comes back.”
“I like that,” Troianskii answered extremely cuttingly, as though he had prepared an answer in advance, “I’m here in cold storage. There’s no real work to speak of. And so they’ll unseal me, like canned meat and they’ll say, ‘Bird, go fly!’ I’ll fly a bit, then I’ll come back, and they’ll seal me up again in a tin can. How wonderful, Mama.”
“Why is he so nasty to his mother, what a moron… He’s ruining our lunch,” thought Artiom, smiling distractedly.
Elizaveta Averianovna rarely loo
