XIV
Rumours that Pilnikov was a disguised girl soon spread about the town. Among the first to hear of it were the Routilovs. The inquisitive Liudmilla always tried to see everything new with her own eyes. She had a burning curiosity about Pilnikov. Of course, she would have to see the masquerading trickster. She knew Kokovkina, and so one evening Liudmilla announced to her sisters:
“I’m going to take a look at this girl.”
“Busybody!” said Darya indignantly.
“She’s got on her best clothes,” said Valeria with a restrained smile.
They were annoyed because they had not thought of it first and it would be awkward for the three of them to go. Liudmilla was dressed more elaborately than usual—she herself could not tell why. Apart from other considerations, she liked to dress up. She dressed more lightly than her sisters: her arms and her shoulders were a little more bared, her dress a little shorter, her shoes a little lighter, her stockings a little thinner, more transparent and of a flesh colour. At home she liked to go about in a petticoat, without stockings, but with shoes on her bared feet—moreover her petticoat and her chemise were very charmingly embroidered.
The weather was cold, windy, and the fallen leaves floated on the speckled pools. Liudmilla walked quickly, and under her thin cloak she almost did not feel the cold.
Kokovkina and Sasha were drinking tea. Liudmilla looked at them with searching eyes—they were sitting quietly, drinking tea, eating rolls and chatting. Liudmilla kissed Kokovkina and said:
“I’ve come on business, dear Olga Vassilyevna, but that can wait—first warm me up with a little tea. But who is this young man here?”
Sasha flushed and bowed uneasily. Kokovkina introduced them. Liudmilla sat down at the table and began to gossip in an animated way. The townspeople liked to see her because she could recount things prettily. Kokovkina, who was a stay-at-home, was openly glad to see her, and welcomed her heartily. Liudmilla chattered on merrily, laughed, and jumped up now and then to mimic someone and incidently to tease Sasha. She said to Kokovkina:
“You must feel lonely, my dear, from sitting always at home with this grumpy little schoolboy. You might look in on us now and then.”
“But how can I?” answered Kokovkina. “I’m too old to go visiting.”
“Don’t call it visiting,” said Liudmilla. “Just come in when you like and make yourself at home. This infant needs no swaddling.”
Sasha assumed an injured expression and blushed.
“What a stick-in-the-corner he is,” said Liudmilla to annoy him, and nudged Sasha. “You ought to talk to your visitors.”
“He’s still only a youngster,” said Kokovkina. “He’s very modest.”
“I’m modest too,” said Liudmilla with a smile.
Sasha laughed and said ingenuously:
“Really, are you modest?”
Liudmilla burst out laughing. Her laughter, as always, was delightfully gay. As she laughed, she flushed very much and her eyes became mischievous and guilty, and their glance attempted to dodge those of her companions. Sasha was flustered and tried eagerly to explain.
“I didn’t mean that—I wanted to say that you were very gay and not modest—and not that you were immodest.”
Then feeling what he had said was not as clear as it might be, he grew more confused and blushed.
“What impertinence!” exclaimed Liudmilla laughing and flushing. “What a jewel he is!”
“You’ve embarrassed my Sashenka,” said Kokovkina, looking affectionately at both Liudmilla and Sasha.
Liudmilla, leaning forward with a catlike movement, stroked Sasha’s head. He gave a loud, embarrassed laugh, turned from under her hands and ran into his room.
“My dear, find me a husband,” said Liudmilla without any ado.
“Well, you’ve found a nice matchmaker, I must say!” said Kokovkina with a smile, but it was evident from the expression of her face that she would have undertaken to make a marriage with great enjoyment.
“How are you not a matchmaker and why shouldn’t I make a bride?” said Liudmilla. “Surely you wouldn’t be ashamed to make a marriage for me.”
Liudmilla put her arms on her hips and danced a few steps in front of her hostess.
“Well,” said Kokovkina, “what a wood flower you are!”
“You might do it in your spare time,” said Liudmilla with a laugh.
“What sort of husband would you like?” asked Kokovkina with amusement.
“Let him be—let him be dark—my dear, he must certainly be dark, very dark, dark as a—well, you have a model here—your student—his eyebrows must be black and his eyes languishing, and his eyelashes must be long—long, blue-black eyelashes—your schoolboy’s certainly handsome—really handsome—I’d like one of his sort.”
Soon Liudmilla made ready to leave. It had grown quite dark. Sasha went out to escort her.
“Only as far as the cabby,” said Liudmilla in a gentle voice, and looked at Sasha with her caressing eyes, blushing guiltily.
Once on the street Liudmilla became gay once more and began to cross-examine Sasha.
“Well, are you always at your lessons? Do you read much?”
“Yes, I love reading,” replied Sasha.
“Andersen’s fairytales?”
“No, not fairytales, but all sorts of books. I like history and poems too.”
“Do you like poetry? And who’s your favourite poet?” asked Liudmilla gravely.
“Nadson, of course,”22 replied Sasha, with the deep conviction of the impossibility of any other answer.
“So, so!” said Liudmilla encouragingly. “I like Nadson too, but only in the morning. In the evening, my dear, I like to dress up. And what do you like to do?”
Sasha looked at her with his soft, dark eyes—they suddenly became moist—and he said quietly:
“I like to caress.”
“Well, you are a nice boy,” said Liudmilla, putting her arm on his shoulder. “So you like to caress? But do you like to splash23 in your bath?”
Sasha smiled. Liudmilla went on:
“In warm water?”
“Yes, in warm and in cold,” said the boy shamefacedly.
“And what sort of soap do you like?”
“Glycerine.”
“And do you like grapes?”
Sasha began to laugh.
“You’re a queer girl! It’s a different thing and you ask as if it were the same. You can’t take me in.”
“As if I wanted to!” said Liudmilla laughing.
“I know what you are—you’re a giggler.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Everyone says so,” said Sasha.
“You’re a little gossip,” said Liudmilla with assumed severity.
Sasha blushed again.
“Well, here’s a cabby. Cabby!” shouted Liudmilla.
“Cabby!” shouted Sasha also.
The cabman came up in his shaky drozhky.
Liudmilla told him where to go. He thought a while and demanded forty kopecks. Liudmilla said:
“Do you think it’s far? That shows that you don’t know the road.”
“Well, how much will you give?” asked the cabman.
“You can take which half you like.”
Sasha laughed.
“You’re a cheerful young lady,” said the cabby with a grin. “You might add another five-kopeck piece.”
“Thank you for escorting me, my dear,” said Liudmilla, as she pressed Sasha’s hand tightly and seated herself in the drozhky.
Sasha ran back to the house thinking cheerfully about the cheerful maiden.
Liudmilla returned home in a cheerful mood, smiling and thinking of something pleasant. The sisters awaited her. They sat at a round table in the dining-room, lit up by a hanging lamp. The brown bottle of cherry-brandy on the white tablecloth looked very cheerful; the silver paper round the bottle’s neck glittered brightly. It was surrounded by plates containing apples, nuts, and sweets made of honey and nuts.
Darya was slightly tipsy. Her face was red and her clothes were a little dishevelled; she was singing loudly. Liudmilla as she came heard the last couplet but one of the well-known song:
“Her dress is gone, her reed is gone.
Naked, he leads her naked along the dune.
Fear drives out shame, shame drives out fear,
The shepherdess is all in tears:
‘Forget what you have seen.’ ”
Larissa was also present. She was sprucely dressed. She was tranquilly cheerful and eating an apple, cutting off the slices with a small knife and was laughing.
“Well,” she asked, “what did you see?”
Darya stopped singing and looked at Liudmilla. Valeria leaned her head on her hand with the little finger against her temple and smiled responsively at Larissa. She was slender, fragile, and her smile was unreposeful. Liudmilla poured herself a cherry-red liqueur and said:
“It’s all nonsense! He’s a real boy and quite sympathetic. He’s very dark and his eyes sparkle, but he’s quite young and innocent.”
Then she burst into a loud laugh. The sisters when they looked at her began to laugh also.
“Well, what’s one to say? It’s all Peredonovian nonsense,” said Darya, and waved her hand contemptuously; she grew thoughtful for a moment, leaning her head on her hands, with her elbows on the table. “I might as well go on singing,” she said, and began to sing with piercing loudness.
There was an intensely grim animation in her squeals. If a dead man should be released from the grave on condition of his singing perpetually, he would sing in this way. But the sisters had already become used to Darya’s tipsy bawling, and at times even joined in with her in purposely ranting voices.
“Well, she’s let herself loose,” said Liudmilla laughing. It was not that she objected to the noise, but she wanted her sisters to listen to her. Darya shouted angrily, interrupting her song in the middle of a word:
“What’s the matter with you? I’m not interfering with you!”
And immediately she took up the song at the very place she had left off. Larissa said amiably:
“Let her sing.”
“It’s raining hard on me,
There’s no roof for a girl like me—”
bawled Darya, imitating the sounds and drawing out the syllables as the simple folk-singers do to make a song more pathetic. For example, it sounded like this:
“O-o-oh; it’s a-rai-ai-ning ha-a-a-rd on me-e-e!”
Particularly unpleasant were the sounds stretched out where the accents did not fall. It produced a superlative impression: it would have brought a mortal depression on a new listener. A sadness resounding through our native fields and villages, a sadness consuming with a hideous flame the living word, debasing a once living song with senseless howling. …
Suddenly Darya sprang up, put her hand on her hips and began to shout out a gay song,24 dancing and snapping her fingers:
“Go away, young fellow, go away—
I am a robber’s daughter
A fig for your good looks—
I’ll stick a knife in your belly.
I’ll not have a muzhik.
I’m going to love a bossiak.”25
Darya danced and sang, and her eyes seemed as motionless as the dead moon in its orbit. Liudmilla laughed loudly—and her heart now felt faint, now felt oppressed, from gay joyousness or from the cherry-sweet cherry brandy. Valeria laughed quietly with glass-sounding laughter, and looked enviously at her sisters; she wished she were as cheerful as they, but somehow she felt anything but cheerful—she thought that she was the last, the youngest, “the leftover”; hence her frailty and her unhappiness. And though she was laughing she was almost on the point of bursting into tears.
Larissa looked at her, and winked—and Valeria suddenly grew more cheerful. Larissa rose, and moved her shoulders—presently, in a single instant, all four sisters were whirling round madly, as in a mystic dance, and, following Darya’s lead, were shouting new chastushki, one more gay and absurd than the other. The sisters were young, handsome, and their voices sounded loud and wild—the witches on the Bald hill might have envied this mad whirl.
All night Liudmilla dreamt such sultry African dreams!
Now she dreamt that she was lying in a smotheringly hot room, and her bedcover slipping from her left her hot body naked—and then a scaly, ringed serpent crept into the room, and climbing up a tree coiled itself round the branches of its naked, handsome limbs. …
Then she dreamt of a hot summer evening by a lake under threatening, cumbrously-moving clouds—she was lying on its bank, naked, with a smooth golden crown across her forehead. There was a smell of tepid stagnant water and of grass withered by the heat—and upon the dark, ominous, calm water floated a white, powerful swan of regal stateliness. He beat the water noisily with his wings, and, hissing loudly, approached her and embraced her—and it felt delicious, and languorous and sad. …
And both the serpent and the swan, in bending over her, showed Sasha’s face, almost bluely pale, with dark, enigmatically sad eyes—their blue-black eyelids, jealously covering their witching glance, descended heavily and apprehensively.
Then Liudmilla dreamt of a magnificent chamber with low, heavy arches—it was crowded with strong, naked, beautiful boys—the handsomest of all was Sasha. She was sitting high, and the naked boys in turn beat one another. And when Sasha was laid on the floor, his face towards Liudmilla, and beaten, he loudly laughed and wept—she was also laughing, as one laughs only in dreams, when the heart begins to beat intensely, and when one laughs long, unrestrainedly, the laughter of oblivion and of death. …
In the morning after all these dreams Liudmilla felt that she was passionately in love with Sasha. An impatient desire to see him seized hold of her—but the thought that she would see him dressed made her sad. How stupid that small boys don’t go about naked! Or at least barefoot, like the streets gamins in summer upon whom Liudmilla loved to gaze because they walked about barefoot, and sometimes showed their bared legs quite high.
“As if it were so shameful to have a body,” thought Liudmilla, “that even small boys hide it!”