XIV

The Butters baby had proved to be twins, and there was so much extra sewing for Anna to do that she was obliged to take some home. Her stitching was poor; she did not mind; she was tired of other people’s children. She did not mind if every garment she made should fall to pieces on their superfluous bodies. She resented, too, being obliged to remain so much in the presence of her husband, whose melancholy and arid figure seemed to her now little more than a tiresomely deathless reminder of her disappointed motherhood. She said that her son was dead, she imagined him dead, but she knew that he was not dead. At the very root of her mind was the sane admission that there was no practical reason why he should not return in safety to Chi-tao-kou, with or without a wife. This root of common sense was planted deeply out of sight in her heart, however; aboveground flourished the branching growth of silly premonition and apprehension⁠—a growth which she saw no reason to prune; and from this tangle had lately blossomed her entirely senseless determination to see her son’s bride through the distorting eyes of the dead Alexander⁠—to call her Death, and to have no hope. This superficial, yet ardently nourished, hopelessness did not prevent her from taking her sewing every afternoon out on to the ramshackle porch of their house, which commanded a view of the street along which her son, if he returned, must come. The despair which ached continually, like a cramp, in her brain did not prevent her from thinking “I’ll make curd cakes the first evening, I think, and I’ll kill one of the last two chicks out of Old Speckly’s last brood but one.⁠ ⁠…”

Old Sergei was obscurely glad that his wife’s work now obliged her to spend more time in the house. Her presence was tempestuous, her words hardly ever kind. Nineteen years of marriage had made her so wary and contrary a bird that the little snares he spread to trip her into a complaisant word of approval or an appropriate and flattering grunt of agreement were always futile. He was never allowed to complete his sporadic gestures of preening himself. Still, even humiliation was better than silence⁠—especially as there was no mocker at hand to witness his frequent humiliations. Somehow, in spite of Anna’s impatience, he felt safe with her, as one feels safe even in a rough straw bed after groping in a dark room. Wherever she sat, sewing, he sat near her, trying not to notice that she often moved petulantly away. From the porch, however, as he soon discovered, she would not move away; there, he⁠—sitting just inside the window⁠—had his companion pinned down.

“I suppose you sit out here so as to see Seryozha coming round the corner, when at last he comes,” said Old Sergei one day.

“Nothing of the kind,” said Anna. “I know now that Seryozha will never come back.”

To his teasing, “Well then, why sit out there in the dust?” she made no reply.

But presently she said something that so much surprised him that the sense of it fell back from his mind, as a wave falls back from a rock, leaving its surface dark, glossy, and wet, but its shape unchanged. He listened to the low unloving tone of her voice, rather than to the words she uttered, and the tone conveyed to his slow mind nothing but the usual reproach. Immediately, the house shook and he realized that she had jumped off the porch. Then he found, printed on his hearing, as clearly as the shape of a windowpane is printed on suddenly closed eyes, her words: “As a matter of fact, here he comes⁠—your son⁠—and the man that went with him.”

“Annitchka! Annitchka!” he cried, absurdly confused by the discrepancy between her tone and her words. But, as he feared, she was gone from the porch. What could she have meant⁠—here he comes⁠—your son? As he rose, trembling, from his chair, he sought foolishly in his mind for some other possible meaning of those disquietingly simple words⁠—here he comes⁠—your son.⁠ ⁠… So deeply astonished was he that his sense of direction⁠—his homely familiarity with every object⁠—every wrinkle⁠—every dint in the room, was on the instant lost. He shuffled wildly up and down, hitting his knee painfully against a ledge that seemed to have sprung like a fungus from a smooth wall, rapping his flying knuckles against an anonymous piece of furniture that could not be the ordinary reliable dresser that had for so long acted as signpost to his gropings.

“Annitchka! Annitchka!” he quavered. And as he stumbled to and fro, round and round, lost in a quivering jungle of bewilderment, he heard, fined and diminished by the accurate perspective-sense of the hearing, Seryozha’s far-off shout.

“Mamma! mamma! mamma!”

At the sound of his son’s voice, Old Sergei, in a frenzy of exaltation and desire, saw the dim oblong of the door, and his own upheld hand silhouetted like a blurred crab against that incredible squat pillar of light. He was at once extravagantly dizzy⁠—reeled, swung, moaned, clung to the dresser, shut his new eyes for a few seconds and opened them again. There was a roaring of readjustment in his brain; his whole habit of concentration rushed from all his senses to that one lost and found sense of sight. He leaned his numb hands against the wall and planted his incredulous feet, as though they were wooden blocks, one before the other⁠—the other before the one⁠—forcing his half-paralyzed body to walk along a new path⁠—a path that his feet had forgotten⁠—a path that his eyes could see.

He had lost his power of estimating space by sight; his feet reached the threshold of the door before his eyes expected. Daylight towered round him, as though he tottered in a fountain of terrifying flame. He felt wholly defeated. The light pressed in on him; he was buried alive in an avalanche of light. Weighed down by light, he fell to his knees. As he did so, Seryozha’s voice, from somewhere very near, broke through the roar of his forgotten sense of hearing. It was as if the blood rushed into a limb that had been for a moment numb.

He lifted his face, raised his lids. This smear of smoke in the core of a flame, then⁠—was this all that Old Sergei was to see of his son? Better to be blind, thought Old Sergei, wildly, than to seek in vain through this terrifying new world of fire for the lost face of his son. More lost than ever before, it seemed, for now the promise of returning sight was a broken promise. “Ah! ah! I can’t see you! I can’t see you!” wailed the old man.

“You shall! You shall!” cried Seryozha, giggling with excitement. “Just be hopeful, papa darling⁠—just be hopeful for a minute.”

An appalling smell now awoke to consciousness another of Old Sergei’s momentarily neglected senses. Something of revolting texture was rubbed against his eyes. “What’s this? What’s this?” he screamed in a fury.

“Just be hopeful⁠—be hopeful,” Seryozha’s voice went on. His father could feel the boy’s breath on his brow. What was this filthy, stinking pad over his eyes that shuttered away his son?

“Take it away, boy, take it away. Let me see your face.”

“Can you see my face?” asked Seryozha, withdrawing his magic poultice.

And it seemed to Old Sergei as if that urgent creating young voice cut like a knife through the thin crumbling texture of his limitations. Something that felt like a dark doubt in himself was pushed away from his heart and from his eyes, as the blinds of the house of a dead man run up to admit the sun when the coffin is at last carried away. He felt like a man who, in a dream, finds that he can fly. The voice of his son created before his eyes⁠—a face⁠—a huge, shimmering gray turnip close to his eyes, much bigger than the sky, with features like clouds. It was like an Olympian practical joke, that face⁠—a mask, with blurred craters for eyes, crooked streak for nose, broad black scratch for mouth. Yet, imperfect and grotesque as was the geography of this globe within six inches of his eyes, it was obscurely but surely the face of Seryozha. Every second brought in partial focus some new identifying blur on one plane or another of this refound world that was his son’s face.

“I can see,” whispered Old Sergei, and he could not speak again. Tears ran out of his eyes and trickled past the corners of his trembling mouth. His cheeks were sucked in with the breath drawn to utter words he could find no voice to say. He leaned toward his son and put his arms round his neck, hanging against him, dizzily swaying.

Seryozha, snorting and snuffling with emotion, almost carried him back into the living-room, seated him in the armchair, and knelt at his feet, stroking the old twitching, tear-smeared cheeks. “Papa, papa⁠—my papa,” said Seryozha in a soft voice, feeling that there was nobody he loved so much in the world.

Anna, panting behind her son (who had run to his father), arrived in the doorway. She came and leaned over the back of her husband’s chair, feeling so full of delight that even the narrow wispy skull of the old man⁠—across which she saw Seryozha’s face⁠—looked lovely to her.

“And he looks so well,” she said, ardently describing the boy to her husband. “Thinner, perhaps⁠—but so well.⁠ ⁠… Tschah! there’s no doubt about it, he’s a fine boy, our boy,” she added with a deafening hiccup, as she shook her husband’s shoulder. Neither the old man nor the young one acknowledged her remarks. Seryozha went on saying, “Papa⁠—papa⁠—papa,” stroking inquiringly with gentle blunt fingers the skin round his father’s eye-sockets. Seryozha felt a creator’s pride⁠—almost a paternal pride, as if he had begotten a new papa. “Let there be light,” he had said, he was the god of a new genesis.

The dog was not being welcomed home at all, but it did not mind. It wandered about the room, sniffing deeply, welcoming itself home. A dog’s nose may be said to do something more for it than simply reconstruct the past, since the word reconstruct implies a certain effort of the imagination⁠—an element of guesswork. A dog, I think, smelling a smell, does not guess what has happened, it takes for granted⁠—just as we, hearing a friend calling us, a horse neighing, or a clock striking, have no need for guesswork; our sense has told us something, not hinted at something. The dog, smelling traces of a past event, is a witness of that event; time is no obstacle; as long as a smell clings, so long is yesterday⁠—to a dog⁠—current news. A dog could surely make some contribution to the theory of relativity. “Here,” mused Seryozha’s dog, “that horrid little goat lay down⁠ ⁠… here, the old woman dropped an egg⁠ ⁠… here stood that Korean water-carrier whom I always bite⁠ ⁠… in this chair a missionary sat, carrying a parcel of clothes the paper of which once had something to do with dried raisins.⁠ ⁠…” The room confessed its past to the dog, reserving nothing that a smell could tell. Presently the dog had a piece of luck⁠—a pleasure of the present interrupted inquiry into the past. Near the threshold it found a piece of fish offal in such a condition of delicious decay as even the dog⁠—a connoisseur in putrescence⁠—seldom had the good fortune to unearth. It stood warily half in and half out of the door, fearing to have its treasure snatched from it, masticating hastily with a breathy sound like ga-haow⁠—ga-haow⁠—ga-haow.

Anna began to feel a little offended with her family for being so preoccupied. “And where is the bride?” she said, a little less sweetly, straightening herself. “Have you dropped her somewhere on the road?”

“Yes,” said Seryozha, dreamily, and then, as if ceasing to murmur the word “papa” had broken a spell, he pulled himself together and rose from his knees. With a lighthearted leap backward, using his arms as crutches, he sat on the table.

“Oh, papa,” he began in his natural, noisy, indifferent young voice, “everything went so beautifully. I got your money⁠—or rather, Mr. Chew got it⁠—”

“Where have you left Mr. Chew?”

“He was here. I expect he went back to show Tanya the way. But, papa, Olga Ivanovna was⁠—”

“Yes, but where is⁠—”

“Well, but, papa, how much d’you think we got? Guess. Well, your two hundred yen had swelled to three hundred and fifty! Worth going for, wasn’t it? And, papa, I saw a mare give birth to a foal. You’ve no idea⁠—Oh, but listen, papa, at Mi-san they have eighteen horses, counting the three yearlings⁠—”

Anna stood looking along the table at his broad back and shoulders, feeling injury swelling in her heart, like the hot assembling blood in a pinched finger. “What’s this⁠—papa⁠—papa⁠—papa⁠—no mamma at all?” Was it for this she had counted the days, rolled her curl-papers on a tear-wet pillow through long nights? She made a difficult effort to keep her voice sweet. “Begin at the beginning, darling boy, and tell us everything. It isn’t really true that you’re married, is it?” Perhaps the bride called Death was a dream, she thought, or Seryozha’s letter a joke. She had the unphilosophical habit of challenging proven facts to prove themselves again⁠—and yet again⁠—and even then of blotting out those twice-proven facts like hated dreams, daring them to materialize again.

“Yes, I am married,” said Seryozha, checked in his boisterousness, but still looking at his father as if he shared a secret with him.

“Such nonsense!” said Anna, vehemently, almost glad to have an excuse to sharpen her voice. “If you could see the child,” she added to her husband, nudging him to remind him that he should join in the reproach, “you would say like me that for such a baby to marry without his parents’ consent is worse than nonsense⁠—it’s wicked, undutiful nonsense.”

“Papa can see me,” said Seryozha, and Anna had once more the impotent sense of speaking to unhearing space⁠—as a diver’s voice, under the sea, is swallowed up, reabsorbed, by his own imprisoned hearing.

“Such nonsense!” she said again, more bitterly, and then, realizing what Seryozha had said, she looked rather sharply at her husband to see what the boy could mean. Although it seemed to her that there was a look of vision in the old man’s eyes, she discounted the remark as nonsense, for the present, for she had no attention to spare for her husband. “Get off the table, Seryozha, and let me get tea ready.” She would not try to make curd cakes today, she thought, wearily.

“And, papa,” resumed Seryozha without moving. “What do you think? Gavril Ilitch’s wife beat him in the street, because he paid up your money. Mr. Chew told me. Beat him⁠—think of that! You remember Gavril Ilitch⁠—like a great dumpling⁠—you can imagine how funny it must have looked.⁠ ⁠… Oi!⁠—I did regret not being there⁠ ⁠…”

Anna, thwarted in her hopes of spreading the tablecloth, stood grimly watching him. In spite of her feeling of injury, she gloried in the sight of him⁠—his size, his straightness, his independence.

“Ai, that old clock,” said Seryozha, interrupting himself. “I often thought of its ugly old face while I was away.”

“And your mother’s ugly old face?” asked Anna.

“I often thought of that, too,” cried Seryozha, jumping off the table and throwing his arms about her. But she hardly had time to feel delight, for he spoke to his father over her shoulder. “Papa, in a field in Korea we saw a plough worked like a motorcar⁠—no bullocks at all. The furrow it made was so straight and deep.”

He was sitting on the table again, his hand descriptively ploughing the air in front of him.

“For God’s sake, where is this wife of yours?” grumbled Anna, in a softened voice. “Where have you left her?”

“In the new temple,” said Seryozha, the smile that belonged to the marvelous plough still parting his lips. “Mr. Chew suggested our coming on ahead, and she seemed quite pleased. She is not like other girls⁠—always asking for attention.”

“But is she there alone?”

“No. With Katya’s niece.”

“Who is Katya and who is her niece? For God’s sake, don’t talk so foolishly, boy.”

“Katya is Varvara Alexeievna’s servant.⁠ ⁠…” And as Seryozha said this his eye fell on the tablecloth on her arm⁠—still torn and stained, still not mended or washed, just as he had seen it the day he went away. And the words in his mouth⁠—“Varvara Alexeievna’s servant”⁠—sent his mind back to his mother-in-law’s neat house and orderly possessions⁠—the sunlight, through clean panes, lying patterned on a clean floor; the pressed linen that clothed Varvara’s awkward yet leisured body; the busy effectiveness of Katya. He remembered the departure from Mi-san, which, owing to Pavel’s dramatic sense, had appeased that craving that was in Seryozha, as in all young creatures, for the dignified conduct of great affairs of sentiment. There had been the panting Ford at the door, and in it a large crate of unfamiliar shape. “Whose package is that?” “Yours,” said Pavel, superbly. “Half the Ostapenko family silver for Pavel Ostapenko’s only child. And I’ll send her mare up by road as soon as I can arrange it, and the black gelding for you, my dear boy. And here is my daughter’s maid, Marfa, Katya’s niece, for I want the child to be well looked after. And here, Seryozha, is the child’s dowry.⁠ ⁠…” He handed him a draft for two thousand yen. Seryozha had felt ideally well treated for the first time in his life. All that was needed was a grave and literary blessing, and this Pavel at once supplied. “The God of Heaven give you a prosperous journey, my children. Tanya, you’re a married woman now. You must honor a new father and mother; they are your parents now, and from them let me hear a good account of you.” He kissed his daughter on the forehead. And then Varvara rather spoiled the noble austerity of it all by crying wildly: “Take care of her, Seryozha⁠—there’s no one like her.⁠ ⁠… She’s different⁠—she’s special. I commit her to you as a special trust.⁠ ⁠… Be very good to her.⁠ ⁠…” Then she gasped, with a rush of tears, “If there are babies, Seryozha, let me be there⁠—I must be there.⁠ ⁠…” A scene to make a man of a boy indeed, thought Seryozha. Even Varvara’s tears, though awkwardly shed, had been a tribute to his grown-up dignity. And now⁠—home to this threadbare muddle⁠—to be reinfected with the virus of childishness by his incurable mother. For a few seconds Seryozha saw his home, and all his longing for home turned sour.

His mother watched his expression change and a sullenness come into his eyes. “Ah, tschah!” she said, hurt by this result of his glance in her direction. “I won’t bother you with questions, then. I’ll leave you to talk to your father. I’ll go to the new temple to meet your Tanya.”

She felt like a horseman whose unmanageable mount suddenly kicks out at a friend standing by, to whom he has been trying to talk charmingly. Here was her warm heart⁠—its warmth all in vain⁠—mounted on this clumsy steed of manners and body.

But Seryozha was still imbedded in his past. He could not yet bear to let the then dissolve into the now. “We had such a journey,” he said, dreamily. “By motorcar from Mi-san to Choanji, and we let Mr. Chew take the car and luggage from there to Gensan while Tanya and I walked through the Kongo-san⁠—”

“But the expense⁠ ⁠…” quavered Old Sergei.

“Tschah! We are rich now. Expense is nothing. Why, papa, we have brought a huge box full of family silver.⁠ ⁠…”

Anna went out, patting Seryozha’s wrist wistfully as she passed him. He smiled at her as she did so. “Mamma darling, we must live quite differently now.⁠ ⁠…”

The new temple was so new that it was not yet finished. The molded mud gods were already enthroned, but they were not colored yet. To make up for this rather ungodlike nakedness, somebody had put a fresh hollyhock in each god’s hand. They looked like ladies trying on their engagement rings in their baths.

On a ledge between one god and another sat Tatiana. Anna was quite shocked to see how light and small and beautiful her son’s bride was.

Wilfred Chew was standing in the middle of the courtyard, looking contemptuously up at the dolphin-bristling roof-ridge and the curly, dragony eaves.

“Ah Mrs. Malinin,” said Wilfred, brightly. “I see I am to have the pleasure of introducing your daughter-in-law to you. Mrs. Malinin senior, I beg to present to you Mrs. Malinin junior.” He rubbed his hands together cheerfully, expecting some kind of outburst of womanly cackle. But neither Mrs. Malinin cackled at all. Anna, feeling stout, hot, and suspicious, sat down on the same ledge as Tatiana, two gods away from her.

“Why do you stay here all alone, daughter?” asked Anna, after huskily beginning to say several other things. “Why don’t you come to our home?”

Tatiana looked at her kindly and warily, as a deer, knowing its retreat safe, looks between the trees of a forest at some strange visitor. “Ai!” she said. “Seryozha isn’t such a very married man, dear Anna Semionovna, that he can’t have his first few minutes at home without his wife. Besides,” she added, “poor Marfa has a sore heel.”

From another chapel of the temple, across the courtyard, Anna could hear a heavy and vulgar groaning⁠—“O God! O God!⁠ ⁠…” Going forward a few steps, she saw Katya’s niece⁠—a fat, flushed, straw-haired girl, sitting in a lump on a low step at the foot of an unfurnished altar, soaking one gross foot in a basin full of warm water. Beside her stood two kind Chinese priests, dressed like coolies (for they had been interrupted in mason’s work), except for their priestly pillbox hats. The priests, in producing the warm water, had obviously exhausted their resources for dealing with blistered female Big-noses. They looked kind, helpless, and depressed, and Marfa, who was not of martyr stuff, did nothing to spare their sympathetic feelings. “O God!” she groaned, vigorously. “O God! O God!”

“What is it⁠—a blister?” asked Anna.

“O God!” replied Marfa.

Anna, leaning over it, saw that there was indeed a big broken blister on the heel. But she did not care. Her heart was quite hard just now. Not knowing what to do about any of these problems, she resented all of them; she did not know what to do for Marfa’s heel, what to do about welcoming Tatiana, whether to make curd cakes or not, how to find a double bed for Seryozha, whether to tip these kind priests.⁠ ⁠… Her imagination, usually so ingenious, had come to the end of its supply of ingenuities. Nothing occurred to her for Marfa’s relief except uncompromising amputation of that ugly foot, or immediate strangling of the sufferer. She therefore turned in silence toward Tatiana again.

“I ought to kiss her, I suppose,” thought Anna, desperately. “And she is certainly a most beautiful little creature.” Her thoughts added, “But she is called Death.”

Tatiana’s lack of precedents showing her what to do in these circumstances was even more complete than her mother-in-law’s. Anna had temporarily lost her social resources, but Tatiana had never found hers. Tatiana’s quick heart never prompted her in the solution of personal problems. She kept her heart for other purposes; her heart’s eyes were incurably longsighted. She would never have been at a loss with a trapped mouse, but a trapped mother-in-law seemed to need some subtlety of treatment, the nature of which did not occur to Tatiana at all. She realized that a mouse and a mother-in-law have, in these circumstances, something in common⁠—she saw this in Anna’s eyes, and felt most tenderly sorry. Animals, she knew, were not comforted by touch, but people, she believed, sometimes were. So she leaned forward, round the intervening gods, and lightly stroked Anna’s arm. Then she sat back to watch the result. Anna watched her, without moving.

“She’ll be shaking hands with me next,” thought Anna, remembering things that Alexander Weber had said.

Tatiana, trembling a little, decided to talk. If she were careful to be polite, talk could do no harm, thought poor Tatiana.

“I do think your Manchuria is beautiful,” she said. “Not like land at all⁠—real land is always so surprising round the corner⁠—but like the sea which has no surprises and no corners. But it is a winter country, this, Anna Semionovna, isn’t it⁠—although the sun is so hot now. It looks to me as if winter really lives here, and just sleeps half the year, like a snake.”

“It is a winter country,” admitted Anna, moodily, anxious at once to make the worst of it. “Remembering Manchuria from far off, one would never remember sweating in green still weather, or seeing the coolies in their big straw hats, or fetching water from rivers that run toward the sea.⁠ ⁠… Smelly furs and cracking black rivers and wind and endlessly sore fingers and melting the water to boil the tea in the dark morning⁠—that’s Manchuria as you’ll remember it some day. A winter country indeed.”

“Some day you must come home with me, dear Anna Semionovna, and see our Korea. Especially our Kongo-san. Ai! ai! you should see the sunny cliffs come forward through the mist to bow, and then go back.” And she began to talk with a tense, trembling enthusiasm about such things as mountains, mists, cascades like stringed harps. It seemed to the surprised Anna that the child’s ardor had no flame in it, but only the stinging quality of ice.

These flowers of sight were furled in Tatiana’s sight like those Japanese toy water-flowers that lie disguised and secret like flakes of sawdust in the hand, but, tossed into water, expand into lilies and roses and orchids. The secret miles flowered in Tatiana’s mind, as she drew them one by one out of silence into this fresh element of words. The path across the Diamond Mountains opened before her, arched with sunlight.

“It was a path through the air,” said Tatiana. “We jumped from rock to rock; we scarcely trod on soil.” She remembered their course with the glowing, almost theatrical, exaggeration characteristic of her⁠—overemphasis of memory combined with under-emphasis of tone. She remembered their flying course from brow to brow of tall boulders, like the course of two clouds from peak to peak, over waters choked and knotted by these bowling boulders⁠—waters jerked this way and that, foaming like horses violently checked in their course⁠—waters dammed into peacock-green pools, to spill over paradoxically, in the wrong direction, by secret exits. “Seryozha swam in a pool; I saw him like a white frog from the top of a round rock.⁠ ⁠… Yes, we were like the chipmunks and the kingfishers, Anna Semionovna, our paths were all through the air or through the water. One could bite the red maple leaves as one jumped from rock to rock⁠ ⁠…”

While she talked in her clear soft voice, Anna watched her doubtfully, her mind half-consciously echoing her own last words⁠—“a winter country indeed.” She felt dimly a little flattered by the child’s cool wariness; it seemed a tribute to the definite, un-Anna-like impression she was making, thought Anna. Inside this pink bewildered body was no confidently mature critic⁠—no mother-in-law at all, really, if Tatiana had only known. But Tatiana, luckily, did not know. Tatiana fixed her alert, wild-fawn stare on the outer Anna and tried, with cautious words, to propitiate that outer Anna, that apparently solid symbol of authority. “She thinks my hands know how to do things⁠—my mouth knows how to say things,” thought Anna, feeling proud and surprised, smoothing down her miscontrived, mis-cut apron over her stomach and feeling that it was being gloriously mistaken for a real, bought, mother-in-law’s apron. But still she was not sure. Still that fading illusory glitter of icy ruthlessness hung about Tatiana⁠—a last gleam of the witch-glare thrown on her name by poor Alexander.

“… a little meadow where the abbots were buried,” Tatiana was saying. “The grass was as green as⁠—as a squirrel’s fur is red⁠ ⁠… and each grave was of black marble, and its throne was a tortoise and its crown was a bandage of twisted dragons.⁠ ⁠… Even the rough common stones round that place had crowns on, like the roofs of little pagodas. Tame marble tombstones for the tame saints, I suppose, and wild stones over the wild mountain saints. There was a praying mantis on one dragon’s claw, and Seryozha’s dog came sniffing⁠—so⁠—and the praying mantis prayed, ‘O God, make this dog ashamed,’ so God did⁠ ⁠… the dog sneezed for shame.⁠ ⁠… We saw the sea and a great thin waterfall from a high path.⁠ ⁠…” She remembered the silver wire of sea strung across a gorge, hooked tautly from a maple to a pine, and another wire of water⁠—jointed and vertical this time⁠—leaning up a broken precipice across which a frayed intermittent smoke of clouds blew lightly.

“Surely there is nothing to be afraid of here,” thought Anna, hardly listening to the words of this strange, cloudy talk.

But Tatiana, though she realized faintly now that she was not quite so safe as she had hoped, in talking of clouds and cascades to a new mother-in-law, could not forget the clouds. Clouds raced across her eyes, especially those last clouds that had dragged the dwindling mountains from her sight⁠ ⁠… two strata of clouds⁠—hardly to be called by the same name⁠—cloud⁠—so far apart were they.⁠ ⁠… There was the still, cushioned world of clouds from which the mountains grew (for the mountains had no roots in the earth).⁠ ⁠… And in front of the faces of the mountains, adding incredibly to their stature, shreds and skeins of stormlit clouds, torn across the pinnacled air, white on steel-blue, silver on white⁠—clouds rent and raveled on sharp peaks like wool on needles. Somewhere Tatiana had heard God’s beard likened to white wool. “Ah, those mountains are held down by clouds,” said Tatiana, “not held up by earth. You have to believe in clouds when you see them like that⁠—as you have to believe in that bee⁠ ⁠…”

A big bee on a level with their eyes was pushing her bullying way into a chrysanthemum’s heart, irritably elbowing petals right and left, her furry muscles trembling with rough strength.

“Do you always talk about clouds?” asked Anna.

“Clouds? No. Why should I talk always about clouds? It is so seldom one sees the live bodies of clouds. Generally talk about clouds would be like talk about dead saints⁠—generally they are so still and so high. Who could talk about them then?”

“Can’t you talk about my Seryozha?” asked Anna. “You’re his wife and I’m his mother. He’s more interesting than a cloud, isn’t he?”

Tatiana thought for a minute and then said, “Yes,” in a shamed voice. She was never safe from a sense of guilt, because she had no standard of behavior. She had talked unsuitably to this unknown ear, she now realized. She would not have been surprised if Anna had told her to go back at once to her parents⁠—a wife found wanting, a disgraced daughter-in-law. It would not have occurred to her to assert her rights. The command to turn the other cheek, even, would have been wasted on Tatiana⁠—she knew of no right not to have her cheek slapped⁠—she knew of no rights at all except the right to see out of her eyes.

“He has a little rash on the back of his neck, I see,” said Anna. “How did he get that?”

“Yes, and also on his behind,” said Tatiana, gravely. “It came after he swam in a mountain pool and lay in the sun on a rock.” She turned her accurate mind’s eye on Seryozha’s rash and considered it; she could see the shape of the patch of pinkness on Seryozha’s skin as clearly as, a minute ago, she had seen the shapes of the clouds.

“It is only sunburn, then?” suggested Anna.

“I think it is,” agreed Tatiana.

“He has a sensitive skin.”

“Yes⁠—and bright, like a horse’s.⁠ ⁠…” Tatiana thought with delight of living bodies as she said this.

Anna sighed. Yet at the same time she thought: “This wife can’t take Seryozha away from his mother. Why, it’s as if he had bought a new telescope, not married a wife. This girl may be new eyes for him, his father may be new ears, but I shall still be in his old heart. Death⁠—tschah! she is not death⁠—she is nothing at all.⁠ ⁠…”

A priest, with a kind eager bow, brought them two cups of leafy tea. These visitors, the priest thought, had evidently forgotten that they did not live here. The tea was a polite hint of a limit⁠—a tactful unspoken goodbye.

Anna thought, “Of course I mustn’t mention Alexander Weber. That would be a thing I should regret very much afterwards.” But even while she was congratulating herself on having⁠—just this once⁠—been wise in time, she heard her own voice saying, “You know, I saw a good deal of Alexander Weber before he died. He talked a great deal about you.”

“Ah, poor Sasha!” said Tatiana in a low voice⁠—though, as a matter of fact, she cared scarcely at all now about Sasha’s death. He was dissolved from her thoughts. She had such a short, thin-spun memory that her mind’s eye never saw ghosts. “Perhaps he told you, Anna Semionovna, that I was possessed by a devil.”

Tatiana hesitated and shuddered. Seryozha, who felt that his feats of magic were not to be hidden under a bushel, had told her his story of the magic smoke. Like all such vague, unlikely stories, it had taken on an aspect both more startlingly magic and more convincingly prosaic, on Seryozha’s lips. The further it retreated into the realm of legend, the more facts were remembered by Seryozha to prove its solid truth. Every conscientious liar who has an occult experience to relate must have noticed this curious posthumous skeleton of facts that materializes to uphold a fading ghost of fiction. (“I know I wasn’t dreaming,” we say, “because I remember I’d just got up to let the cat out, and I noticed distinctly it was raining, and I was just going to tell my wife so when I saw a curious light in the corner⁠—just there⁠—I can show you the exact spot. I know because I could see the corner of the piano and said to myself that it needed dusting⁠—so that shows you⁠ ⁠…” etc., etc. In just such a hard mold of facts, the faint fluidity of an uncertain, unexplained experience sets into the jelly of a ghost-story.)

The first lie that Tatiana had ever told herself was this⁠—that the story of her possession by a devil⁠—now cast out⁠—was true. This lie⁠—this illusory salvation from an illusory devil⁠—was her desperate anchor to normality, her license to believe herself a woman now⁠—a woman plucked out of shameful fairyhood, her defense against being an outlaw and alone. Did Andromeda, chained to her rock, dream through the dark night of a lover beside her, unloosing her chain⁠—and smile uneasily in her sleep⁠—half awake, yet clinging to her dream, trying to believe that she was no longer a dragon’s prisoner beside the lonely sea, but brought home to a lover’s arms? In such a dream Tatiana lived, her heart stirring awake, her lids shut firmly against waking.

Every time Tatiana repeated this lie to herself, she shuddered⁠—such a shudder as makes people say, “Someone walked over your grave.” She shuddered now as she said to Anna: “It was true, what he said. I was possessed by a devil. I was so much afraid of men⁠—they were the only animal that didn’t seem lovely to me⁠ ⁠… that was a devil’s teaching. But Seryozha drove the devil away⁠—by magic, he says, and also, Anna Semionovna, by being so lovely himself.⁠ ⁠…” She was her father’s daughter. She sought in her mind for a password to Anna’s credulity⁠—a word that should once and for all prove her lying claim of fleshliness to be true. “I’m as much a woman now, Anna Semionovna⁠ ⁠… as a sow is a sow⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah, tschah, child!” cried Anna, startled. She looked at her small, trembling daughter-in-law and noticed that she had become very white. “Presently,” thought Anna, “she’ll be horrified to remember that she said that.” And instantly she felt at ease with Tatiana.

Wilfred Chew approached them. “Ladies,” he said, “I don’t wish to butter in on your family conversation, but don’t you think we had better be getting home? The foot of this girl Marfa will not be better in a minute; she might as well make the effort to arrive at your home and perhaps treat it with some kind of healing plasters. Shall we not now begin our little walk?”

Tatiana came to her feet with a dancing spring, feeling vaguely that a dreaded word had been spoken and swept into the unmattering past. As she did so, Anna felt a rush of gratitude and tolerance toward her. She seized her clumsily by the arm.

“You pretty child, don’t be afraid of me.⁠ ⁠… I’m not brave, either,” she mumbled, her tongue stumbling over her teeth.

Tatiana ducked her shoulder away, though, having done so, she smiled a bewildered and compassionate smile. She hated touch; she instinctively looked upon hands as so many traps. Still, having withdrawn herself, she felt tender. What should she say? What should she say?

“I did enjoy seeing the porpoises from the boat, too,” she said. “They were such well-made porpoises⁠—and they didn’t seem to know we were looking at them.”

A slope waving with standing kaoliang eight feet high, overripe for harvest, lay all about the new temple. A path from the temple door to the gate of Chi-tao-kou tunneled straight through this rigidly vertical jungle. One looked along a golden corridor, upheld by a million delicate pillars, intersected by a thousand passages. Even the sunlight lay geometrically, in neatly recurring diamond shapes, on the ruled red soil.

As Anna, Tatiana, Wilfred, and the wailing Marfa entered under the first arch of this long shimmering aisle, two tiny figures appeared at the further end. They seemed snapshotted through that far starry lens that focused the sunlight.

“Here are your respective husbands,” said Wilfred. “A family reunion indeed.” He thirsted for gratitude and praise. “I have brought you a very nice daughter-in-law, Mrs. Malinin, have I not?”

“Ah, well enough,” snorted Anna and gave a croaking laugh. As she turned to smile at Tatiana, she caught a glimpse of a bar of sunlight combing the girl’s chestnut hair. “I am wishing my old husband could see her,” she added, warmly and remorsefully, remembering that she had called the child Death and that a blind man would bear the accusation in mind without seeing the vivid defense.

“He can see her,” said Wilfred, complacently.

“What do you mean?”

“He has been cured of his blindness by an application of Chinese medicine. And it is not surprising. Doctors all over the world are appreciating more and more the truths underlying the Chinese science of medicine.”

“Has he speaked that he can see?” asked Anna.

“My dear lady, I was present at the cure. I was, in fact, responsible for the cure, though Saggay Saggayitch made the actual application. At once your husband said⁠—in Russian, of course⁠—My goodness, I can see perfectly clearly.”

“Ah, tschah! he is being at his old trick again,” said Anna, crossly. “It is all lie, this blindness⁠ ⁠… he never has been blind, I think.”

The offended Wilfred turned quite pink. “You are a lady of little faith, Mrs. Malinin, like in the Gospel. If you had been present at the miracle of the Gadarene swine, you would have said that the poor creatures had been suffering from hydrophobia all along.”

“Well, perhaps they was,” snapped Anna, still ruffled. Regretting her daring pronouncement at once, however, she recalled it ungraciously. “Oi, no⁠—of course, Mr. Chew, I know these pigs have not been⁠—I know my husband has been blind⁠—it is a blindness of nerve⁠—of hysterics, the doctor speaks. One time before, he has been seeing for a few minutes.”

“This time the cure is entirely permanent,” said Wilfred, firmly.

Meanwhile the two groups had been drawing nearer to each other, and now Old Sergei called to his wife, “Look, Annitchka, I can see. I am walking alone!” He had been rather dazzled by the light in the open streets, but now in this avenue of crested spears he could open his eyes bravely and feel whole again.

“What did I tell you?” exclaimed Wilfred.

“Magnificent!” shouted Anna, half ironically⁠—and then was penitent, hearing again that unsympathetic reservation in her own voice. “Magnificent,” she said again, yet still, she knew, her voice was not quite right. As the two halves of the family met, she threw her arms roughly round her husband’s neck and gave him a loud kiss on the corner of his mouth. That was better, she thought, though not perfect. And suddenly she realized for the first time that nothing terrible had happened or need happen at all⁠—on the contrary, they might all be happy together now forever. Although Seryozha had come home at last, she had not, till now, looked forward to serenity. Her mind had been adjusted to mistrust of the future. Now, naive anticipation of endless flawless happiness rushed into her heart. “Let’s have a party tonight,” she said, giggling with pleasure. “The Malinin wedding-feast. We can ask your cousin Andryusha, my darling, and Mitya Nikitin with his balalaika.⁠ ⁠…”

“Excuse me,” said Wilfred. “I will wait here and guide the carter with the luggage to your house.” He wanted time to think of some subterfuge that might excuse him from presence at the feast. He had eaten and drunk one Russian feast too many, and the thought of another made his Chinese stomach turn.

Old Sergei was timidly and hopefully peering at his daughter-in-law’s shining face. “You are welcome, daughter,” he said, after a moment. “God be blessed, who brought you to us. God bless your father and mother.⁠ ⁠…”

As they walked home, Korean and Chinese neighbors who had known of Old Sergei’s blindness, stood gaping and shouting good-natured questions and comments. Seryozha, taking these as personal congratulations on the success of his magic, stepped proudly along.

The house, as soon as they entered it, began to shake with the tread of Anna walking confusedly about, talking of the party, her volatile mind continually drawing red herrings across the trail her feet were set on. The air was haunted with murmurings⁠—“If I had a few young carrots I might⁠ ⁠… then there’s that tin of asparagus that the missionaries⁠ ⁠… or one ought, strictly speaking, to whisk a spoonful of olive oil round the⁠ ⁠… but sardines for zakuska wouldn’t be good enough⁠ ⁠… spring onions standing in the cut-glass tumbler.⁠ ⁠…” Each thought called her back empty-handed from the last uncompleted search.

“I might help, perhaps,” said Tatiana, following her about, a little puzzled.

“Your Marfa might help, perhaps,” said Anna, irritably. “She behaves as if no one ever had a blistered heel before. Ointment perhaps might soothe.⁠ ⁠…” She launched herself on a new course. “But there won’t be enough dessert plates for both plums and walnut cake.⁠ ⁠…”

This unobtrusive pursuit by the anxiously helpful Tatiana shamed Anna, by imperceptible degrees, into some kind of effort at organization. “Well, we might at least begin to mix the pie,” she said in a firm reproachful voice, suddenly dashing a pie-dish down on to the table. “And I’ll go now and get the little Lai boy next door to run and invite our guests for a copper or two. I suppose now, Tanya, your mother has everything to match⁠—plates⁠—little plates⁠—dishes⁠—everything⁠ ⁠… The samovar, I dare say, is much finer than mine⁠ ⁠…”

“It is more proud-looking, perhaps,” admitted Tatiana. “But its face is not so kind.”

Old Sergei and his son were at last left in peace in the living-room, but they could find no more subjects for pleasant talk. All Seryozha’s experiences seemed to have become twice-told tales in the course of seventy minutes.

“You ought to see that Mr. Chew is given his money when he comes in, Seryozha,” said Old Sergei, and directly he had uttered the words “you ought,” Seryozha knew at last that he was in the same old home again, with the same old nagging father. Seryozha’s face hardened, and he adjusted his wits to the old game of inventing irritating retorts. “I will leave that to you now, Seryozha,” continued the old man. “For you must begin to take a little responsibility⁠—not expect me to do everything. I think you might give Mr. Chew a little more than we arranged. We do not want to be mean, and he has certainly done well by us.”

“Oh, papa!” exclaimed Seryozha, scornfully. “A little more, you say. Why, you haven’t rearranged your ideas at all⁠—for all my explaining everything.⁠ ⁠… Don’t you realize we’re rich now? Three hundred and fifty yen from Seoul (it’s settled on Tanya in the deed, to be sure, but only in case of my death and of course I shan’t die⁠—I feel as if I shall live to be a hundred and twenty-seven), and two thousand yen dowry.⁠ ⁠… And all through Mr. Chew’s cleverness. Why, we shouldn’t be giving him too much or beggaring ourselves if we gave him half the Seoul money.⁠ ⁠… He arranged everything about the journey. It’s his doing that Tanya and I are here safe and sound; his knowledge of Chinese science made all the difference to Tanya’s state of health, and he arranged that she and I should meet; he drew up our marriage paper and arranged the money side of it; he went to Seoul and got twice as much money out of Gavril Ilitch as you or I would have dreamed of⁠—and then his scientific knowledge gave you back your sight, papa.⁠ ⁠… Why, what we owe him is beyond thinking⁠—and you go talking about a little tip, as though he were a coolie.⁠ ⁠…”

New sight had made Old Sergei more easy to abash. The world seemed more menacing, now that he could see it.

“Well, of course he has done a great deal.⁠ ⁠… I don’t want to be mean.⁠ ⁠… Let me see, the arrangement was fifty sen a day over and above his expenses (which I suppose you have already paid)⁠—and ten percent on the hundred and fifty yen interest on the Seoul money.⁠ ⁠… Fifty sen a day for four weeks⁠ ⁠… that’s fourteen yen⁠—and the ten percent makes fifteen yen⁠—twenty-nine yen we owe him actually.⁠ ⁠… Yes, you are right, it does seem poor pay for so many benefits, now that we can afford more.⁠ ⁠… But we aren’t millionaires, Seryozha, you know.⁠ ⁠… Well, supposing we give him a present of a hundred yen over and above what we owe him⁠—say, a hundred and thirty yen altogether⁠ ⁠… that’s roughly half.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I think we may say that’s due to him.”

His unpractised eyes, blinking at the sunset in the doorway, saw Wilfred’s figure pass across it. Wilfred was walking up and down the chicken-yard musing, alarmed chickens splashing from under his feet.

“Mr. Chew,” quavered Old Sergei. “Tell him, Seryozha (you have the money ready in your hand, haven’t you?)⁠—tell him that we have been discussing the great success that has attended everything that he has undertaken on our behalf, and that we beg him to accept a little present of a hundred yen, over and above the actual salary⁠—as a little token of our gratitude. Say it graciously in your best English, Seryozha.⁠ ⁠…”

Seryozha’s blood ran cold at the very idea of saying or doing anything graciously, and blushing crimson, he blurted out, “My papa speak⁠—and I speak also⁠—thank you most indeed for being most kind and wise indeed. All very good. Horosho, horosho. We pay a present of a hundred yen⁠—here, please, take⁠—also the thirty yen we speaked before. See this paper.”

“I refuse it,” said Wilfred, immediately. “With many thanks but without the slightest hesitation I refuse the present. Twenty-nine yen is what you owe me, not thirty. As for the present⁠—no.”

The sunset, pouring into Wilfred’s eyes across the chicken-house during his walk up and down the yard, had exalted him⁠—inspired him with a feeling of kinship with suns and saints. He was transfigured by the splendor of himself⁠—his self-satisfaction had found a new self to be satisfied with. The Reverend Oswald Fawcett was for the time being undisputed king of his soul. It was absurdly easy to be good.

“I refuse this present,” repeated Wilfred, “as I would refuse the half of your fortune, should you offer it to me. I am above presents. I have no fear of poverty, believing in the following motto⁠—‘Do good and no evil shall touch you.’ Saggay Saggayitch, please note carefully what I am going to say and translate it all, accurately, to your father and mother⁠—and to any other interested party. If I have helped you⁠—and there is certainly no doubt that I have⁠—it is because I was sent to help you. I have this quite clear in my mind now; in the light of this beautiful sunset illumination, I have enjoyed a kind of revelation. I have been divinely sent, to help you all over your lame dog’s stile. It is no merit⁠—no favor of mine⁠—all that I have done,” continued Wilfred⁠—and truly he felt triumphantly humble on his own behalf. He was conscious for the first time of his littleness⁠—conscious of the tremendous garment of Christianity that he had tried on, and flaunted himself in, so many times, and now, for the first time, seriously donned. He was conscious of this great magic grafted fruit of English righteousness, swelling and ripening round that small indigestible pip that was Wilfred Chew.

“If you only knew,” he said, “how improbable it was that I should come to Chi-tao-kou⁠—to Manchuria at all, indeed⁠—Sir Theo Mustard had changed his plans by the barest chance⁠—but there is no such thing as chance, however bare. Chance is the Lord’s choice. I have proof of being thus chosen. The catching of that fish, Saggay Saggayitch⁠—three times did I dream that exact scene, in advance, and, dreaming, heard a divine voice saying ‘Wilfred Chew, the inside of this fish can cast out devils and heal the sick.’ The Lord was choosing me⁠ ⁠… as His man of business, so to speak, to make your paths straight⁠ ⁠… If I had been sent by a human benefactor, of course, as a lawyer I should not dream of giving away his secrets⁠—even if he were a king, I would be discreet, despising advertisement of any kind. It is good to keep close the secret of a king, but it is honorable to reveal the works of God. Saggay Saggayitch⁠—I am a work of God⁠—I reveal myself to you⁠—not as myself, Wilfred Chew (an imperfect and ignoble person), but as a work of God⁠—a messenger of God. I have been sent in answer to the prayers of good people⁠—yourselves. People that sin are enemies to their own life. Saggay Saggayitch (remember to translate all this). Tell your father that I am sent as the reward of goodness. He was good, leaving his dinner that day, as your mother told me, to go and do his duty by his dead friend, yet for a time only misfortune seemed to result. Blindness⁠—poverty⁠—the difficulty of getting his lawful money from Mr. Isaev at Seoul⁠ ⁠… all these things afflicted him, yet still he was good⁠—he prayed. The same with your wife; she was afflicted by a devil⁠—and she prayed. And, in answer to these prayers, I was sent by God to you⁠—or rather, not I, but an angel in this poor body of mine. It is as if you had seen a vision all these days, Saggay Saggayitch⁠—you thought you walked with a man called Wilfred Chew⁠—a mere barrister, of the Middle Temple, London⁠—but really you walked with an angel. Often, during these weeks, I have felt quite strikingly not myself; something guided my hand even when I did not know it, something saved me from sinning.⁠ ⁠… And when my outward man fell from grace (on one occasion at least you were a witness of it), eating and drinking far too much, I am ashamed to say⁠—even then, something within me sat apart⁠—the angel in me sat apart⁠—neither eating nor drinking, simply occupied in fulfilling the divine commission. Translate all this now, please, Saggay Saggayitch.”

Poor Seryozha was staggered. He stammered in Russian to his father, “He says that he has been God’s angel to us.”

“I am surprised that he should say so himself, but it is perfectly true,” said Old Sergei, bowing to Wilfred. “One can see God’s hand in all that he has done. But surely he said more than that.”

“He said that a great many times,” said Seryozha, guiltily. “It was all I understood.”

“Have you translated it all properly, Saggay Saggayitch?” asked Wilfred, a little surprised at the condensing tendency of the Russian language. He was so anxious that the point of his remarks should reach the old man⁠—that this stream of inspiration that he felt flowing through his heart and lips should not be dammed by misunderstanding. “Does he understand, Saggay Saggayitch, that I am not praising myself⁠—that I am not an angel, though an angel traveled inside me? Does he understand that I am myself a great sinner?” He was very anxious to have his meaning made clear⁠—not only the fact of his possession by an angelic spirit, but also his new idea of himself as a great sinner used as a divine mouthpiece⁠—a Chinese Saint Paul. “Does he understand all that? Tell him how I sinned. Tell him I was drunk.”

“He was drunk,” said Saryozha to his father.

Old Sergei started. “Well, well!” he murmured, feebly. “I dare say the temptation was strong.”

“Does he understand everything now?” asked poor Wilfred, anxiously.

“Everything indeed,” replied Saryozha.

Wilfred, however, was determined to take no risks. He leaned over Old Sergei and seized his hand. Old Sergei’s straining, peering face was turned upward, like the beak of a fledgeling about to be fed.

“Listen, Mr. Malinin. Ya plokhoi chelovyek⁠ ⁠…”

“Nyet nyet,” murmured Old Sergei, politely.

“Da da⁠—plokhoi chelovyek. But at the same time, Bokh’s chelovyek⁠ ⁠… Horosho⁠—ah?”

“Horosho, horosho.”

“Horosho?”

“Horosho, horosho, horosho.”

“Then all is now understood,” said Wilfred, radiantly.

“I will now leave you.”

“Won’t you stay to dinner?” asked Anna, who, as they now saw, was standing in the doorway, peeling a potato on to the floor.

“Ah, Mrs. Malinin, have you heard all that I have been saying?”

“Indeed yes,” said Anna, with vague warmth. “Most interesting indeed.”

“Ah, then you can talk it all over with your husband.⁠ ⁠… Tell him I think it would make an interesting and helpful book⁠—he should write such a book, Mrs. Malinin. I want everyone to know about it all. I want this,” added Wilfred, standing in the doorway, “because these feelings are the largest feelings I have ever had in my life.⁠ ⁠…” His lips twitched. “I think now that this is a good adventure that we have had.⁠ ⁠… I want people to know about it so as to be helped to be good. I feel that in going I leave goodness with you.⁠ ⁠…”

But as he walked away, tense with excitement, goodness went with him down the street. The ghost of the Reverend Oswald Fawcett held his hand.

“Yes, indeed,” said Old Sergei, after a moment’s silence. “He is right. It is as if God had sent His angel to help us. Do you remember, Annitchka, you once said you wished that God would send His angel to take care of our Seryozha on his dangerous journey to Seoul, and I said that God had forgotten poor Russians. I was wrong. I believe now that I was wrong. God will remember us⁠—give us happiness again. God will remember poor Russia again, poor Russia now being scourged for her sins⁠—and bring not us, Annitchka, but our children and our grandchildren back out of exile. Yes, Russia is passing through the fire, and will be desolate for a time, but God will have mercy and bring her children again into the land, where they shall build a Russia, not like the first, a new Russia. They shall return from all the places of their exile, and build up Russia gloriously. Ai, Annitchka, we shall not see it, but Seryozha’s children will see it.”

But Anna’s voice came from the kitchen, whither she had retreated. “Seryozha, draw up that bench to the table, and your father’s big chair.” She reappeared, panting, in the doorway. “You and Tanya⁠—bride and bridegroom⁠—shall sit on the bench at the head of the table.”

Seryozha sat on it to see how it would feel. If Sonia Matvievna were to sit beside him, he thought, it would be a good joke to slide one’s behind violently up the bench and push her off, catching her round the waist as she fell. But with Tanya, this would be a senseless thing to do.

“No, we old people shall not see it,” continued Old Sergei’s sad murmur. “But perhaps that is in itself a mercy, for much trouble will come first. I can feel trouble coming. Why, Seryozha, this place⁠—only twenty-five versts from the Siberian border⁠—could be blotted out in five minutes by bombs⁠ ⁠…”

Marfa limped in, carrying a vase tightly filled with copper-colored zinnias. She laid the cloth and lighted the lamp. Intensely blue sky shuttered the window. Walls and ceiling glowed with a vulgar pleasant golden light. From under the shade of the lamp a tent-shaped radiance spread. The tiny lamp in front of the icon, high up on a triangular shelf across the corner of the room, trembled like a star above the common groundling promise of the room.

“Oh, well, if we are bombed,” said Seryozha, “we can all go and live at Mi-san.⁠ ⁠… I should like to take up horse-breeding as a profession. Papa, you’ve no idea how⁠ ⁠…”

“The lamp⁠—the lamp⁠—how pretty!” murmured Old Sergei. “I can see the lamp.”

“There’s a knock at the door,” said Anna, standing hiccuping with delighted excitement in the steaming kitchen doorway. “The first guest.⁠ ⁠… Tanya, the tray of zakuska.⁠ ⁠… Marfa, pick up that potato peel.⁠ ⁠… Seryozha, open the door.⁠ ⁠… Ai, everything is cooking nicely. Ai, ai! Isn’t everything happy, my darlings!⁠ ⁠… Isn’t this going to be a happy feast⁠ ⁠… !”