“Perhaps you want to become a nun?” Volodin asked in an offended voice.
“Join the Tolstoyans and their sect,” Peredonov added, “and manure the ground.”
“Why do I have to go anywhere?” Nadezhda asked sternly, getting up from her spot. “I like it just fine here.”
Volodin also got up, puffed out his lips offendedly and said:
“After this, if Mishenka displays those kind of feelings towards me, and if things turn out like this when you ask him, then I ought to decline to do the lessons because how can I come now if Mishenka feels like that towards me?”
“But why ever for?” Nadezhda protested. “That’s something completely separate.”
Peredonov thought that they ought to keep trying to persuade the young lady—perhaps she might agree. He said to her gloomily:
“Nadezhda Vasilyevna, now just think it over well. Why are you acting without rhyme or reason? He’s a fine fellow. He’s my friend.”
“No,” Nadezhda said. “There’s nothing to think about! I thank Pavel Vasilyevich very much for the honor, but I can’t.”
Peredonov glanced angrily at Volodin and stood up. He thought that Volodin was a fool. He wasn’t even capable of making the young lady fall in love with him.
Volodin was standing by his chair, his head downcast. He asked in a reproachful voice:
“So that means it’s final, Nadezhda Vasilyevna? E-ech! A fellow loved a girl but she didn’t love him. God’s my witness! Well, then, I’ll have a cry and that’s that.”
“You’re scorning a fine fellow, and who knows the kind that might turn up next,” Peredonov said insistently.
“E-ech!” Volodin exclaimed once more and was about to head for the door. But suddenly he decided to be magnanimous and returned—to offer his hand by way of farewell to both the young lady and even that offender, Misha.
Out on the street Peredonov was grumbling angrily. Volodin was discussing it the whole way in an offended squealing voice just as though he were bleating.
“Why did you give up the lessons?” Peredonov grumbled. “A real rich man!”
“Ardalyon Borisych, I merely said that if such was the case then I ought to give them up, but she was pleased to say that it wasn’t necessary to do so, and since I was pleased not to answer, then it ended up with her begging me. So now it depends upon me: if I wish to, I can refuse; if I wish to, I can continue.”
“Why refuse?” Peredonov said. “Just continue as though nothing had happened.”
“He may as well make the best of it there,” Peredonov thought. “He’ll be less envious.”
There was a melancholy feeling in Peredonov’s heart. Volodin still wasn’t fixed up—he’d better keep an eye on both of them so that Volodin wouldn’t go and conspire with Varvara. What was more, Adamenko might be angry with him because he had tried to propose Volodin as a husband. She had relatives in Petersburg. She might write them and it could do him harm.
And the weather was unpleasant. The sky was frowning, crows were flying about and cawing. They were cawing right over Peredonov’s head, just as though they were teasing him and prophesying fresh and even more terrible troubles. Peredonov wrapped his neck up in his scarf and thought that it wouldn’t be difficult to catch a cold in that kind of weather.
“What kind of plant is that, Pavlushka?” he asked, showing Volodin a plant with berries by the fence in someone’s garden.
“That’s deadly nightshade, Ardasha,” Volodin replied mournfully.
There were a lot of plants like that in their own garden, Peredonov recalled. And what a terrible name they had! Perhaps they were poisonous. Suppose Varvara took them, broke off an entire bunch, brewed them up instead of tea and poisoned him, yes, poisoned him when the paper came so that Volodin could take his place. Perhaps they had already agreed to do so. It was hardly a coincidence that Volodin knew what the plant was called.
Volodin said:
“God’s her judge! Why did she have to offend me? She’s expecting an aristocrat, but she doesn’t realize that there are all kinds of aristocrats and she’ll have her share of troubles with someone else. But a simple fine fellow might be able to make her happy. Well, I’m going to church, I’ll light a candle for her health and I’ll pray that God grant her a drunkard for a husband so that he’ll beat her, so that he’ll squander his money and make a beggar out of her. Then she’ll remember me, but it’ll be too late by then. She’ll be wiping away her tears with her fist and saying: ‘What a fool I was that I turned Pavel Vasilyevich down, no one would have beaten me, he was a fine man.’ ”
Moved by his own words, Volodin’s eyes filled with tears and he wiped the tears from his bulging, sheeplike eyes with his hands.
“You ought to break her windows at night,” Peredonov advised.
“Well, God help her,” Volodin said sorrowfully. “Suppose I get caught. No, but what a boy he is! My goodness gracious, what did I do to him to make him want to harm me? Wasn’t I trying to help him, but just look, if you please, at how he was plotting against me. What kind of a child is that, what will become of him, my goodness, tell me then?”
“Yes,” Peredonov said angrily. “You can’t even manage with a little boy. E-ech! Some prospective husband you are!”
“Come now,” Volodin protested. “Of course I’m a prospective husband. I’ll find another. She shouldn’t think that anyone’s going to shed tears over her.”
“E-ech, some prospective husband!” Peredonov teased him. “You even put a necktie on. How did you think you were going to get into society lane with that ugly mug of yours? Some prospective husband!”
“Well, I am a prospective husband, whereas you, Ardasha, are the marriage-broker,” Volodin said soberly. “You yourself gave me reason to hope, but you were incapable of making a successful match. E-ech, some marriage-broke; you are!”
And they started to tease each other diligently, squabbling for a long while with the appearance of people who might have been consulting over a business matter.
After she saw her guests out, Nadezhda returned to the sitting room. Misha was lying on the divan and laughing. His sister pulled him off the divan by the shoulder and said:
“And you have forgotten that you are not supposed to eavesdrop.”
She raised her hands and wanted to join her baby fingers together, but suddenly she started to laugh and the baby fingers never joined. Misha rushed to her—they embraced and laughed for a long while.
“Nevertheless,” she said, “into the corner for eavesdropping.”
“Don’t,” Misha said, “I saved you from a prospective husband and you ought to be grateful to me.”
“Who saved whom! You heard how they were getting ready to whip you with the rod. Off you go into the corner.”
“It’d be better if I stood here like this for a while,” Misha said.
He got down on his knees at his sister’s feet and laid his head on her knees. She cuddled and tickled him. Misha laughed, crawling about the floor on his knees. Suddenly the sister pushed him away and changed seats to the divan. Misha was left alone. He stood for a while on his knees, looking questioningly at his sister. She seated herself more comfortably, took a book as though she were going to read, but kept looking at her brother.
“Well, I’m tired now,” he said plaintively.
“I’m not keeping you, you did it yourself,” his sister said, smiling from behind her book.
“Well, I’ve been punished now, let me go,” Misha begged.
“Was I the one who made you get down on your knees?” Nadezhda asked in a voice that feigned indifference. “Why are you pestering me!”
“I won’t get up until you forgive me.”
Nadezhda laughed, put her book aside and pulled Misha to herself by the shoulder. He shrieked and rushed to embrace her, exclaiming:
“Pavlusha’s fiancée!”
XVI
THE DARK-EYED BOY filled all of Lyudmila’s thoughts. She frequently talked about h
im with her own family and with acquaintances, at times quite irrelevantly. She saw him in her dreams almost every night, sometimes modest and ordinary, but more frequently in some wild or magical setting. The stories of these dreams became quite a habit with her so that soon the other sisters themselves started to ask her first thing in the morning how she had dreamt of Sasha that night. Her daydreams about him occupied all her spare time.
On Sunday Lyudmila persuaded her sisters to invite Kokovkina over after mass and to keep her there as long as possible. She wanted to get Sasha alone at home. She didn’t go to church herself. She instructed her sisters:
“Tell her that I slept in.”
The sisters laughed at her plot but, of course, they agreed. They lived together very amiably. And it suited them just fine: Lyudmila would be busying herself with a young boy, thus she’d be leaving the real prospective husbands for them. They did as they promised and invited Kokovkina over after mass.
Meanwhile, Lyudmila got herself ready to go. She had dressed up in a cheerful and attractive fashion, perfumed herself with a soft, delicate Atkinson syringe, put a small atomizer and an unopened bottle of perfume into a beaded bag and concealed herself by the window behind the curtain in the sitting room, so that from this place of ambush she could see in time whether Kokovkina was coming. She had thought of taking the perfume with her earlier—to perfume the gymnasium student so that he wouldn’t smell of his repulsive Latin, ink and boyishness. Lyudmila loved perfume, ordered it from St. Petersburg and used up a great deal of it. She loved aromatic flowers. Her room was always fragrant with something: flowers, perfume, pine, fresh branches of birch in the springtime.
There were her sisters and Kokovkina was with them. Lyudmila ran joyfully through the kitchen, across the orchard, through the gate and along the alleyway so that she wouldn’t come face to face with Kokovkina. She was smiling cheerfully, walking quickly towards Kokovkina’s house and playfully twirling her white bag and white umbrella. The warm autumn day made her happy and it seemed as though she were bearing her own characteristic spirit of cheerfulness with herself and spreading it all around.
At Kokovkina’s the servant told her that the lady was not at home. Lyudmila laughed noisily and joked with the red-cheeked girl who had opened the door for her.
“Maybe you’re fooling me,” she said. “Maybe your mistress is hiding from me.”
“Hee-hee, why would she be hiding!” the servant answered with a laugh. “Go and take a look for yourself in the rooms if you don’t believe me.”
Lyudmila peeked into the sitting room and cried out playfully:
“Is anyone alive here? Aha, the student!”
Sasha had glanced out of his room, caught sight of Lyudmila and was overjoyed, and Lyudmila grew even more cheerful at the sight of his joyful eyes. She asked:
“But where is Olga Vasilyevna?”
“She’s not home,” Sasha replied. She hasn’t come back yet. She went somewhere from church. When I got back she wasn’t here yet.”
Lyudmila pretended that she was surprised. She waved her umbrella and said with annoyance:
“Really, but everyone has come home from church. Everyone is sitting at home, but, how do you like that, there’s no one here. Is it you, my young classman, who causes such a ruckus that the old lady can’t sit at home?”
Sasha smiled silently. Lyudmila’s voice and Lyudmila’s ringing laughter made him happy. He was trying to think up some way whereby he could cleverly volunteer to accompany her home, so that he could spend at least a few minutes more with her, to look at her and listen to her.
But Lyudmila had no intentions of going. She gave Sasha a crafty grin and said:
“Well, aren’t you going to ask me to sit down a while, my dear young fellow? I say, I am tired! Let me have a little rest at least.”
Chuckling, she went into the sitting room, caressing Sasha with her quick, tender eyes. Sasha was embarrassed, blushed and rejoiced—she would be with him for a while!
“Do you want me to atomize you?” Lyudmila asked in a lively tone. “Do you want me to?”
“You’re a fine one!” Sasha said “Right away you want to atomize me! What did I do to deserve such cruelty?”
Lyudmila burst into ringing laughter and threw herself against the back of the chair.
Atomize!” she exclaimed. “Silly! You misunderstood me. I want to atomize you with perfume.”
Sasha said with amusement:
“Ah, with perfume! Well, that’s a different matter.”
Lyudmila took the atomizer out of her purse, and twirled a handsome vessel of dark-red and gold-patterned glass with a gutta-percha bulb and bronze fittings in front of Sasha’s eyes, and said:
“You see, yesterday I bought a new atomizer and I went and forgot it in my bag.”
Then she pulled out a large bottle of perfume with a dark, variegated label—Pao-Rosa by Guerlain of Paris. Sasha said:
“What a deep bag you have!”
Lyudmila replied cheerfully:
“Well, don’t expect anything more, I didn’t bring you any spice cakes.”
“Spice cakes,” Sasha repeated with amusement.
He watched with curiosity when Lyudmila uncorked the perfume and asked:
“How are you going to pour it in there without a funnel?”
Lyudmila said cheerfully:
“You’ll give me a funnel.”
“But I don’t have one,” Sasha said with dismay.
“As you like, but you’ll still give me a funnel,” Lyudmila insisted with a chuckle.
“I’d get one from Malanya, but she uses it for kerosene,” Sasha said.
Lyudmila burst into cheerful laughter.
“Ah, what a slow-witted young fellow you are! Give me a piece of paper, if you don’t mind—and there’s our funnel.”
“Ah, of course!” Sasha exclaimed joyfully. “We can roll one out of paper. I’ll bring some right away.”
Sasha ran off into his room.
“Will it do from a notebook?” he shouted from there.
“It doesn’t matter,” Lyudmila answered cheerfully. “Even tear it out of a school book, from your Latin Grammar, I don’t mind.”
Sasha laughed and shouted:
“No, I’d better take it from a notebook.”
He found a clean notebook, tore out the middle sheet and was about to run into the sitting room, but Lyudmila was already standing in the doorway.
“May I come into the host’s room?” she asked playfully.
“Yes, please do!” Sasha cried cheerfully.
Lyudmila sat down at his table, rolled a funnel out of paper and with a businesslike face started to pour the perfume from the bottle into the atomizer. The paper funnel grew wet and darkened at the bottom and along the side where the rivulet flowed. The aromatic liquid settled in the funnel and drained slowly downwards. A warm, sweet fragrance of roses, mingling with a penetrating smell of alcohol, wafted through the air. Lyudmila poured half of the perfume from the bottle into the atomizer and said:
“Well, that’s enough.”
And she started to screw on the atomizer. Then she crumpled up the damp paper into a ball and rubbed it between her palms.
“Smell,” she said to Sasha and lifted a palm to his face.
Sasha bent over, half closed his eyes and inhaled. Lyudmila laughed, slapped him gently on the lips with her palm and held her hand to his mouth. Sasha reddened and kissed her warm fragrant palm with the delicate touch of his trembling lips. Lyudmila sighed and a rapturous expression passed over her attractive face and once again was replaced with her customary expression of happy cheerfulness. She said:
“Now just hold still while I spray you!”
And she pressed the gutta-percha bulb. A fragrant mist spurted out, vaporized and diffused through the air onto Sasha’s shirt. Sasha laughed and turned around obediently as Lyudmila nudged him.
“Smells nice, eh?” she asked.
“Very nice,” Sasha re
plied cheerfully. “What is it called?”
“Some baby you are! Read the label and you’ll see,” she said in a teasing voice.
Sasha read and then said:
“It smells kind of like rose oil.”
“Oil!” Lyudmila said reproachfully and gently slapped Sasha on the back.
Sasha laughed with a squeal and stuck out the tip of his tongue rolled up into a tube. Lyudmila stood up and started to look through Sasha’s school texts and notebooks.
“May I look?” she asked.
“Please do,” Sasha said.
“Where are your ones and zeroes,* show them to me.”
“So far I haven’t had anything so delightful,” Sasha replied in an offended voice.
“You’re telling lies, now,” Lyudmila said decidedly. “You’re the kind of person who would get bad marks. I imagine you’ve hidden them.”
Sasha smiled silently.
“You’re fed up with Latin and Greek I suppose.”
“Not really,” Sasha replied, but it was apparent that he would be overcome with the usual boredom when the conversation turned to school texts alone. “It’s rather boring cramming all the time,” he admitted. “But I don’t mind, I have a good memory. But I do like to solve problems.”
“Come to my place tomorrow after dinner,” Lyudmila said.
“Thank you, I will come,” Sasha said, blushing.
He felt pleased that Lyudmila had invited him.
Lyudmila asked:
“Do you know where I live? Will you come?”
“I know. Alright, I’ll come,” Sasha said happily.
“You come for certain now,” Lyudmila repeated sternly. “I’ll be expecting you, you hear!”
“What if I have a lot of lessons?” Sasha said, more from a sense of conscientiousness than from the actual thought that he wouldn’t come because of his lessons.
“Come now, that’s nonsense, you just come all the same,” Lyudmila insisted. “Or you’ll be impaled on a stake.”
“But what for?” Sasha asked with a chuckle.
“Just because you deserve it. You come and I’ll tell you something and show you something,” Lyudmila said, skipping, humming and tugging at her skirt and spreading her rosy fingers. “You just come now, my dear, silver, golden boy.”
The Petty Demon Page 21
