The lamp was burning in the landlady’s room. Alychka sat Turkish
fashion in the open window, watching the dark heavy mass of water, lit
by electric lamps, wavering below, and the gentle motion of the scant
dead green of the poplars along the quay. Two round spots of bright red
were burning in her cheeks, and there was a moist and weary light in
her eyes. In the cooling air the petulant sound of a valse graciously
floated from far away on the other side of the river, where the lights
of the café chantant were shining.
They were drinking tea with shop bought raspberry jam. Adka and Edka
crumbled pieces of black bread into their saucers, and made a kind of
porridge. They smeared their faces, foreheads, and noses with it. They
blew bubbles in their saucers. Romka, returned with a black eye, was
hastily taking noisy sups of tea from a saucer. Lieutenant Tchijhevich
had unbuttoned his waistcoat, extruding his paper dickey, and half lay
on the sofa, perfectly happy in this domestic idyll.
‘Thank God, all the rooms are taken,’ Anna Friedrichovna sighed
dreamily.
‘You see, it’s all due to my lucky touch,’ said the lieutenant. ‘When I
came back, everything began to look up.’
‘There, tell us another.’
‘No, really, my touch is amazingly lucky. By God, it is! In the
regiment, when Captain Gorojhevsky took the bank, he always used to
make me sit beside him. My God! how those men used to play! That same
Gorojhevsky, when he was still a subaltern, at the time of the Turkish
War, won twelve thousand. Our regiment came to Bukarest. Of course, the
officers had pots of money--nothing to do with it--no women. They began
cards. Suddenly, Gorojhevsky pounced on a sharp. You could see he was
a crook by the cut of his lug. But he faked the cards so cleverly that
you couldn’t possibly get hold of him....’
‘Wait a second. I’ll be back in a moment,’ interrupted the landlady. ‘I
only want to give out a towel.’
She went out. The lieutenant stealthily came near to Alychka and bent
close to her. Her beautiful profile, dark against the background of
night, took on a subtle, tender outline of silver in the radiance of
the electric lamps.
‘What are you thinking about, Alychka--perhaps I should say, whom?’ he
asked in a sweet tremolo.
She turned away from him. But he quickly lifted the thick plait of her
hair and kissed her beneath her hair on her warm thin neck, greedily
smelling the perfume of her skin.
‘I’ll tell mother,’ whispered Alychka, without drawing away.
The door opened. It was Anna Friedrichovna returned. Immediately the
lieutenant began to talk, unnaturally loud and free.
‘Really, it would be wonderful to be on a boat with your beloved or
your dearest friend on a spring night like this.... Well, to continue,
Anna, darling. So Gorojhevsky dropped a cool six thousand, if you’ll
believe me! At last some one gave him a word of advice. He said:
“_Basta_--I’m not having any more of this. You won’t mind if we put a
nail through the pack to the table and tear off our cards?” The fellow
wanted to get out of it. Gorojhevsky took out his revolver: “You’ll
play, you dog, or I’ll blow a hole in your head!” There was nothing
for it. The crook sat down, so flustered that he clean forgot there
was a mirror behind him. Gorojhevsky could see every one of his cards.
So Gorojhevsky not only got his own back, but raked in a clear eleven
thousand into the bargain. He even had the nail mounted in gold, and he
wears it as a charm on his watch chain.’