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 cat-like 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 fairy-tales?"
"No, not fairy-tales, 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,"[1] 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 splash[2] 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,[3] 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."[4]
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 left-over"; 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!"
[1] Simon Yakovlevitch Nadson (1862-86), a poet of considerable merit,
who was popular in spite of his monotony and melancholy.
[2] This word in Russian is "poloskatsya" and is a pun on "laskatsya,"
which is to caress.
[3] The original word is "chastushka," which is a town song put to the
tune of an old folk-song. This is a recent development of town life in
Russia.
[4] "Bossiak" is literally "bare-foot," a vagabond. The "bossiak"
has become quite a marked type in Russia since Gorky took to writing
of him. The bossiak is often referred to in a satiric way in modern
Russian literature.