Lichonin was left alone. In the half-dark corridor it smelt of kerosene
fumes from the guttering little tin lamp, and of the odour of stagnant
bad tobacco. The daylight dully penetrated only near the top, from two
small glass frames, let in the roof at both ends of the corridor.
Lichonin found himself in that simultaneously weakened and elevated
mood which is so familiar to every man who has happened to be
thoroughly sleepless for a long time. It was as though he had gone out
of the limitations of everyday human life, and this life had become to
him distant and of indifference; but at the same time his thoughts and
emotions obtained a certain peaceful clarity and apathetic
distinctness, and there was a tedious and languishing allurement in
this crystal Nirvanah.
He stood near his room, leaning against the wall, and seemed to see,
feel, and hear how near him and below him were sleeping several score
of people; sleeping with the last, fast morning sleep, with open
mouths, with measured deep breathing, with a wilted pallor on their
faces, glistening from sleep; and through his head flashed the thought,
remote yet familiar since childhood, of how horrible sleeping people
are—far more horrible than dead people. Then he remembered about
Liubka. His subterranean, submerged, mysterious “I” rapidly, rapidly
whispered that he ought to drop into the room, and see if the girl were
all right, as well as make certain dispositions about tea in the
morning; but he made believe to himself that he was not at all even
thinking of this, and walked out into the street.
He walked, looking closely at everything that met his eyes, with an
idle and exact curiosity new to him; and every feature was drawn for
him in relief to such a degree that it seemed to him as though he were
feeling it with his fingers... There a peasant woman passed by. Over
her shoulder is a yoke staff, while at each end of the yoke is a large
pail of milk; her face is not young, with a net of fine wrinkles on the
temples and with two deep furrows from the nostrils to the corners of
the mouth; but her cheeks are rosy, and, probably, hard to the touch,
while her hazel eyes radiate a sprightly peasant smile. From the
movement of the heavy yoke and from the smooth walk her hips sway
rhythmically now to the left, now to the right, and in their wave-like
movements there is a coarse, sensual beauty.
“A mischievous dame, and she’s lived through a checkered life,”
reflected Lichonin. And suddenly, unexpectedly to himself, he had a
feeling for, and irresistibly desired, this woman, altogether unknown
to him, homely and not young; in all probability dirty and vulgar, but
still resembling, as it seemed to him, a large Antonovka[17] apple
which had fallen to the ground-somewhat bored by a worm, and which had
lain just a wee bit too long, but which has still preserved its bright
colour and its fragrant, winey aroma.
[17] Somewhat like a Spitzbergen, but a trifle rounder.—Trans.
Getting ahead of her, an empty, black, funereal catafalque whirled by;
with two horses in harness, and two tied behind to the little rear
columns. The torch-bearers and grave-diggers, already drunk since
morning, with red, brutish faces, with rusty opera hats on their heads,
were sitting in a disorderly heap on their uniform liveries, on the
reticular horse-blankets, on the mourning lanterns; and with rusty,
hoarse voices were roaring out some incoherent song. “They must be
hurrying to a funeral procession; or, perhaps, have even finished it
already,” reflected Lichonin; “merry fellows!” On the boulevard he came
to a stop and sat down on a small wooden bench, painted green. Two rows
of mighty centenarian chestnuts went away into the distance, merging
together somewhere afar into one straight green arrow. The prickly
large nuts were already hanging on the trees. Lichonin suddenly
recalled that at the very beginning of the spring he had been sitting
on this very boulevard, and at this very same spot. Then it had been a
calm, gentle evening of smoky purple, soundlessly falling into slumber,
just like a smiling, tired maiden. Then the stalwart chestnuts, with
their foliage—broad at the bottom and narrow toward the top—had been
strewn all over with clusters of blossoms, growing with bright, rosy,
thin cones straight to the sky; just as though some one by mistake had
taken and fastened upon all the chestnuts, as upon lustres, pink
Christmas-tree candles. And suddenly, with extraordinary
poignancy—every man sooner or later passes through this zone of inner
emotion—Lichonin felt, that here are the nuts ripening already, while
then there had been little pink blossoming candles, and that there
would be many more springs and many blossoms, but the one which had
passed no one and nothing had the power to bring back. Sadly gazing
into the depths of the retreating dense alley, he suddenly noticed that
sentimental tears were making his eyes smart.
He got up and went on farther, looking closely at everything that he
met with an incessant, sharpened, and at the same time calm attention,
just as though he were looking at the God-created world for the first
time. A gang of stone masons went past him on the pavement, and all of
them were reflected in his inner vision with an exaggerated vividness
and brilliance of colour, just as though on the frosted glass of a
camera obscura. The foreman, with a red beard, matted to one side, and
with blue austere eyes; and a tremendous young fellow, whose left eye
was swollen, and who had a spot of a dark-blue colour spreading from
the forehead to the cheekbone and from the nose to the temple; and a
young boy with a naive, country face, with a gaping mouth like a
fledgling’s, weak, moist; and an old man who, having come late, was
running after the gang at a funny, goat-like trot; and their clothes,
soiled with lime, their aprons and their chisels—all this flickered
before him in an inanimate file—a colourful, motley, but dead
cinematographic film.
He had to cut across the New Kishenevsky Market. Suddenly the savoury,
greasy odour of something roasted compelled him to distend his
nostrils. Lichonin recalled that he had not eaten anything since noon
yesterday, and at once felt hunger. He turned to the right, into the
centre of the market.
In the days of his starvings—and he had had to experience them more
than once—he would come here to the market, and for the pitiful
coppers, gotten with difficulty, would buy himself bread and fried
sausage. This was in winter, oftenest of all. The huckstress, wrapped
up in a multiplicity of clothes, usually sat upon a pot of coals for
warmth; while before her, on the iron dripping-pan, hissed and crackled
the thick, home-made sausage, cut into pieces a quarter of a yard in
length, plentifully seasoned with garlic. A piece of sausage usually
cost ten kopecks, the bread two kopecks.
There were very many folk at market to-day. Even at a distance, edging
his way to the familiar, loved stall, Lichonin heard the sounds of
music. Having made his way through the crowd, which in a solid ring
surrounded one of the stalls, he saw a naive and endearing sight, which
may be seen only in the blessed south of Russia. Ten or fifteen
huckstresses, during ordinary times gossips of evil tongue and addicted
to unrestrainable swearing, inexhaustible in its verbal diversity, but
now, evidently, flattering and tender cronies, had started celebrating
even since last evening; had caroused the whole night through and now
had carried their noisy merrymaking out to the market. The hired
musicians—two fiddles, a first and a second, and a tambourine—were
strumming a monotonous but a lively, bold, daring and cunning tune.
Some of the wives were clinking glasses and kissing each other, pouring
vodka over one another; others poured it out into glasses and over the
tables; others still, clapping their palms in time with the music,
oh’d, squealed, and danced, squatting in one place. And in the middle
of the ring, upon the cobbles of the pavement, a stout woman of about
forty-five, but still handsome, with red, fleshy lips, with humid,
intoxicated, seemingly unctuous eyes, merrily sparkling from under the
high bows of black, regular, Little Russian eyebrows, was whirling
around and stamping out a tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all
the art of her dance consisted in that she would now bow her little
head and look out provokingly from under her eyebrows, then suddenly
toss it back and let her eyelashes down and spread her hands out at her
sides; and also in that in measure with the dance her enormous breasts
swayed and quivered under her red calico waist. During the dance she
was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of her goat-skin
shoes:
“The fiddle’s playing on the street,
You can hear its bass so sweet;
My mother has me locked up neat,
My waitin’ dearie I can’t meet.”
That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same who
not only had had him for a client during hard times, but had even
extended him credit. She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted to him,
embraced him, squeezed him to her bosom and kissed him straight on his
lips with her moist, warm, thick lips. Then she spread her arms out
wide, smote one palm against the other, intertwined her fingers, and
sweetly, as only Podolian wives can do it, began to coo:
“My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You forgive a
drunken wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I’ve gone op a spree!” She
then darted at him in an attempt to kiss his hand. “But then, I know
you ain’t proud, like other gentry. Well, give me your hand,
dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your little hand! No, no, no! I athk,
I athk you! ...” “Well, now, that’s nonsense, Aunt Glycera!” Linchonin
interrupted her, unexpectedly becoming animated. “Let’s best kiss just
so, now. Your lips are just too sweet!”
“Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple of
paradise, you,” Glycera waxed tender, “give me your lips, then! Give me
your little lips to buss, then! ...”
She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered over
him with her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she seized him by
his sleeve, brought him out into the middle of the ring, and began to
walk around him with a stately, mincing step, having bent her waist
coquettishly and vociferating:
“Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,
For I’ve a divel in my pants
Her skirt holds somethin’ for!”
And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most
rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:
“Oh, Chook, that is too much,
You have soiled your apron too much.
Well, Prisko, don’t you fret,
Wipe it off, then, if you’re wet!
TRALALA, TRALALA ...
Sleeps, Khima, and won’t stir
That a Kossack sleeps with her,
You feel all, Khima—why deceive?
Just to yourself you make believe.
TAI, TAI, TRALALAI...”
Lichonin, completely grown merry, suddenly began jumping like a goat
about her, just like a satellite around a whirling planet—long-legged,
long-armed, stooping and altogether incongruous. His entrance was
greeted by a general but pretty friendly neighing. He was made to sit
down at the table, was helped to vodka and sausage. He, for his part,
sent a tramp he knew after beer, and, glass in hand, delivered three
absurd speeches: one about the self-determination of Ukraine; another
about the goodness of Little Russian sausage, in connection with the
beauty and domesticity of the women of Little Russia; and the third,
for some reason, about trade and industry in the south of Russia.
Sitting alongside of Lukeriya, he was all the time trying to embrace
her around the waist, and she did not oppose this. But even his long
arms could not encompass her amazing waist. However, she clasped his
hand powerfully under the table, until it hurt, with her enormous, soft
hand, as hot as fire.
At this moment among the huckstresses, who up to now had been tenderly
kissing, certain old, unsettled quarrels and grievances flickered up.
Two of the wives, bending toward each other just like roosters ready to
enter battle, their arms akimbo, were pouring upon each other the most
choice, out-of-the-way oaths:
“Fool, stiff, daughter of a dog!” one was yelling. “Youse ain’t fit to
kiss me right here.” And, turning her back around to her foe, she
loudly slapped herself below the spine. “Right here! Here!”
While the other, infuriated, squealed in answer:
“You lie, you slut, for I am fit, I am fit!”
Lichonin utilized the minute. As though he had just recalled something,
he hurriedly jumped up from the bench and called out:
“Wait for me, Aunty Luckeriya, I’ll come in three minutes!” and dived
through the living ring of spectators.
“Master! Master!” his neighbour cried after him: “Come back the
quickest you can, now! I’ve one little word to say to you.”
Having turned the corner, he for some time racked his head trying to
recall what it was that he absolutely had to do, now, this very minute.
And again, in the very depths of his soul, he knew just what he had to
do, but he procrastinated confessing this to his own self. It was
already a clear, bright day, about nine or ten o’clock. Janitors were
watering the streets with rubber hose. Flower girls were sitting on the
squares and near the gates of the boulevards, with roses,
stock-gillyflowers and narcissi. The radiant, gay, rich southern town
was beginning to get animated. Over the pavement jolted an iron cage
filled with dogs of every possible colour, breed, and age. On the coach
box were sitting two dog-catchers, or, as they deferentially style
themselves, “the king’s dog-catchers”—i. e., hunters of stray
dogs—returning home with this morning’s catch.
“She must be awake by now,” Lichonin’s secret thought finally took
form; “but if she isn’t yet awake, then I’ll quietly lie down on the
divan and sleep a little.”
In the corridor the dying kerosene lamp emitted a dim light and smoked
as before, and the watery, murky half-light penetrated into the narrow,
long box. The door of the room had remained unlocked, after all.
Lichonin opened it without a sound and entered.
The faint, blue half-light poured in through the interstices between
the blinds and the windows. Lichonin stopped in the middle of the room
and with an intensified avidity heard the quiet, sleeping breathing of
Liubka. His lips became so hot and dry that he had to lick them
incessantly. His knees began to tremble.
“Ask if she needs anything,” suddenly darted through his head.
Like a drunkard, breathing hard, with mouth open, staggering on his
shaking legs, he walked up to the bed.
Liubka was sleeping on her back, with one bare arm stretched out along
the body, and the other on her breast. Lichonin bent nearer, to her
very face. She was breathing evenly and deeply. This breathing of her
young, healthy body was, despite sleep, pure and almost aromatic. He
cautiously ran his fingers over her bare arm and stroked her breast a
little below the clavicle. “What am I doing?” his reason suddenly cried
out within him in terror; but some one else answered for Lichonin: “But
I’m not doing anything. I only want to ask if she’s sleeping
comfortably, and whether she doesn’t want some tea.”
But Liubka suddenly awoke, opened her eyes, blinked them for a moment
and opened them again. She gave a long, long stretch, and with a
kindly, not yet fully reasoning smile, encircled Lichonin’s neck with
her warm, strong arm.
“Sweetie! Darling!” caressingly uttered the woman in a crooning voice,
somewhat hoarse from sleep. “Why, I was waiting for you and waiting,
and even became angry. And after that I fell asleep and all night long
saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!” She drew
him to her, breast against breast.
Lichonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill,
and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering
teeth:
“No, now, Liuba, don’t ... Really, don’t do that, Liuba ... Ah, let’s
drop this, Liuba ... Don’t torture me. I won’t vouch for myself ... Let
me alone, now, Liuba, for God’s sake! ...”
“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. “Come
to me, my joy!”—and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant
opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and
warmly—kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in her
life.
“Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent,
and false body in Lichonin.
“Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing
Lichonin’s lips for the last time. “Oh, you, my little student! ...”