Marie Tarnowska. Annie Vivanti

me with pleasant surprise. How far removed from our Slav souls were those limpid Anglo-Saxon minds! How child-like and simple was their wit, how bland and practical their outlook on life. That was the literature I liked best of all; perhaps because it was so different from everything in myself. I felt that I was a strange, ambiguous, complicated creature compared with those candid elemental natures.

      Bozevsky liked to find me reading. He would arrive in the evening—usually after Vassili had gone out, alone or with friends—and enter the drawing-room with bright and cheerful greeting. He always smiled when he found me with one of his books in my hand, sitting beside Aunt Sonia placidly knitting in her armchair.

      “I like your thoughts to be far away from here,” he would say, kissing my hand. “I like to know that your soul is far from the frivolous society you live in, far from the petty preoccupations, the compliments and the flattery which surround you. Let me read with you; let me join you in the purer realm of fancy, far away from the world.” And he would sit down beside me, with an air of protecting fraternal affection.

      One evening he found me nervous and agitated.

      “What has happened?” he asked.

      “I have been reading a ghastly book,” I told him with a shudder. “The story of a mysterious plant, a sort of huge octopus that feeds on human flesh—”

      “Ugh!” laughed Bozevsky, “how gruesome!” and he bent his sunny head over the page.

      “Just imagine,” I continued, “its branches are long moving tentacles, its thick leaves are quite black and hard; they glitter and move like living scorpions....”

      “Horrid, horrid,” said Bozevsky with his shining smile as he took the book out of my hand. “Forget the scorpions. To-night I shall read you some Italian poetry. I want you to make friends with Carducci.”

      He opened a plainly bound volume at random, and read to me.

      “Oh favolosi prati d'Eliseo…”

      I forgot the tree of scorpions. I forgot Bozevsky. I forgot Aunt Sonia and the world. The unknown poet had wrapped my spirit in his giant wings and was bearing me far away.

      It was about this time that Vassili took me to Moscow. There, one evening, our friends the Maximoffs brought a stranger to see us. They introduced him as an estimable Moscow lawyer of high repute. I was surrounded by other friends and I greeted him absently, without hearing his name. I remember casually noticing that he was neither young nor old, neither ugly nor handsome. His wife, a timid, fair-haired woman, was with him.

      At Vassili's suggestion we all went to the “Strelna,” a famous night-restaurant. I remember that there was a great deal of laughter at the grotesque jokes which Vassili and Maximoff and also the estimable lawyer played on the pretty dark-faced tziganes.

      I noticed that the lawyer's wife did not laugh. She passed her hand across her wistful Madonna-like brow, and listened only to the music.

      Like her I felt out of tune with the merriment around me. My thoughts wandered back to the silent drawing-room at Kieff: I thought of Aunt Sonia and her peaceful knitting, of Bozevsky and the books he had brought me. I seemed to hear his voice saying, “Ugh! a tree of scorpions”—and at that very instant something cold and claw-like clutched my bare shoulder. I uttered a piercing shriek, which seemed to turn every one—including myself—cold with terror. But it was only the estimable lawyer, who, having drunk rather too much, had playfully climbed upon the sofa behind me and, to save himself from falling off, had laid his hand upon my shoulder.

      “What on earth has happened?” exclaimed Vassili. “What made you scream like that?”

      “I don't know,” I stammered, taken aback, “I thought—I thought it was a scorpion!”

      Every one laughed and for the rest of the evening the lawyer was nicknamed “the Scorpion.” Perhaps this name added to the unreasoning fear I felt of him, or perhaps I was merely nervous, but he seemed to be always close behind me, and during the whole of that evening I kept on turning round, with little shivers running down my spine, to see what he was doing.

      Suddenly he had disappeared. Vassili laughed loudly. “Hullo! Where's the Scorpion?” And amidst the laughter of the guests he set himself to count the flippant tziganes one by one to see if any were missing. But they were all there—and I was glad for the sake of the Scorpion's poor little Madonna-wife.

      It was three in the morning when we went back to our sleighs. It was very cold; the clear deep-blue sky was powdered with stars. Assisted by Maximoff I was about to step into the sleigh, when, with another cry, I drew back; my foot had touched something soft and shapeless that was lying huddled up beneath the rug.

      “What is the matter now?” cried Vassili. “Another scorpion?”

      No, it was the same one. It was the estimable lawyer very drunk and fast asleep at the bottom of the sleigh.

      On our way back to the hotel, driving through the keen night air, I asked Vassili:

      “Who was that man?”

      “What man?” said Vassili, who sat opposite to us and was pressing the small feet of Maximoff's wife.

      “You know—the man who frightened me.”

      “Oh, the Scorpion?” laughed Vassili. “That was Donat Prilukoff.”

      When we returned to Kieff I told Bozevsky the adventure of our evening at the Strelna, and described the Scorpion to him with as much humor as I could. But Bozevsky did not laugh. My absence had embittered and exasperated him. He no longer sat beside me with an air of protective fraternal affection. He would not speak of literature or poetry any more. He spent entire evenings making mute scenes of jealousy and despair, while dear Aunt Sonia, instinctively feeling the atmosphere around her charged with electricity, dropped many stitches in her knitting and became sour and irritable.