“Is that you, Vasil Lixeyich? I’m here by meself, the cook had a row with Daddy and went home, and Daddy took the workman and went away into town on business, and he’s unlikely to get back today… I was frightened to death by the storm, and then I hear someun’s[44] driven up, got even more frightened… Hello, please forgive me…”
Krasilschikov struck a match and illuminated her black eyes and swarthy little face:
“Hello, you little idiot. I’m going into town as well, but you can see what’s happening, I dropped in to wait it out… And so you thought it was robbers that had driven up?”
The match had begun to burn out, but it was still possible to see that little face smiling in embarrassment, the coral necklace on the little neck, the small breasts under the yellow cotton dress. She was hardly more than half his height and seemed just a little girl.
“I’ll light the lamp straight away,” she began hurriedly, made even more embarrassed by Krasilschikov’s penetrating gaze, and rushed to the lamp above the table. “God Himself sent you, what would I have done here alone?” she said melodiously, rising onto tiptoe and awkwardly pulling the glass out of the indented grille of the lamp, out of its tin ring.
Krasilschikov lit another match, gazing at her stretching and curved little figure.
“Wait, don’t bother,” he suddenly said, throwing the match away, and took her by the waist. “Hang on, just turn around to me for a minute…”
She glanced at him over her shoulder in terror, dropped her arms and turned around. He drew her towards him – she did not try to break away, only threw her head back wildly in surprise. From above, he looked directly and firmly into her eyes through the twilight and laughed:
“Got even more frightened?”
“Vasil Lixeyich…” she mumbled imploringly, and pulled herself out of his arms.
“Wait. Don’t you like me, then? I mean, I know you’re always pleased when I drop in.”
“There’s no one on earth better than you,” she pronounced quietly and ardently.
“Well, you see…”
He gave her a long kiss on the lips, and his hands slid lower down.
“Vasil Lixeyich… for Christ’s sake… You’ve forgotten, your horse is still where it was by the porch… Daddy will be coming… Oh, don’t!”
Half an hour later he went out of the hut, led the horse off into the yard, stood it underneath an awning, took the bridle off, gave it some wet, mown grass from a cart standing in the middle of the yard, and returned, gazing at the tranquil stars in the clear sky. Weak, distant flashes of summer lightning were still glancing from different directions into the hot darkness of the quiet hut. She lay on the plank bed all coiled up, her head buried in her breast, having cried her fill of hot tears from horror, rapture and the suddenness of what had happened. He kissed her cheek, wet and salty with tears, lay down on his back and placed her head on his shoulder, holding a cigarette in his right hand. She lay quiet, silent, and with his left hand, as he smoked, he gently and absent-mindedly stroked her hair, which was tickling his chin… Then she immediately fell asleep. He lay gazing into the darkness, and grinned in self-satisfaction: “Daddy went away into town…” So much for going away! It’s not good, he’ll understand everything at once – such a dried-up and quick little old man in a little grey poddyovka, a snow-white beard, but whose thick eyebrows are still completely black, an extraordinarily lively gaze, talks incessantly when drunk, but sees straight through everything.
He lay sleepless until the time when the darkness of the hut began to lighten weakly in the middle, between the ceiling and the floor. Turning his head, he saw the east whitening with a greenish tinge outside the windows, and in the twilight of the corner above the table he could already make out a large icon of a holy man in ecclesiastical vestments[45], with his hand raised in blessing and an inexorably dread gaze. He looked at her: she still lay curled up in the same way, her legs drawn up, everything forgotten in sleep! A sweet and pitiful little girl.
When it became fully light in the hut, and a cockerel began yelling in various different voices on the other side of the wall, he made a move to rise. She leapt up and, half-seated, sideways on, unbuttoned at the breast and with tangled hair, she stared at him with eyes that understood nothing.
“Styopa,” he said cautiously. “It’s time I was off.”
“You’re going already?” she whispered senselessly.
And suddenly she came to and, arms crossed, struck herself on the breast with her hands:
“And where are you going? How will I get along without you now? What am I to do now?”
“Styopa, I’ll come back again soon…”
“But Daddy will be at home, won’t he? – how ever will I see you? I’d come to the wood on the other side of the highway, but how can I get out of the house?”
Clenching his teeth, he toppled her onto her back. She threw her arms out wide and exclaimed in sweet despair, as though about to die: “Ah!”
Afterwards he stood before the plank bed, already wearing his poddyovka and his cap, with his knout in his hand and with his back to the windows, to the dense lustre of the sun, which had just appeared, while she knelt on the bed and, sobbing and opening her mouth wide in a childish and unattractive way, articulated jerkily:
“Vasil Lixeyich… for Christ’s sake… for the sake of the King of Heaven Himself, take me in marriage! I’ll be your very meanest slave! I’ll sleep by your doorstep – take me! I’d leave and come to you as I am, but who’ll let me do it like this! Vasil Lixeyich…”
“Be quiet,” Krasilschikov said sternly. “In a few days’ time I’ll come and see your father and tell him I’m marrying you. Do you hear?”
She sat down on her legs, breaking off her sobbing immediately, and obtusely opened wide her wet, radiant eyes:
“Is that true?”
“Of course it’s true.”
“I already turned sixteen at Epiphany[46],” she said hurriedly.
“Well then, so in six months’ time you can get married too…”
On returning home, he began preparations at once, and towards evening left for the railway in a troika. Two days later he was already in Kislovodsk.
Muza
I was then no longer in the first flush of youth[47], but came up with the idea of studying painting – I had always had a passion for it – and, abandoning my estate in the Tambov Province, I spent the winter in Moscow: I took lessons from a talentless, but quite well-known artist, an untidy, fat man who had made a very good job of adopting for himself all that is expected: long hair thrown back in big, greasy curls, a pipe in his teeth, a garnet-coloured velvet jacket, dirty grey gaiters on his shoes – I particularly hated them – a careless manner, condescending glances at a pupil’s work through narrowed eyes and, muttering, as if to himself:
“Amusing, amusing… Undoubted progress…”
I lived on the Arbat, by the Prague restaurant, in the Capital rooms. I worked at the artist’s and at home in the daytime, and not infrequently spent the evenings in cheap restaurants with various new acquaintances from Bohemia, both young and worn, but all equally attached to billiards and crayfish with beer… I had an unpleasant