She was a little over sixteen, but she was a fully formed young girl. They gave her eighteen or more. She had a clear mind and an easy character. She was very good-looking.
She and Rodya understood that they would have to get everything in life the hard way. In contrast to the idle and secure, they had no time to indulge in premature finagling and sniff out in theory things that in practice had not yet touched them. Only the superfluous is dirty. Lara was the purest being in the world.
The brother and sister knew the price of everything and valued what they had attained. One had to be in good repute to make one’s way. Lara studied well, not out of an abstract thirst for knowledge, but because to be exempt from paying for one’s studies one had to be a good student, and therefore one had to study well. Just as she studied well, so without effort she washed dishes, helped in the shop, and ran errands for her mother. She moved noiselessly and smoothly, and everything about her—the inconspicuous quickness of her movements, her height, her voice, her gray eyes and fair hair—went perfectly together.
It was Sunday, the middle of July. On holidays you could lounge in bed a little longer in the morning. Lara lay on her back, her arms thrown back, her hands under her head.
In the shop there was an unaccustomed quiet. The window onto the street was open. Lara heard a droshky rumbling in the distance drive off the cobbled pavement into the grooves of the horse-tram rails, and the crude clatter turned to a smooth gliding of wheels as if on butter. “I must sleep a little more,” thought Lara. The murmur of the city was as soporific as a lullaby.
Lara sensed her length and position in the bed by two points now—the jut of her left shoulder and the big toe of her right foot. There was a shoulder and a foot, and all the rest was more or less herself, her soul or essence, harmoniously enclosed in its outlines and responsively straining towards the future.
I must fall asleep, thought Lara, and she called up in her imagination the sunny side of Karetny Row at that hour, the sheds of the equipage establishments with enormous carriages for sale on clean-swept floors, the beveled glass of carriage lanterns, the stuffed bears, the rich life. And slightly lower—Lara was picturing it mentally—the dragoons drilling in the courtyard of the Znamensky barracks, horses decorously prancing in circles, running leaps into the saddle, riding at a walk, riding at a trot, riding at a gallop. And the gaping mouths of nannies with children and wet nurses, pressed in a row up against the barrack fence. And still lower—thought Lara—Petrovka Street, the Petrovsky Lines.
“How can you, Lara! Where do you get such ideas? I simply want to show you my apartment. The more so as it’s close by.”
It was the name day of Olga, the little daughter of his acquaintances on Karetny Row. The grown-ups were having a party for the occasion—dancing, champagne. He invited mama, but mama could not go, she was indisposed. Mama said: “Take Lara. You’re always cautioning me: ‘Amalia, see to Lara.’ So go now and see to her.” And he saw to her all right! Ha, ha, ha!
What a mad thing, the waltz! You whirl and whirl, without a thought in your head. While the music is playing, a whole eternity goes by, like life in novels. But the moment it stops, there is a feeling of scandal, as if they had poured cold water over you or found you undressed. Besides, you allow others these liberties out of vanity, to show what a big girl you are.
She could never have supposed that he danced so well. What knowing hands he has, how confidently he takes her by the waist! But never again would she allow anyone to kiss her like that. She could never have supposed that so much shamelessness could be concentrated in anyone’s lips when they were pressed so long to your own.
Drop all this foolishness. Once and for all. Do not play the simpleton, do not be coy, do not lower your eyes bashfully. It will end badly someday. The dreadful line is very close here. One step, and you fall straight into the abyss. Forget thinking about dances. That is where the whole evil lies. Do not be embarrassed to refuse. Pretend that you never learned to dance or have broken your leg.
5
In the fall there were disturbances at the Moscow railway junction. The Moscow–Kazan railway went on strike. The Moscow–Brest line was to join it. The decision to strike had been taken, but the railway committee could not agree on the day to call it. Everyone on the railway knew about the strike, and it needed only an external pretext for it to start spontaneously.
It was a cold, gray morning at the beginning of October. The wages on the line were to be paid that day. For a long time no information came from the accounting department. Then a boy arrived at the office with a schedule, a record of payments, and an armload of workers’ pay books collected in order to impose penalties. The payments began. Down the endless strip of unbuilt space that separated the station, the workshops, the engine depots, the warehouses, and the tracks from the wooden office buildings, stretched a line of conductors, switchmen, metalworkers and their assistants, scrubwomen from the car park, waiting to receive their wages.
It smelled of early city winter, trampled maple leaves, melting snow, engine fumes, and warm rye bread, which was baked in the basement of the station buffet and had just been taken out of the oven. Trains arrived and departed. They were made up and dismantled with a waving of furled and unfurled flags. The watchmen’s little horns, the pocket whistles of the couplers, and the bass-voiced hooting of locomotives played out all sorts of tunes. Pillars of smoke rose into the sky in endless ladders. The heated-up locomotives stood ready to go, scorching the cold winter clouds with boiling clouds of steam.
Up and down the tracks paced the head of the section, the railway expert Fuflygin, and the foreman of the station area, Pavel Ferapontovich Antipov. Antipov had been pestering the repair service with complaints about the materials supplied to him for replacing the tracks. The steel was not tensile enough. The rails did not hold up under tests for bending and breaking, and, according to Antipov’s conjectures, were sure to crack in freezing weather. The management treated Pavel Ferapontovich’s complaints with indifference. Somebody involved was lining his pockets.
Fuflygin was wearing an expensive fur coat, unbuttoned, trimmed with railway piping, and under it a new civilian suit made of cheviot. He stepped carefully along the embankment, admiring the general line of his lapels, the straight crease of his trousers, and the noble shape of his shoes.
Antipov’s words went in one ear and out the other. Fuflygin was thinking his own thoughts, kept taking his watch out and looking at it, and was hurrying somewhere.
“Right, right, old boy,” he interrupted Antipov impatiently, “but that’s only on the main lines somewhere or on a through passage with a lot of traffic. But, mind you, what have you got here? Sidings and dead ends, burdock and nettles, at most the sorting of empty freight cars and the shunting maneuvers of ‘pufferbillies.’ And he’s still displeased! You’re out of your mind! Not just these rails; here you could even lay wooden ones.”
Fuflygin looked at his watch, snapped the lid shut, and began gazing into the distance, where the highway came close to the railway. A carriage appeared at the bend of the road. This was Fuflygin’s own rig. Madame his wife had come for him. The driver stopped the horses almost on the tracks, holding them back all the time and whoa-ing at them in a high, womanish voice, like a nanny at whimpering children—the horses were afraid of trains. In the corner of the carriage, carelessly reclining on the cushions, sat a beautiful lady.
“Well, brother, some other time,” said the head of the section, and he waved his hand as if to say “Enough of your rails. There are more important matters.”