The snowstorm was already very intense. The sky shook, and white kingdoms and countries fell—numberless, secret and terrible. Nobody knew where they came from and it was clear that they had never in their lives heard of earth. These blind, midnight countries would cover the earth, without seeing it or knowing it. There was a terrible intoxication about these kingdoms, a devilish fascination. Thinking about them, Zhenya swallowed the wrong way and choked for a moment. The swirling air shook everything in its path, and in the far, far distance the fields howled mournfully, as if they were being whipped. Everything was confused. The night threw itself upon the fields, raging through its tangled gray hair, which she cut down and blinded. Everybody out riding shouted that the road could no longer be recognized. Shouts and echoes vanished without meeting and died away, lifted above different roofs by the rampaging wind. The snowstorm.
In the corridor they stamped their feet a long time and shook the snow out of their white, ruffled furs. And how much water flowed from their rubbers onto the checkered linoleum! Eggshells lay on the table, the pepper box had been taken from its stand and not replaced, and pepper lay sprinkled over the tablecloth, the spilled yolks and an opened tin of sardines. Their parents had already eaten their evening meal, but they were still sitting in the dining room and urged the children, who had turned up late, to hurry. They did not scold them, for they themselves had eaten earlier than usual because they were going to the theater. Their mother was uncertain whether she wanted to go or not, and sat there looking depressed. Looking at her, Zhenya realized that she herself was anything but happy.
Finally she opened the silly but rather sad book, and came back into the dining room to ask where the nutcake was. Her father looked at her mother and said nobody was forcing them to go and that they would probably do better to stay home.
“No, of course we’ll go,” said her mother. “I must have diversion, the doctor said so.”
“Well, let’s make a decision.”
“Where is the nutcake?” Zhenya asked for the second time and was told that she ought to eat something else first—one didn’t start with nutcake. However, it was in the cupboard. As if Zhenya were a stranger in the house and didn’t know family habits, added her father. Then he turned to her mother and repeated, “Let’s make a decision.”
“I have decided. We’re going.” Her mother smiled sadly at Zhenya and went out to dress. Seryozha broke his egg with a spoon. Hastily, like a very busy man, be reminded his father that the weather was rough, that there was a snowstorm, he should remember that; then he laughed. Something embarrassing was happening to his thawed-out nose. He wriggled in his chair and pulled a handkerchief out of his school uniform pants. He blew his nose the way his father had taught him—”without hurting your eardrums”—and said, “We saw Negarat’s friend on our way.”
“Evans?” the father asked absent-mindedly. “We don’t know that man,” Zhenya put in heatedly.
“Vika!” called a voice from the bedroom. Their father got up and went out.
At the door Zhenya collided with Ulyasha, who was carrying a lighted lamp. Soon afterward she heard a door closing nearby. That would be Seryozha going to his room. Today he had surpassed himself—his sister liked it when the Akhmedianovs’ friend behaved like a real schoolboy, when it could be said of him that he was wearing a school uniform.
Doors opened and shut. Rubbers stamped out. Finally, the master and mistress were gone….
The letter said she had never been touchy, and “if you want something, ask for it, as before,” and when the “dear sister,” laden with greetings and good wishes, had distinguished her from her numerous relatives, Ulyasha, who was called “Juliana” in the letter, thanked the young lady, turned down the lamp, took the letter, the ink bottle and the rest of the greasy paper and went out.
Zhenya returned to her homework. She kept on dividing the number and put down one dividend after the other. There was no end in sight. The fraction in the quotient rose and rose.
“Suddenly the measles return,” went through her head. “Today Dikikh said nothing about the infinite.” She felt that she had felt this way earlier today—she’d rather have slept or cried—but she didn’t recall what it was about or when it happened for she couldn’t think clearly any more. The howling outside the window was dying down. The snowstorm was gradually tapering off. Decimal fractions were something quite new to her. There was not enough room on the right. She decided to start again at the beginning, to write smaller, and this time check every term. The street became quiet once again. She was afraid she had forgotten the number she had “borrowed” from the next number and she couldn’t keep the product in her head. “The window won’t run away,” she thought and cast threes and sevens into the bottomless quotient. “I will hear them in time. It’s quiet now. They won’t come in that quickly. They are wearing their furs and Mama is pregnant. I have it now—3773 is repeated. One can either copy it or cross it out.” Suddenly she remembered what Dikikh had told her today: “You needn’t keep them, you can simply leave them out.”
She got up and went to the window. It had cleared. Separate snowflakes sailed out of the black night. They glided toward the street lamp, swam around it and disappeared, to be replaced by others. The streets glittered, a carpet of snow for a sleigh ride. The carpet was white, radiant and sweet like the gingerbread in the story. Zhenya stood at the window and studied the circles and figures that Andersen’s silver snowflakes formed around the lamp. She stood there for quite a while and then went to Mama’s room to get Murr the Tomcat.
She entered without light. One could see without it, for the coachhouse roof threw a reflected brilliance into the room. Beneath the high ceiling the beds froze and glittered. The smoke-gray silk lay where it had been carelessly thrown. The small blouses gave out an oppressive odor of armpits and calico. There was a smell of violets, and the cupboard was blue-black like the night outside and like the dry, warm darkness in which this frozen brilliance moved. A brass knob on the bed shimmered like a lonely pearl. Another one was extinguished by a sheet thrown over it. Zhenya squeezed her eyes together; the brass knob separated itself from the bed and swam to the wardrobe. Then she remembered why she had come. With book in hand, she walked to one of the windows. The night was star-bright. Winter had come to Yekaterinburg. She looked down into the yard and thought of Pushkin. She decided to ask her tutor to assign her an essay on Eugene Onegin.