Seryozha tried to gossip with her. He asked, “Did you put on perfume? Give me some, too.” He had been nice all day, so rosy-checked, but she thought an evening like this might never come again and she wanted to enjoy it alone.
Zhenya returned to her room and started on the Tales. She read one and started another. She was so absorbed she didn’t hear her brother going to bed in the room next door. A strange game took possession of her face, quite without her knowing it. Her face twisted sideways, like a fish; she pouted her lower lip; and her pupils, glued rigidly to the book as if by a spell, refused to look up, for they were afraid to find it behind the chest of drawers. Then she suddenly nodded to the lines as if she gave them her assent—just as one gives approval to a deed and is pleased about the way things have turned out. She read more slowly when she reached the descriptions of the lakes and threw herself head over heels into the night scenes illuminated with Bengal lights. In one passage, a man who got lost shouted, waited for an answer and heard only the echo of his own voice. She suppressed a cry and had to cough. The un-Russian name “Myra” freed her from her spell. She put the book aside and thought: “So this is winter in Asia. What do the Chinese do on such a dark night?” Her eyes fell on the clock. It must be a terrible feeling to be in this darkness with Chinese. She looked at the clock again and became alarmed. Her parents might come back at any minute. It was nearly twelve. She laced up her shoes and hurried to return the book to its place.
Zhenya sat up in bed with wide-open eyes. No, it couldn’t be a thief—there were many people. They stamped through the house and talked as loud as in daylight. Suddenly somebody cried out as if he were being murdered, something was dragged along the floor, chairs were overturned. It was a woman’s cry. Slowly Zhenya recognized the voices, every one except that of the woman. An incredible running back and forth began. Doors banged. Then a distant door shut, followed by a stifled cry, as if somebody had stuffed something into the woman’s mouth. But the door opened again, and a searing, scourging whine shuddered through the house. Zhenya’s hair stood on end: the woman was her mother; she had done it. Ulyasha was wailing. She also heard the voice of her father, but only once and not again. She heard Seryozha being pushed into a room, and he roared, “Don’t you dare to lock me up!” Then, just as she was, barefoot, wearing only her nightgown, she dashed into the corridor, almost colliding with her father. He was wearing his overcoat and shouted something to Ulyasha as he ran. “Papa!” She saw that he was running from the bathroom with a jug of water. “Papa!”
“Where is Lipa?” he shouted in a totally unfamiliar voice. He spilled water on the floor and disappeared through a door. When he came out again a moment later, in his shirt sleeves and without his waistcoat, Zhenya found herself in Ulyasha’s arms and didn’t hear his words, uttered in a desperate, heart-rending whisper.
“What’s wrong with Mama?”
Instead of a reply Ulyasha repeated over and over, “No, no. It cannot be. Zhenya dear, go to sleep, cover yourself up, turn over and he on your side. A-ah, God! No, no, dear!” she repeated, covered Zhenya up like a small child and went out. It cannot be, but she didn’t say what could not be, and her face had been wet and her hair disarrayed. Three doors away, a lock clicked behind her.
Zhenya lit a match to see whether it would soon be dawn. It was only one o’clock. She was astonished. Had she really slept only one hour? The hubbub in her parents’ room continued. A loud groaning rose and fell. Then, for a moment, an endless, eternal silence. Hurried footsteps and muffled voices broke the silence. A bell rang once, then again. Then words, arguments, orders-so many that it sounded as if the rooms were lit by voices, as a table is lighted by a thousand fading candelabra.
Zhenya fell asleep. She slept with tears in her eyes. She dreamed that there were visitors. She counted them but always miscalculated. Every time there was one person too many. And every time the same horror seized her when she recognized that the extra person wasn’t just anybody: it was Mama.
One couldn’t help it, one had to feel happy about the small, sunny morning. Seryozha thought of games in the yard, of snowballs, of snowfights with the neighbors’ children. Tea was brought to them in the schoolroom, and they were told that there were floor polishers in the dining room. Their father came in. It was soon clear that he knew nothing about floor polishers. He really knew nothing about them. He told them the true reason for the changes in their routine. Their mother was ill. She needed quiet. Ravens flew, with far-echoing caws, over the street, shrouded in white. A small sleigh glided by, pushing its horse forward. The animal was not yet used to the new harness and kept losing the beat.
“You’ll go to the Defendovs. I’ve arranged everything. And you, Seryozha—”
“Why?” Zhenya interrupted.
But Seryozha had guessed why and forestalled his father. “So that you don’t catch the infection,” he instructed his sister. But the street outside made him restless. He ran to the window as if someone had called to him. The Tartar who came out of the house in his new clothes looked as stately and as highly adorned as a pheasant. He wore a lambskin cap, and his bare sheepskin coat had a sheen warmer than morocco leather. He waddled and rocked slightly, probably because the raspberry-red pattern on his white boots ignored the natural structure of the human foot. These patterns moved arbitrarily; they cared little whether the objects beneath them were feet, teacups or roof tiles. But the most interesting thing of all—at this moment, the weak groaning that came from the bedroom grew louder and their father went into the corridor, forbidding them to follow him—the most interesting thing of all was the tracks he left on the smooth snow with his sharp, narrow boot tips. These tracks, looking as if they had been carved, made the snow appear even whiter and silkier.
“Here’s a letter. You’ll give it to Mr. Defendov. Personally. Do you understand? Now get dressed. You’ll be taken there immediately. Go to the rear entrance. Seryozha, the Akhmedianovs are expecting you.”
“Really?” the boy asked rather mockingly.
“Yes. Get dressed in the kitchen!”
Their father spoke distractedly and accompanied them slowly to the kitchen, where their furs, caps and mittens were heaped like a small mountain on a stool. The winter air blew in from the stairs. “Ah-yoch!” The frozen call of flying sleighs hung in the air. Since they were in a hurry, they missed their coat sleeves once or twice. Their clothes smelled of closets and sleepy fur.
“What are you doing? Don’t put it on the edge of the table or it will fall off. Well, how are things?”
“She’s still groaning.” The chambermaid lifted her apron, leaned down and threw some small logs into the flames of the rumbling kitchen stove. “That’s not my affair,” she said with annoyance and went out of the room.
In a dented black pail lay yellowed prescriptions and broken glass. The towels were soaked with fresh as well a clotted blood. They seemed to blaze, as if they could be trod out like flaring embers. Only water boiled in the pots. Everywhere stood white crucibles and mortars of unusual shape, as in a drugstore. Little Halim was breaking up ice blocks in the hallway.