“Is there much left from the summer?” asked Seryozha.
“We’ll soon have new ice.”
“Here, give it to me. You’re not doing it right.”
“What do you mean, not right? I have to break it into little pieces. For the bottles.”
“Well, are you through?”
While Zhenya ran once more through the rooms, Seryozha went out onto the steps and beat the icy railings with a stick of wood, waiting for his sister.
8
The Defendovs were eating their evening meal. The grandmother crossed herself and sank back into her armchair. The lamp shone dimly and was unsteady. Sometimes it was turned up too high, sometimes too low. Defendov often reached out his hand to the screw; he drew it back slowly, sat back on his seat and his hand shook, not like the hand of an old man, but more as if he were raising a glass of spirits poured too full. His fingertips shook. He spoke in a clear, steady voice, as if he put his words together not with sounds but with individual letters. And he pronounced them all, even the final consonants.
The swollen neck of the lamp glowed, outlined with geranium and heliotrope tendrils. The cockroaches ran toward the warm glass, and the clock hands advanced cautiously. Time crept as it does in winter. In the room it festered; outside it congealed with a bad smell. Behind the windows, it hurried, doubled and tripled itself in the lights.
Mrs. Defendov put roast liver on the table. The soup, spiced only with onions, steamed fragrantly. Defendov talked continuously, often repeating the words “I recommend,” but Zhenya heard nothing…. Even yesterday she had felt like crying. Now she thirsted for tears as she sat in the little jacket sewed according to her mother’s instructions.
Defendov noticed how things were with her. He tried to distract her. Now he spoke to her as to a small child, then he fell into the opposite extreme. His joking questions frightened and confused her. He blindly fingered the soul of his daughter’s friend, as if he were asking her heart its age. After he had detected one of Zhenya’s characteristic traits, he tried to behave in conformity with it and thus help the child to stop thinking about home. But this only reminded her even more that she was among strangers.
Suddenly she could stand it no longer, got up and murmured with childish embarrassment, “Thank you. I’ve really eaten enough. May I look at the pictures?” Everybody looked startled and she blushed, then nodded toward the adjoining room and added, ” Walter Scott. May I?”
“Go, go, my dear,” said the grandmother, and with a frown at the others made them keep their peace. “The poor child,” she said to her son when the claret-colored curtain closed behind Zhenya.
The grim completeness of the set of magazines, The North, lay so heavy upon the bookshelf that it leaned to one side, and the velvety crimson underneath had a golden luster. A pink lamp hung from the ceiling and cast no light on either of the much-rubbed armchairs. The little carpet, buried in darkness, was a surprise to the feet.
Zhenya had wanted to come into the room, sit down and cry. Tears entered her eyes but her sorrow failed to overflow. How could she shake off this sorrow, which had lain upon her like a beam since yesterday? Tears had no power over it, they could not open the sluice gates. To help them along, she tried to think about her mother.
Preparing to spend a night with strangers, she realized for the first time the depths of her attachment to this dearest and most beloved human being on earth.
Suddenly she heard Lisa’s laugh behind the curtain. “Oh, you fidget, oh, you little Lisa devil,” said the grandmother, coughing between her words. Zhenya wondered how she could ever have imagined that she loved this girl; her laughter sounded in the very next room, yet it was distant and useless to Zhenya. And then something turned over within her and let the tears break loose when she thought of her mother, suffering, standing among an endless row of yesterdays, as if among a crowd of people who had come to say good-by on a railway platform and remained behind when the train carried Zhenya away.
But what was really insupportable was the penetrating look Mrs. Luvers had thrown at her yesterday in the schoolroom. It had buried itself in her memory, and would now never leave her. It was an object that must be accepted, something of value to her that she had forgotten and neglected.
The wild, delirious bitterness and the utter endlessness of this feeling were so confusing that she felt she might lose her reason over it. Zhenya stood at the window and wept violently. Her tears flowed and she did not wipe them away; her hands moved, yet they grasped nothing. They reached out, clutching spasmodically, desperately and willfully.
Suddenly a thought came to her—that she was terrifyingly like her mother. She had the feeling with a vividness and certainty which seemed to have the power to turn the thought into reality and, through the very force of this shockingly swift conviction, make her indeed like her mother. This feeling was so sharp and penetrating that she groaned involuntarily. It was the recognition of a woman who is given the power to contemplate her external loveliness from within. Zhenya couldn’t account for it to herself. It was the first time she had ever experienced anything like it. In only one particular she was not mistaken: Mrs. Luvers had once stood by a window in the same state of excitement, turned away from her daughter and her daughter’s governess; she had bitten her lip and the gloved hand that clutched a pair of opera glasses.
In a stupor from weeping, but with a happy face, Zhenya went back to the Defendovs. Her walk had changed; now it was broad, dreamy and new. When Defendov saw her walk in, he realized that the picture of her that he had formed in her absence was quite inaccurate. He would have proceeded to draw another one had not the samovar interfered.
Mrs. Defendov fetched a tray from the kitchen and placed the samovar on the floor. All eyes were turned toward the wheezing copper machine, as if it were alive. Its capricious behavior was tamed when it stood at last on the table. Zhenya sat down on her chair. She decided to enter the conversation, and felt dimly that the choice of a topic was up to her. Otherwise, the others would once more leave her in her perilous solitude and not realize that her mother was present here, through her and in her. This shortsightedness on their part would hurt—and, most of all, it would hurt Mama. She addressed Mrs. Defendov, who with some difficulty was adjusting the samovar at the edge of the table: “Vassa Vassilievna…”
“Can you have a child?”
Lisa did not answer Zhenya at once. “Quiet, don’t speak so loud. Naturally, all girls can.” She spoke incoherently and in a whisper. Zhenya couldn’t see her friend’s face, for Lisa was looking for matches on the table and not finding any. She knew much more about it than Zhenya; she knew everything, the way children know who have picked it up from the conversation of strangers. Natures whom the Creator loves rebel in such cases. They revolt and are gripped by a wild timidity. They cannot have this experience without certain pathological impulses. The opposite would hardly be considered naturaclass="underline" juvenile insanity bears today the seal of normality.
Somebody had once told Lisa all kinds of vulgar and filthy things in a dark corner. They didn’t shock her when she heard them, and she had carried them about ever since, not forgetting one bit of the dirt that had been revealed to her. She knew it all. Her body was not surprised, her heart made no protest, her soul inflicted no punishment upon her brain because it had dared to find out without consulting her heart about things that didn’t come from the soul.
“I know that.” (“You know nothing,” thought Lisa.) “I know that,” Zhenya repeated. “I’m not asking about that. But whether one feels—you take a step and suddenly you have a child—well…”