LITMIR.BIZ

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understood by his face that he had reasons for preventing us from going in. I respect other people’s reasons and secrets, but on this occasion my curiosity was greatly excited. I persisted, and we entered the house.

      ‘Come into the drawing-room, please,’ barefooted Mit’ka spluttered almost choking with delight.

      Try to imagine the very smallest drawing-room in the world, with unpainted deal walls. These walls are hung all over with oleographs from the Niva, photographs in frames made of shells, and testimonials. One testimonial is from a certain baron, expressing his gratitude for many years of service; all the others are for horses. Here and there ivy climbs up the wall… In a corner a small lamp, whose tiny blue flame is faintly reflected on the silver mounting, burns peacefully before a little icon. Chairs that have evidently been only recently bought are pressed close together round the walls. Too many had been purchased, and they had been squeezed together, as there was nowhere else to put them… Here, also, there are armchairs and a sofa in snow-white covers with flounces and laces, crowded up with a polished round table. A tame hare dozes on the sofa… The room is cosy, clean and warm… The presence of a woman can be noticed everywhere. Even the whatnot with books has a look of innocence and womanliness; it appears to be anxious to say that there is nothing on its shelves but wishy-washy novels and mawkish verse… The charm of such warm, cosy rooms is not so much felt in spring as in autumn, when you look for a refuge from the cold and damp.

      After much loud snivelling, blowing, and noisy striking of matches, Mit’ka lit two candles and placed them on the table as carefully as if they had been milk. We sat down in the armchairs, looked at each other, and laughed.

      ‘Nikolai Efimych is ill in bed,’ Urbenin said, to explain the absence of the master, ‘and Olga Nikolaevna has probably gone to accompany my children…’

      ‘Mit’ka, are the doors shut?’ we heard a weak tenor voice asking from the next room.

      ‘They’re all shut, Nikolai Efimych!’ Mit’ka shouted hoarsely, and he rushed headlong into the next room.

      ‘That’s right! See that they are all shut,’ the same weak voice said again. ‘And locked - firmly locked… If thieves break in, you must tell me… I’ll shoot the villains with my gun… the scoundrels!’

      ‘Certainly, Nikolai Efimych!’

      We laughed and looked inquiringly at Urbenin. He grew very red, and in order to hide his confusion he began to arrange the curtains of the windows… What does this dream mean? We again looked at each other.

      We had no time for perplexity. Hasty steps were heard outside, then a noise in the porch and the slamming of doors. And the girl in red rushed into the room.

      ‘I love the thunder in early May,’ she sang in a loud, shrill soprano voice, and she cut short her song with a burst of laughter, but when she saw us she suddenly stood still and was silent - she became embarrassed, and went as quietly as a lamb into the room in which the voice of Nikolai Efimych, her father, had been heard.

      ‘She did not expect to see you,’ Urbenin said, laughing.

      A few minutes later she again came quietly into the room, sat down on the chair nearest the door and began to examine us. She stared at us boldly, not as if we were new people for her, but as if we were animals in the Zoological Gardens. For a minute we too looked at her in silence without moving… I would have agreed to sit still and look at her for a whole hour in this way — she was so lovely that evening. As fresh as the air, rosy, breathing rapidly, her bosom rising and falling, her curls scattered wildly on her forehead, on her shoulders, and on her right hand that was raised to arrange her collar; with large, sparkling eyes… And all this was found on one little body that a single glance could envelop. If you glanced for a moment at this small object you saw more than you would if you looked for a whole century at the endless horizon… She looked at me seriously, from my feet upwards, inquiringly; when her eyes left me and passed to the Count or to the Pole I began to read in them the contrary: a glance that passed from the head to the feet, and laughter…

      I was the first to speak.

      ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ I said, rising and going up to her. ‘Zinov’ev… And let me introduce my friend, Count Karnéev… We beg you to pardon us for breaking into your nice little house without an invitation… We would, of course, never have done so if the storm had not driven us in…’

      ‘But that won’t cause our little house to tumble down!’ she said, laughing and giving me her hand.

      She displayed her splendid white teeth. I sat down on a chair next to her, and told her how quite unexpectedly the storm had overtaken us on our walk. Our conversation began with the weather - the beginning of all beginnings. While we were talking, Mit’ka had had time to offer the Count two glasses of vodka with the inseparable tumbler of water. Thinking that I was not looking at him, the Count made a sweet grimace and shook his head after each glass.

      ‘Perhaps you would like some refreshments?’ Olenka asked me, and, not waiting for an answer, she left the room.

      The first drops of rain rattled against the panes… I went up to the windows… It was now quite dark, and through the glass I could see nothing but the raindrops creeping down and the reflection of my own nose. There was a flash of lightning, which illuminated some of the nearest pines.

      ‘Are the doors shut?’ I heard the same tenor voice ask again. ‘Mit’ka, come here, you vile-spirited scoundrel! Shut the doors! Oh, Lord, what torments!’

      A peasant woman with an enormous, tightly laced stomach and a stupid, troubled face came into the room, and, having bowed low to the Count, she spread a white tablecloth on the table. Mit’ka followed her carefully carrying a tray with various hors d’œuvres. A minute later, we had vodka, rum, cheese, and a dish of some sort of roasted bird on the table before us. The Count drank a glass of vodka, but he would not eat anything. The Pole smelt the bird mistrustfully, and then began to carve it.

      ‘The rain has begun! Look!’ I said to Olenka, who had reentered the room.

      Olenka came up to the window where I was standing, and at that very moment we were illuminated by a white flash of light… There was a fearful crash above us, and it appeared to me that something large and heavy had been torn from the sky and had fallen to earth with a terrible racket… The window panes and the wineglasses that were standing before the Count jingled and emitted their tinkling sound… The thunderclap was a loud one.

      ‘Are you afraid of thunderstorms?’ I asked Olenka.

      She only pressed her cheek to her round shoulders and looked at me with childish confidence.

      ‘I’m afraid,’ she whispered after a moment’s reflection. ‘My mother was killed by a storm… The newspapers even wrote about it… My mother was going through the fields, crying… She had a very bitter life in this world. God had compassion on her and killed her with His heavenly electricity.’

      ‘How do you know that there is electricity there?’

      ‘I have learned… Do you know, people who have been killed by a storm or in war, or who have died after a difficult confinement go to paradise… This is not written anywhere in books, but it is true. My mother is now in paradise! I think the thunder will also kill me some day, and I shall go to paradise too… Are you a cultivated man?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘Then you will not laugh… This is how I should like to die: to dress in the most costly fashionable frock, like the one I saw the other day on our rich lady, the landowner Sheffer; to put bracelets on my arms… Then to go to the very summit of the Stone Grave and allow myself to be killed by the lightning, so that all the people could see it… A terrible peal of thunder, and then, you know, the end!’

      ‘What an odd fancy!’ I said, laughing and looking into her eyes that were full of holy horror at this terrible but dramatic death. ‘Then you don’t want to die in an ordinary dress?’

      ‘No!’ Olenka shook her head. ‘And so that everybody

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