Works of Ivan Turgenev (Illustrated) (361 page)

Kuzma Vassilyevitch closed his eyes and fell asleep immediately.

“
Schlaf, mein Kindchen, schlafe
,” sang Emilie, swaying from side to side and softly laughing at her song and her movements.

“What a big baby I have got!” she thought. “A boy!”

XII

An hour and a half later the lieutenant awoke. He fancied in his sleep that someone touched him, bent over him, breathed over him. He fumbled, and pulled off the kerchief. Emilie was on her knees close beside him; the expression of her face struck him as queer. She jumped up at once, walked away to the window and put something away in her pocket.

Kuzma Vassilyevitch stretched.

“I’ve had a good long snooze, it seems!” he observed, yawning. “Come here,
meine züsse Fräulein
!”

Emilie went up to him. He sat up quickly, thrust his hand into her pocket and took out a small pair of scissors.

“
Ach, Herr Je
!” Emilie could not help exclaiming.

“It’s ... it’s a pair of scissors?” muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch.

“Why, of course. What did you think it was ... a pistol? Oh, how funny you look! You’re as rumpled as a pillow and your hair is all standing up at the back.... And he doesn’t laugh.... Oh, oh! And his eyes are puffy.... Oh!”

Emilie went off into a giggle.

“Come, that’s enough,” muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and he got up from the sofa. “That’s enough giggling about nothing. If you can’t think of anything more sensible, I’ll go home.... I’ll go home,” he repeated, seeing that she was still laughing.

Emilie subsided.

“Come, stay; I won’t.... Only you must brush your hair.”

“No, never mind.... Don’t trouble. I’d better go,” said Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and he took up his cap.

Emilie pouted.

“Fie, how cross he is! A regular Russian! All Russians are cross. Now he is going. Fie! Yesterday he promised me five roubles and today he gives me nothing and goes away.”

“I haven’t any money on me,” Kuzma Vassilyevitch muttered grumpily in the doorway. “Good - bye.”

Emilie looked after him and shook her finger.

“No money! Do you hear, do you hear what he says? Oh, what deceivers these Russians are! But wait a bit, you pug.... Auntie, come here, I have something to tell you.”

That evening as Kuzma Vassilyevitch was undressing to go to bed, he noticed that the upper edge of his leather belt had come unsewn for about three inches. Like a careful man he at once procured a needle and thread, waxed the thread and stitched up the hole himself. He paid, however, no attention to this apparently trivial circumstance.

XIII

The whole of the next day Kuzma Vassilyevitch devoted to his official duties; he did not leave the house even after dinner and right into the night was scribbling and copying out his report to his superior officer, mercilessly disregarding the rules of spelling, always putting an exclamation mark after the word
but
and a semi - colon after
however
. Next morning a barefoot Jewish boy in a tattered gown brought him a letter from Emilie -
 
- the first letter that Kuzma Vassilyevitch had received from her.

“Mein allerliebstep Florestan,” she wrote to him, “can you really so cross with your Zuckerpüppchen be that you came not yesterday? Please be not cross if you wish not your merry Emilie to weep very bitterly and come, be sure, at 5 o’clock to - day.” (The figure 5 was surrounded with two wreaths.) “I will be very, very glad. Your amiable Emilie.” Kuzma Vassilyevitch was inwardly surprised at the accomplishments of his charmer, gave the Jew boy a copper coin and told him to say, “Very well, I will come.”

XIV

Kuzma Vassilyevitch kept his word: five o’clock had not struck when he was standing before Madame Fritsche’s gate. But to his surprise he did not find Emilie at home; he was met by the lady of the house herself who -
 
- wonder of wonders! -
 
- dropping a preliminary curtsey, informed him that Emilie had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to go out but she would soon be back and begged him to wait. Madame Fritsche had on a neat white cap; she smiled, spoke in an ingratiating voice and evidently tried to give an affable expression to her morose countenance, which was, however, none the more prepossessing for that, but on the contrary acquired a positively sinister aspect.

“Sit down, sit down, sir,” she said, putting an easy chair for him, “and we will offer you some refreshment if you will permit it.”

Madame Fritsche made another curtsey, went out of the room and returned shortly afterwards with a cup of chocolate on a small iron tray. The chocolate turned out to be of dubious quality; Kuzma Vassilyevitch drank the whole cup with relish, however, though he was at a loss to explain why Madame Fritsche was suddenly so affable and what it all meant. For all that Emilie did not come back and he was beginning to lose patience and feel bored when all at once he heard through the wall the sounds of a guitar. First there was the sound of one chord, then a second and a third and a fourth -
 
- the sound continually growing louder and fuller. Kuzma Vassilyevitch was surprised: Emilie certainly had a guitar but it only had three strings: he had not yet bought her any new ones; besides, Emilie was not at home. Who could it be? Again a chord was struck and so loudly that it seemed as though it were in the room.... Kuzma Vassilyevitch turned round and almost cried out in a fright. Before him, in a low doorway which he had not till then noticed -
 
- a big cupboard screened it -
 
- stood a strange figure ... neither a child nor a grown - up girl. She was wearing a white dress with a bright - coloured pattern on it and red shoes with high heels; her thick black hair, held together by a gold fillet, fell like a cloak from her little head over her slender body. Her big eyes shone with sombre brilliance under the soft mass of hair; her bare, dark - skinned arms were loaded with bracelets and her hands covered with rings, held a guitar. Her face was scarcely visible, it looked so small and dark; all that was seen was the crimson of her lips and the outline of a straight and narrow nose. Kuzma Vassilyevitch stood for some time petrified and stared at the strange creature without blinking; and she, too, gazed at him without stirring an eyelid. At last he recovered himself and moved with small steps towards her.

The dark face began gradually smiling. There was a sudden gleam of white teeth, the little head was raised, and lightly flinging back the curls, displayed itself in all its startling and delicate beauty.

“What little imp is this?” thought Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and, advancing still closer, he brought out in a low voice:

“Hey, little image! Who are you?”

“Come here, come here,” the “little image” responded in a rather husky voice, with a halting un - Russian intonation and incorrect accent, and she stepped back two paces.

Kuzma Vassilyevitch followed her through the doorway and found himself in a tiny room without windows, the walls and floor of which were covered with thick camel’s - hair rugs. He was overwhelmed by a strong smell of musk. Two yellow wax candles were burning on a round table in front of a low sofa. In the corner stood a bedstead under a muslin canopy with silk stripes and a long amber rosary with a red tassle at the end hung by the pillow.

“But excuse me, who are you?” repeated Kuzma Vassilyevitch.

“Sister ... sister of Emilie.”

“You are her sister? And you live here?”

“Yes ... yes.”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch wanted to touch “the image.” She drew back.

“How is it she has never spoken of you?”

“Could not ... could not.”

“You are in concealment then ... in hiding?”

“Yes.”

“Are there reasons?”

“Reasons ... reasons.”

“Hm!” Again Kuzma Vassilyevitch would have touched the figure, again she stepped back. “So that’s why I never saw you. I must own I never suspected your existence. And the old lady, Madame Fritsche, is your aunt, too?”

“Yes ... aunt.”

“Hm! You don’t seem to understand Russian very well. What’s your name, allow me to ask?”

“Colibri.”

“What?”

“Colibri.”

“Colibri! That’s an out - of - the - way name! There are insects like that in Africa, if I remember right?”

XV

Colibri gave a short, queer laugh ... like a clink of glass in her throat. She shook her head, looked round, laid her guitar on the table and going quickly to the door, abruptly shut it. She moved briskly and nimbly with a rapid, hardly audible sound like a lizard; at the back her hair fell below her knees.

“Why have you shut the door?” asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch.

Colibri put her fingers to her lips.

“Emilie ... not want ... not want her.”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch grinned.

“I say, you are not jealous, are you?”

Colibri raised her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Jealous ... angry,” Kuzma Vassilyevitch explained.

“Oh, yes!”

“Really! Much obliged.... I say, how old are you?”

“Seventen.”

“Seventeen, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch scrutinised his fantastic companion closely.

“What a beautiful creature you are!” he said, emphatically. “Marvellous! Really marvellous! What hair! What eyes! And your eyebrows ... ough!”

Colibri laughed again and again looked round with her magnificent eyes.

“Yes, I am a beauty! Sit down, and I’ll sit down ... beside.”

“By all means! But say what you like, you are a strange sister for Emilie! You are not in the least like her.”

“Yes, I am sister ... cousin. Here ... take ... a flower. A nice flower. It smells.” She took out of her girdle a sprig of white lilac, sniffed it, bit off a petal and gave him the whole sprig. “Will you have jam? Nice jam ... from Constantinople ... sorbet?” Colibri took from the small chest of drawers a gilt jar wrapped in a piece of crimson silk with steel spangles on it, a silver spoon, a cut glass decanter and a tumbler like it. “Eat some sorbet, sir; it is fine. I will sing to you.... Will you?” She took up the guitar.

“You sing, then?” asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch, putting a spoonful of really excellent sorbet into his mouth.

“Oh, yes!” She flung back her mane of hair, put her head on one side and struck several chords, looking carefully at the tips of her fingers and at the top of the guitar ... then suddenly began singing in a voice unexpectedly strong and agreeable, but guttural and to the ears of Kuzma Vassilyevitch rather savage. “Oh, you pretty kitten,” he thought. She sang a mournful song, utterly un - Russian and in a language quite unknown to Kuzma Vassilyevitch. He used to declare that the sounds “Kha, gha” kept recurring in it and at the end she repeated a long drawn - out “sintamar” or “sintsimar,” or something of the sort, leaned her head on her hand, heaved a sigh and let the guitar drop on her knee. “Good?” she asked, “want more?”

“I should be delighted,” answered Kuzma Vassilyevitch. “But why do you look like that, as though you were grieving? You’d better have some sorbet.”

“No ... you. And I will again.... It will be more merry.” She sang another song, that sounded like a dance, in the same unknown language. Again Kuzma Vassilyevitch distinguished the same guttural sounds. Her swarthy fingers fairly raced over the strings, “like little spiders,” and she ended up this time with a jaunty shout of “Ganda” or “Gassa,” and with flashing eyes banged on the table with her little fist.