When her father was on friendly terms with mine, we used to see her
continually. She would sit with us for hours at a time, either sewing,
or spinning with her delicate, rapid, clever fingers. She was a
well-made, rather thin girl, with intelligent brown eyes and a long,
white, oval face. She talked little but sensibly in a soft, musical
voice, barely opening her mouth and not showing her teeth. When she
laughed--which happened rarely and never lasted long--they were all
suddenly displayed, big and white as almonds. I remember her gait, too,
light, elastic, with a little skip at each step. It always seemed to me
that she was going down a flight of steps, even when she was walking on
level ground. She held herself erect with her arms folded tightly over
her bosom. And whatever she was doing, whatever she undertook, if she
were only threading a needle or ironing a petticoat--the effect was
always beautiful and somehow--you may not believe it--touching. Her
Christian name was Raissa, but we used to call her Black-lip: she had
on her upper lip a birthmark; a little dark-bluish spot, as though she
had been eating blackberries; but that did not spoil her: on the
contrary. She was just a year older than David. I cherished for her a
feeling akin to respect, but we were not great friends. But between
her and David a friendship had sprung up, a strange, unchildlike but
good friendship. They somehow suited each other.
Sometimes they did not exchange a word for hours together, but both
felt that they were happy and happy because they were together. I had
never met a girl like her, really. There was something attentive and
resolute about her, something honest and mournful and charming. I
never heard her say anything very intelligent, but I never heard her
say anything commonplace, and I have never seen more intelligent eyes.
After the rupture between her family and mine I saw her less
frequently: my father sternly forbade my visiting the Latkins, and she
did not appear in our house again. But I met her in the street, in
church and Black-lip always aroused in me the same feeling--respect
and even some wonder, rather than pity. She bore her misfortunes very
well indeed. "The girl is flint," even coarse-witted, Trankvillitatin
said about her once, but really she ought to have been pitied: her
face acquired a careworn, exhausted expression, her eyes were hollow
and sunken, a burden beyond her strength lay on her young shoulders.
David saw her much oftener than I did; he used to go to their house.
My father gave him up in despair: he knew that David would not obey
him, anyway. And from time to time Raissa would appear at the hurdle
fence of our garden which looked into a lane and there have an
interview with David; she did not come for the sake of conversation,
but told him of some new difficulty or trouble and asked his advice.
The paralysis that had attacked Latkin was of a rather peculiar kind.
His arms and legs had grown feeble, but he had not lost the use of
them, and his brain indeed worked perfectly; but his speech was
muddled and instead of one word he would pronounce another: one had to
guess what it was he wanted to say.... "Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo," he
would stammer with an effort--he began every sentence with
"Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo, some scissors, some scissors," ... and the word
scissors meant bread.... My father, he hated with all the strength left
him--he attributed all his misfortunes to my father's curse and called
him alternately the butcher and the diamond-merchant. "Tchoo, tchoo,
don't you dare to go to the butcher's, Vassilyevna." This was what he
called his daughter though his own name was Martinyan. Every day he
became more exacting; his needs increased.... And how were those needs
to be satisfied? Where could the money be found? Sorrow soon makes one
old: but it was horrible to hear some words on the lips of a girl of
seventeen.
XIII
I remember I happened to be present at a
conversation with David over the fence, on the
very day of her mother's death.
"Mother died this morning at daybreak," she
said, first looking round with her dark expressive eyes and then
fixing them on the ground.
"Cook undertook to get a coffin cheap but she's not to be trusted; she
may spend the money on drink, even. You might come and look after her,
Davidushka, she's afraid of you."
"I will come," answered David. "I will see to it. And how's your
father?"
"He cries; he says: 'you must spoil me, too.' Spoil must mean bury.
Now he has gone to sleep." Raissa suddenly gave a deep sigh. "Oh,
Davidushka, Davidushka!" She passed her half-clenched fist over her
forehead and her eyebrows, and the action was so bitter ... and as
sincere and beautiful as all her actions.
"You must take care of yourself, though," David observed; "you haven't
slept at all, I expect.... And what's the use of crying? It doesn't
help trouble."
"I have no time for crying," answered Raissa.
"That's a luxury for the rich, crying," observed David.
Raissa was going, but she turned back.
"The yellow shawl's being sold, you know; part of mother's dowry. They
are giving us twelve roubles; I think that is not much."
"It certainly is not much."
"We shouldn't sell it," Raissa said after a brief pause, "but you see
we must have money for the funeral."
"Of course you must. Only you mustn't spend money at random. Those
priests are awful! But I say, wait a minute. I'll come. Are you going?
I'll be with you soon. Goodbye, darling."
"Good-bye, Davidushka, darling."
"Mind now, don't cry!"
"As though I should cry! It's either cooking the dinner or crying. One
or the other."
"What! does she cook the dinner?" I said to David, as soon as Raissa
was out of hearing, "does she do the cooking herself?"
"Why, you heard that the cook has gone to buy a coffin."
"She cooks the dinner," I thought, "and her hands are always so clean
and her clothes so neat.... I should like to see her there at work in
the kitchen.... She is an extraordinary girl!"
I remember another conversation at the fence. That time Raissa brought
with her her little deaf and dumb sister. She was a pretty child with
immense, astonished-looking eyes and a perfect mass of dull, black
hair on her little, head (Raissa's hair, too, was black and hers, too,
was without lustre). Latkin had by then been struck down by paralysis.
"I really don't know what to do," Raissa began. "The doctor has
written a prescription. We must go to the chemist's; and our peasant
(Latkin had still one serf) has brought us wood from the village and a
goose. And the porter has taken it away, 'you are in debt to me,' he
said."
"Taken the goose?" asked David.
"No, not the goose. He says it is an old one; it is no good for
anything; he says that is why our peasant brought it us, but he is
taking the wood."
"But he has no right to," exclaimed David.
there we have got a very, very old trunk. I began rummaging in it and
what do you think I found? Look!"
She took from under her kerchief a rather large field glass in a
copper setting, covered with morocco, yellow with age. David, as a
connoisseur of all sorts of instruments, seized upon it at once.
"It's English," he pronounced, putting it first to one eye and then to
the other. "A marine glass."
"And the glasses are perfect," Raissa went on. "I showed it to father;
he said, 'Take it and pawn it to the diamond-merchant'! What do you
think, would they give us anything for it? What do we want a telescope
for? To look at ourselves in the looking-glass and see what beauties
we are? But we haven't a looking-glass, unluckily."
And Raissa suddenly laughed aloud. Her sister, of course, could not
hear her. But most likely she felt the shaking of her body: she clung
to Raissa's hand and her little face worked with a look of terror as
she raised her big eyes to her sister and burst into tears.
"That's how she always is," said Raissa, "she
doesn't like one to laugh.
"Come, I won't, Lyubotchka, I won't," she added, nimbly squatting
on her heels beside the child and passing her fingers through her hair.
The laughter vanished from Raissa's face and her lips, the corners of
which twisted upwards in a particularly charming way, became motionless
again. The child was pacified. Raissa got up.
"So you will do what you can, about the glass I mean, Davidushka.
But I do regret the wood, and the goose, too, however old it may be."
"They would certainly give you ten roubles," said David, turning the
telescope in all directions. "I will buy it of you, what could be
better? And here, meanwhile, are fifteen kopecks for the chemist's....
Is that enough?"
"I'll borrow that from you," whispered Raissa, taking the fifteen
kopecks from him.
"What next? Perhaps you would like to pay interest? But you see I
have a pledge here, a very fine thing.... First-rate people, the English."
"They say we are going to war with them."
"No," answered David, "we are fighting the French now."
"Well, you know best. Take care of it, then. Good-bye, friends."
XIV
Here is another conversation that took place beside the same fence.
Raissa seemed more worried than usual.
"Five kopecks for a cabbage, and a tiny little one, too," she said,
propping her chin on her hand. "Isn't it dear? And I haven't had the
money for my sewing yet."
"Who owes it you?" asked David.
"Why, the merchant's wife who lives beyond the rampart."
"The fat woman who goes about in a green blouse?"
"Yes, yes."
"I say, she is fat! She can hardly breathe for fat. She positively
steams in church, and doesn't pay her debts!"
"She will pay, only when? And do you know, Davidushka, I have fresh
troubles. Father has taken it into his head to tell me his dreams--you
know he cannot say what he means: if he wants to say one word, it
comes out another. About food or any everyday thing we have got used
to it and understand; but it is not easy to understand the dreams even
of healthy people, and with him, it's awful! 'I am very happy,' he
says; 'I was walking about all among white birds to-day; and the Lord
God gave me a nosegay and in the nosegay was Andryusha with a little
knife,' he calls our Lyubotchka, Andryusha; 'now we shall both be
quite well,' he says. 'We need only one stroke with the little knife,
like this!' and he points to his throat. I don't understand him, but I
say, 'All right, dear, all right,' but he gets angry and tries to
explain what he means. He even bursts into tears."
"But you should have said something to him," I put in; "you should
have made up some lie."
"I can't tell lies," answered Raissa, and even flung up her hands.
And indeed she could not tell lies.
"There is no need to tell lies," observed David, "but there is no need
to kill yourself, either. No one will say thank you for it, you know."
Raissa looked at him intently.
"I wanted to ask you something, Davidushka; how ought I to spell
'while'?"
"What sort of 'while'?"
"Why, for instance: I hope you will live a long while."
"Spell: w-i-l-e."
"No," I put in, "w-h-i-l-e."
"Well, it does not matter. Spell it with an h, then! What does matter
is, that you should live a long while."
"I should like to write correctly," observed Raissa, and she flushed a
little.
When she flushed she was amazingly pretty at once.
"It may be of use.... How father wrote in his day ... wonderfully! He
taught me. Well, now he can hardly make out the letters."
"You only live, that's all I want," David repeated, dropping his voice
and not taking his eyes off her. Raissa glanced quickly at him and
flushed still more.
"You live and as for spelling, spell as you like.... Oh, the devil,
the witch is coming!" (David called my aunt the witch.) "What ill-luck
has brought her this way? You must go, darling."
Raissa glanced at David once more and ran away.
David talked to me of Raissa and her family very rarely and
unwillingly, especially from the time when he began to expect his
father's return. He thought of nothing but him and how we should live
together afterwards. He had a vivid memory of him and used to describe
him to me with particular pleasure.
"He is big and strong; he can lift three hundred-weight with one
hand.... When he shouted: 'Where's the lad?' he could be heard all
over the house. He's so jolly and kind ... and a brave man! Nobody can
intimidate him. We lived so happily together before we were ruined.
They say he has gone quite grey, and in old days his hair was as red
as mine. He was a strong man."
David would never admit that we might remain in Ryazan.
"You will go away," I observed, "but I shall stay."
"Nonsense, we shall take you with us."
"And how about my father?"
"You will cast off your father. You will be ruined if you don't."
"How so?"
David made me no answer but merely knitted his white brows.
"So when we go away with father," he began again, "he will get a good
situation and I shall marry."
"Well, that won't be just directly," I said.
"No, why not? I shall marry soon."
"You?"
"Yes, I; why not?"
"You haven't fixed on your wife, I suppose."
"Of course, I have."
"Who is she?"
David laughed.
"What a senseless fellow you are, really? Raissa, of course."
"Raissa!" I repeated in amazement; "you are joking!"
"I am not given to joking, and don't like it."
"Why, she is a year older than you are."
"What of it? but let's drop the subject."
"Let me ask one question," I said. "Does she know that you mean to
marry her?"
"Most likely."
"But haven't you declared your fee
lings?"
"What is there to declare? When the time comes I shall tell her. Come,
that's enough."
David got up and went out of the room. When I was alone, I pondered ...
and pondered ... and came to the conclusion that David would act
like a sensible and practical man; and indeed I felt flattered at the
thought of being the friend of such a practical man!
And Raissa in her everlasting black woollen dress suddenly seemed to
Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Page 22