Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories Part 28

"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 ma.s.s of dull, black hair on her little, head (Raissa's hair, too, was black and hers, too, was without l.u.s.tre). 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.

"He has no right to, but he has taken it. I went up to the garret, 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 gla.s.s 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 p.r.o.nounced, putting it first to one eye and then to the other. "A marine gla.s.s."

"And the gla.s.ses are perfect," Raissa went on. "I showed it to father; he said, 'Take it and p.a.w.n 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-gla.s.s and see what beauties we are? But we haven't a looking-gla.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.d 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."