“Love,” muttered Kapendiukhin, “what sort of love?”
“Such a handsome young man as you are must know all about love,” answered the woman simply.
The workshop shook with laughter, and Sitanov growled to Kapendiukhin:
“A fool, if no worse, she is!
People only love that way through a great passion, as every one knows.”
He was pale with the wine he had drunk; drops of sweat stood on his temples like pearls; his intelligent eyes burned alarmingly.
But old Golovev, twitching his monstrous nose, wiped the tears from his eyes with his fingers, and asked:
“How many children did you have?”
“Only one.”
Over the table hung a lamp; over the stove, another.
They gave a feeble light; thick shadows gathered in the corners of the workshop, from which looked half-painted headless figures.
The dull, gray patches in place of hands and heads look weird and large, and, as usual, it seemed to me that the bodies of the saints had secretly disappeared from the painted garments.
The glass balls, raised right up to the ceiling, hung there on hooks in a cloud of smoke, and gleamed with a blue light.
Jikharev went restlessly round the table, pressing hospitality on every one. His broad, bald skull inclined first to one and then to another, his thin fingers always were on the rriove.
He was very thin, and his nose, which was like that of a bird of prey, seemed to have grown sharper; when he stood sideways to the light, the shadow of his nose lay on his cheek.
“Drink and eat, friends,” he said in his ringing tenor.
“Why do you worry yourself, comrade?
They all have hands, and every one has his own hands and his own appetite; more than that no one can eat, however much they may want to!”
“Rest yourself, people,” cried Jikharev in a ringing voice. “My friends, we are all the slaves of God; let us sing, Traise His Name.’ ”
The chant was not a success; they were all enervated and stupefied by eating and vodka-drinking. In Kapendiukhin’s hands was a harmonica with a double keyboard; young Victor Salautin, dark and serious as a young crow, took up a drum, and let his fingers wander over the tightly stretched skin, which gave forth a deep sound; the tambourines tinkled.
“The Russian dance!” commanded Jikharev, “little comrade, please.”
“Ach!” sighed the woman, rising, “what a worry you are!”
She v/ent to the space which had been cleared, and stood there solidly, like a sentry.
She wore a short brown skirt, a yellow batiste blouse, and a red handkerchief on her head.
The harmonica uttered passionate lamentations; its little bells rang; the tambourines tinkled; the skin of the drum gave forth a heavy, dull, sighing sound. This had an unpleasant effect, as if a man had gone mad and was groaning, sobbing, and knocking his head against the wall.
Jikharev could not dance. He simply moved his feet about, and setting down the heels of his brightly polished boots, jumped about like a goat, and that not in time with the clamorous music.
His feet seemed to belong to some one else; his body writhed unbeautifully; he struggled like a wasp in a spider’s web, or a fish in a net. It was not at all a cheerful sight.
But all of them, even the tipsy ones, seemed to be impressed by his convulsions; they all watched his face and arms in silence.
The changing expressions of his face were amazing. Now he looked kind and rather shy, suddenly he became proud, and frowned harshly; now he seemed to be startled by something, sighed, closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, wore a sad expression.
Clenching his fists he stole up to the woman, and suddenly stamping his feet, fell on his knees in front of her with arms outspread and raised brows, smiling ardently.
She looked down upon him with an affable smile, and said to him calmly:
“Stand up, comrade.”
She tried to close her eyes, but those eyes, which were in circumference like a three copeck piece, would not close, and her face wrinkled and assumed an unpleasant expression.
She could not dance either, and did nothing but move her enormous body from side to side, noiselessly transferring it from place to place.
In her left hand was a handkerchief which she waved languidly; her right was placed on her hip. This gave her the appearance of a large pitcher.
And Jikharev moved round this massive woman with so many different changes of expression that he seemed to be ten different men dancing, instead of one. One was quiet and humble, another proud and terrifying; in the third movement he was afraid, sighing gently,, as if he desired to slip away unnoticed from the large, unpleasant woman.
But still another person appeared, gnashing his teeth and writhing convulsively like a wounded dog.
This sad, ugly dance reminded me of the soldiers, the laundresses, and the cooks, and their vile behavior.
Sitanov’s quiet words stuck in my memory:
“In these affairs every one lies; that’s part of the business. Every one is ashamed; no one loves any one — but it is simply an amusement.”
I did not wish to believe that “every one lied in these affairs.” How about Queen Margot, then?
And of course Jikharev was not lying.
And I knew that Sitanov had loved a “street” girl, and she had deceived him. He had not beaten her for it, as his comrades advised him to do, but had been kind to her.
The large woman went on rocking, smiling like a corpse, waving her handkerchief. Jikharev jumped convulsively about her, and I looked on and thought: “Could Eve, who was able to deceive God, have been anything like this horse?”
I was seized by a feeling of dislike for her.
The faceless images looked from the dark walls; the dark night pressed against the window-panes.
The lamps burned dimly in the stuffy workshop; if one listened, one could hear above the heavy trampling and the din of voices the quick dropping of water from the copper wash-basin into the tub.
How unlike this was to the life I read of in books!
It was painfully unlike it.
At length they all grew weary of this, and Kapendiukhin put the harmonica into Salautin’s hands, and cried: