She was a capable apprentice. The former owner had taken notice of her, and now the new one began to bring her closer. Olya Demina liked Lara very much.
Everything remained as it had been under Levitskaya. The sewing machines turned like mad under the pumping feet or fluttering hands of the weary seamstresses. One would be quietly sewing, sitting on a table and drawing her hand with the needle and long thread far out. The floor was littered with scraps. They had to talk loudly to outshout the rapping of the sewing machines and the modulated trills of Kirill Modestovich, a canary in a cage under the window’s arch, the secret of whose name the former owner had taken with her to the grave.
In the waiting room, ladies in a picturesque group surrounded a table with magazines. They stood, sat, or half reclined in the poses they saw in the pictures and, studying the models, discussed styles. At another table, in the director’s place, sat Amalia Karlovna’s assistant from among the senior cutters, Faina Silantievna Fetisova, a bony woman with warts in the hollows of her wizened cheeks.
She held a bone cigarette holder with a cigarette in it between her yellowed teeth, squinted her eye with its yellow white, and let out a yellow stream of smoke from her nose and mouth as she wrote down measurements, receipt numbers, addresses, and the preferences of the crowding customers.
Amalia Karlovna was a new and inexperienced person in the shop. She did not feel herself the owner in the full sense. But the personnel were honest; Fetisova could be relied on. Nevertheless, it was a troubled time. Amalia Karlovna was afraid to think of the future. She would be seized by despair. Everything would drop from her hands.
Komarovsky visited them often. When Viktor Ippolitovich crossed the whole shop on his way to their apartment and in passing frightened the fancy ladies changing clothes, who hid behind the screen at his appearance and from there playfully parried his casual jokes, the seamstresses disapprovingly and mockingly whispered after him: “His Honor,” “Her’n,” “Amalka’s Heartthrob,” “Stud,” “Skirt-chaser.”
An object of still greater hatred was his bulldog Jack, whom he sometimes brought on a leash and who pulled him along with such violent tugs that Komarovsky would miss his step, lurch forward, and go after the dog with his arms stretched out, like a blind man following his guide.
Once in the spring Jack snapped at Lara’s leg and tore her stocking.
“I’ll do him in, the filthy devil,” Olya Demina whispered in Lara’s ear in a child’s hoarse voice.
“Yes, he’s really a disgusting dog. But how will you do it, silly girl?”
“Shh, don’t shout, I’ll tell you. You know those Easter eggs, the stone ones. Like your mother has on the chest of drawers …”
“Yes, of course, made of marble, of crystal.”
“Right! Bend down, I’ll whisper in your ear. You take one, dip it in lard, the lard sticks to it, the mangy mutt swallows it, stuffs his gut, the little Satan, and—basta! Paws up! It’s glass!”
Lara laughed and thought with envy: The girl lives in poverty, works hard. Young ones from the people develop early. But see how much there still is in her that is unspoiled, childlike. The eggs, Jack—where did she get it all? “Why is it my lot,” thought Lara, “to see everything and take it so to heart?”
4
“But for him mama is—what’s it called … He’s mama’s … whatever … They’re bad words, I don’t want to repeat them. But why in that case does he look at me with such eyes? I’m her daughter.”
She was a little over sixteen, but she was a fully formed young girl. They gave her eighteen or more. She had a clear mind and an easy character. She was very good-looking.
She and Rodya understood that they would have to get everything in life the hard way. In contrast to the idle and secure, they had no time to indulge in premature finagling and sniff out in theory things that in practice had not yet touched them. Only the superfluous is dirty. Lara was the purest being in the world.
The brother and sister knew the price of everything and valued what they had attained. One had to be in good repute to make one’s way. Lara studied well, not out of an abstract thirst for knowledge, but because to be exempt from paying for one’s studies one had to be a good student, and therefore one had to study well. Just as she studied well, so without effort she washed dishes, helped in the shop, and ran errands for her mother. She moved noiselessly and smoothly, and everything about her—the inconspicuous quickness of her movements, her height, her voice, her gray eyes and fair hair—went perfectly together.
It was Sunday, the middle of July. On holidays you could lounge in bed a little longer in the morning. Lara lay on her back, her arms thrown back, her hands under her head.
In the shop there was an unaccustomed quiet. The window onto the street was open. Lara heard a droshky rumbling in the distance drive off the cobbled pavement into the grooves of the horse-tram rails, and the crude clatter turned to a smooth gliding of wheels as if on butter. “I must sleep a little more,” thought Lara. The murmur of the city was as soporific as a lullaby.
Lara sensed her length and position in the bed by two points now—the jut of her left shoulder and the big toe of her right foot. There was a shoulder and a foot, and all the rest was more or less herself, her soul or essence, harmoniously enclosed in its outlines and responsively straining towards the future.
I must fall asleep, thought Lara, and she called up in her imagination the sunny side of Karetny Row at that hour, the sheds of the equipage establishments with enormous carriages for sale on clean-swept floors, the beveled glass of carriage lanterns, the stuffed bears, the rich life. And slightly lower—Lara was picturing it mentally—the dragoons drilling in the courtyard of the Znamensky barracks, horses decorously prancing in circles, running leaps into the saddle, riding at a walk, riding at a trot, riding at a gallop. And the gaping mouths of nannies with children and wet nurses, pressed in a row up against the barrack fence. And still lower—thought Lara—Petrovka Street, the Petrovsky Lines.
“How can you, Lara! Where do you get such ideas? I simply want to show you my apartment. The more so as it’s close by.”
It was the name day of Olga, the little daughter of his acquaintances on Karetny Row. The grown-ups were having a party for the occasion—dancing, champagne. He invited mama, but mama could not go, she was indisposed. Mama said: “Take Lara. You’re always cautioning me: ‘Amalia, see to Lara.’ So go now and see to her.” And he saw to her all right! Ha, ha, ha!
What a mad thing, the waltz! You whirl and whirl, without a thought in your head. While the music is playing, a whole eternity goes by, like life in novels. But the moment it stops, there is a feeling of scandal, as if they had poured cold water over you or found you undressed. Besides, you allow others these liberties out of vanity, to show
