“Last night at the American dance,” she said, “I danced with Ward.”
“I know, I saw you,” I said in a tone of condemnation.
“He’s very nice; I like him; but I can’t talk of anything to him. He asked me, ‘Do you like foxtrots?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ And when later on we danced the waltz, he said, ‘Do you like waltzes?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ And he said. ‘I like them too.’ ”
“There you are!” I cried triumphantly. “You’ve got to stick to me and sack all the rest!”
“You are nice,” she said, “and there are days when I like you—though you never know when they are. But … I can’t talk to you.”
And she added, “I am going home.”
The sun contracted and grew more red and feeble as the moon shone brighter and cast an even yellow light upon the space around us. Fretful fantastic shadows flitted across the ice. Objects about us grew black. Darkness was now hard upon us.
We returned by moonlight that glimmered on the snow.
X
Six weeks elapsed, and the snow was melting in the valley. When the sun appeared behind the trees the birches, steeped in water, had that silvery appearance which is beautiful beyond measure. Spring was in the air.
It was a dinner, a formal, drunken, tedious affair that I must needs attend. I sat between General Bologoevski and a British flag-lieutenant, who had fallen in love with Nina at first sight and now drank in greedily everything I had to say about her. In this building, not so long ago, other men had met their death. At each coup d’état this house had been besieged. Fugitives had taken shelter in these rooms. Even on this sofa a body had been stabbed to death. And now we revelled noisily. The dark, dark night of early spring was a breathing, watching presence. The bare white-plastered walls seemed to prick their ears.
What has happened? Nothing. The nights were drawing in. The three sisters had gone to a dance. And so had Ward, White and Holdcroft. When now I called on them, more often I would find the older folks alone. How melancholy, but strangely fascinating, were these evenings: this gathering of souls dissatisfied with life, yet always waiting patiently for betterment: enduring this unsatisfactory present because they believed that this present was not really life at all: that life was somewhere in the future: that this was but a temporary and transitory stage to be spent in patient waiting. And so they waited, year in, year out, looking out for life: while life, unnoticed, had noiselessly piled up the years that they had cast away promiscuously in waiting, and stood behind them—while they still waited. …
What Nikolai Vasilievich actually waited for was best known to himself. His hopes had been built up on the assumption of a sudden recovery of his goldmines, a possibility he connected somehow with political developments in the Far East. It would not be fair to examine critically the grounds he had for this ambitious expectation, from any rational standpoint. Nikolai Vasilievich had built up enchanted castles of a rare magnitude and beauty upon this somewhat flimsy and elusive foundation; and he could not have now examined this foundation with an open mind without ruining his dreams. And Nikolai Vasilievich had further committed himself to the continued sustaining of illusions by identifying in his mind certain definite promises of a financial nature that he had made to Zina and her people, his daughters, Fanny Ivanovna, his wife and Kniaz, with his dreams, indeed in such a manner that his dreams had become vital realities to them; and this important consideration had served the further purpose of giving his dreams all the more the appearance of realities. He had private doubts, of course; but he brushed them aside in a manly manner: he could not afford to do otherwise. He waited for political changes. He was not clear in his mind as to what particular political changes would serve his purpose. He did not know. He was wise enough to know that in conditions so complex and multitudinous as those in Siberia there was no telling which particular political combination would affect his goldmines favourably. Moreover, he did not want to know. He did not want to know because he felt that if he knew, his happiness henceforth must needs depend on the single chance of that particular political combination, alone likely to affect his goldmines favourably, coming into power; rather did he like to think that his happiness depended on any kind of change on the political horizon—a more than likely possibility.
At last he saw hopeful signs. The Social Revolutionary partisans had occupied the city, and from day to day he waited for an indication of their attitude towards his goldmines. This indication came to hand at last when they called for him and put him into prison for having taken part in that lamentable punitive expedition of which, as a matter of fact, he was the chief victim. His term of imprisonment, unpleasant as it was, had yet served the good purpose of further cementing his multitudinous family. His daughters, Zina, Čečedek, Kniaz, Fanny Ivanovna, his wife, Eisenstein, Uncle Kostia, Zina’s father, and the bookkeeper Stanitski, all met in their frequent calls in the cell of the breadwinner.
On dragged the dinner. General Bologoevski at my side was telling me that he was at heart a democrat, that he sincerely wished to see a government that was more democratic than the old “damrotten government” under the Czar. Yes, his heart, he said, was democratic, and even when he was in Tokyo he could not suffer himself, yes, he could not suffer himself (he put his hands upon his heart), big and strong as he was, to be pulled by a dwarf slave. So he placed the coolie in his riksha and pulled the man himself. And yesterday he went with his
