A thread of sound like a flute—the sound of Tatiana whistling—from somewhere in the house, seemed to run like a rill of coolness through the garden.
“Tanya whistles like a boy,” thought Varvara. She imagined Tatiana as the girl must look as she ironed in the washing-shed outside the house—whistling in time with her ironing. “She must be hot, though,” thought Varvara. “There is no draught in the shed.” She imagined the light diamond mustache of tiny drops that appeared always on Tatiana’s upper lip when she was hot—a little delicate hint of heat that, in that still girl, took the place of the raw flush, the bloated mouth, the hair askew, the stare-eyed goggle that in so many other women and men are the symptoms of overheating.
The three members of the Ostapenko family were always very conscious one of another. Their craving that each should be justified, even when wrong, that each should be worthy of each and appear worthy even when unworthy, that none should be hurt or humiliated, even when deserving of rebuff, amounted to a kind of chronic soreness of heart. They all almost hated and quite loved one another—savage in the disappointment of their own hopes of one another, and savage in their anger against outsiders for being disappointed. They had an overbearing family egoism; they felt as if they were set apart, as if they should be judged by a standard different from that to which other families conform. Each thought the other two, for instance, more beautiful than ordinary beauty; even Varvara’s birthmark seemed to her husband and daughter a sort of hallmark of queer beauty. Only Pavel Ostapenko felt real vanity about himself; Varvara and Tatiana each felt it for the other two. In themselves they were more proud of the things they did not do very well than they were about their gifts. With one half of her mind Varvara knew that her designs for her embroidery were not worth the exquisite stitching she put into them. The designs were childish and ungainly—not simple enough to be primitive, not clever enough to be sophisticated. Criticism of her designs, therefore, could make her tremble with anger, and pointed praise of her stitching was almost equally humiliating. She knew—and refused to admit—that she was an interpreter, not a creator, in everything, but she refused to be praised for anything less than creation.
In the same way, Tatiana’s only vanity was her whistle. It was sweet and most flexible and versatile; she could give it either the ogling quality of the saxophone or the cold veiled purity of the flute. It was always impeccably accurate. Her ear heard words in the air which, running through her senses, not through her brain, came out as tunes through her lips—wandering, passing, blind tunes that never went forward and never came back. It was a foolish and tiny skill, much more akin to a bird’s song than a human sound; the sound mixed lightly with the cooing of doves and the whistling of larks—it had none of the interrupting, creative quality of most human melody. Tatiana did not feel that she should be applauded for her whistling, but she herself enjoyed it intensely. It was very close and clear in her own ears and filled up all the lonely space about her. She heard it almost as though it were space singing, not herself, and she looked forward to it whenever she set herself to work with her hands in an empty place. She valued this knack of hers far more than she valued her straight and vivid beauty. She had grown weary now of having her beauty praised, since such praise was always the prelude to a demand—to one of the dangerous approaches she dreaded.
There was a side gate to the garden, opening under a twirl of tufted pine branch. By the care with which the latch was lifted Varvara knew that her husband, Pavel, was a little drunk but not very. Varvara looked at him with a sourness that came of expectations disappointed. The trouble was that she had invented a Pavel Ostapenko for herself, to which the actual Pavel seldom conformed. She was a Procrustean wife.
Pavel looked uneasily at his wife as he pulled at his little red beard. He used his beard as though it were a kind of tab by which to pull his mouth open; tugging at his beard, he pulled his jaw down—snapped it up again—open—shut—open—showing fine teeth and an uneasy tongue.
“I have some news,” he said, looking down at his wife, rather relieved to be about to put his uneasiness and rancor into words.
Varvara had decided deliberately to sulk a little. She felt that a cold silence now might make him drink one glass less next time.
“I have heard something,” he began again, “that makes me as uncomfortable and guilty as though it were my own fault. Oh, Varitchka—that poor boy, Sasha Weber. … I was fond of him. He has cut his throat.”
“Sasha!” exclaimed Varvara, shocked out of her resolve. “But he has left Seoul. … How do you know? … Who heard?”
“Soloviev heard from the boy’s mother. He had reached Chi-tao-kou, just over the Chinese border. … Evidently he found life unbearable, after all, though he made a show of indifference.” Pavel’s tears—for he was an emotional drinker—spilled suddenly over his cheekbones.
“It is not our fault. It is not our fault,” said Varvara, huskily. “What nonsense to cry as if it were our fault! A boy’s folly still remains folly, even if he is dead and will never be a fool again—poor little fool!”
Ostapenko pulled his jaw into a few more gapes. His eyes—brown irises entirely surrounded by whites—glared in a frightened way at
