But about a hundred yards farther on, the hens met two pairs of boots which danced menacingly about the road, while voices thundered, “Chok-chok-chok.” The hens turned back. The odds were too heavy—devils before and devils behind. How can hens die better than facing fearful odds? Almost any way—much better—thought the hens. Tatiana, close on their tails—for the hens were getting tired—saw for a moment only the boots of the approaching strangers shuffling helpfully in front of the hens. Then she managed to seize one hen by the wing and snatch it to her bosom in a storm of flying feathers and dying yawps. The other hens rushed round in circles. They were caught by the strangers.
Tatiana had an impression of clumsy size in the man nearest to her, but she hardly saw his face because at that moment all the sky became full of birds, keeping a vast rendezvous in the sky. Thousands and thousands of birds decided at that moment to fly back to their lost summer; thousands and thousands of them merged into a great giddiness against the blue—a wind for the sight. Their thousands of twitterings and whisperings ran together into one wide shrill sibilance; the rustlings of their countless wings were smoothed into an inimitable breathing. It was impossible for even Tatiana to think thoughts into such a multitude; it seemed they must fly in a kind of democratic ecstasy or trance, they must think with a multiple me, an ego spread thinly over the whole sky like butter on bread.
Tatiana, dazzled and giddy, watching the birds, heard one of the strangers talking what seemed to her to be English, and in the midst of the unknown words she caught her own family name. She looked then at the two men with the shocked, half-insulted puckered look with which she instinctively met any approach—a look of, “Sir, pray unhand me.” She saw Wilfred Chew’s gold tooth. Where had she seen that strange thing before? Of Seryozha she only saw that his eyelids were very much tucked in under the brow bones, and that his hair was bleached and rough.
Seryozha saw very much more of Tatiana than she saw of him. A feeling of quick interest seemed now to establish itself in his mind with the familiarity of an old feeling, though he had not realized that he had paid much attention to the talk of either Alexander Weber or Wilfred Chew. She was a little too odd-looking for his rather childish taste; her face was too white, her hair too dark a red, her eyes too light and wide. Yet he felt instantly in touch with a new and manly experience; the expression of her face, puckered, he thought, against the sun—though really it was against himself—seemed to be laughing and young, but laughing through a mist. There was something in her eyes that reminded him of his father’s blindness—or, he thought, of that queer glare in the moon’s face that gave him, on a clear night, that sense of inexplicable hunger. She was bowed a little on one side to hold the horrified chicken under her arm; she looked like a child trying to hide a forbidden toy, bending askew, alert to run. There was a just visible twitching of the muscles under the soft bluish skin below her eyes. This still creature could move, then; there was a flutter in this stone.
“This, Saggay Saggayitch,” said Wilfred Chew (who had, you see, made an advance in intimacy), “this is Miss Tatiana Ostapenko whom I mentioned to you once or twice before. She, unfortunately, in common with the rest of her family, speaks no English, but I believe she will remember that we had the mutual pleasure of meeting, some time ago, when I called on her father with Sir Theo Mustard. Kindly recall this to her mind in Russian.”
Seryozha at once withdrew his eyes from Tatiana, since he was about to address her. He looked at a stone on the ground, at the vanishing cloud of birds. “This Chinese fellow says you know him,” he mumbled.
“I remember,” said Tatiana, remembering suddenly. “He came in a motorcar with an imbecile English lord.”
“She remembers, does she not?” said Wilfred, complacently. “I thought she would. I was right.”
It was impossible for Tatiana to carry three hens under two arms. She carried one, Seryozha carried the other two. Tatiana walked a step in front—she was never quite with anyone. Seryozha did not look at her. He slouched along, looking at his shoes—the toe of one of which was completely worn away—looking down at the hens. The hens were looking at each other across his lower chest with an unexpectedly calm expression. Seryozha, who suddenly felt much cleverer than usual, remembered another English idiom. “Look,” he said to Wilfred, “Mrs. Hen say, ‘Keep stiff upper beak, sister.’ ”
He swung along, pleased with his wit, looking at everything except Tatiana. Nobody said anything else.
But just as they passed the village tree, emptied now of its birds, Tatiana looked up and, with one little dancing step, broke the rhythm of their silent walk. And Seryozha looked at her then, looked at her straight young back, her headkerchief, which had slipped back to her nape, looked at the clothes and trifles that encased her—the comb that held her red hair, the faded blouse, the full, uneven cotton skirt, her brown bare legs, her feet shod with cloth shoes. He saw these things clinging to her slim dancing body—this rustling cloud of faded cotton swinging round her body. She didn’t know that little tape was showing at her neck he thought gently. She was
