VIII
Pavel Ostapenko lifted his dripping face from the washing-basin and looked out of the window, blinking his staring eyes. Two unknown young men with Tatiana—no, on second thoughts, one, for the second was a Chinese. “Funny,” thought Pavel. “I seem to have seen them both before.” “Varitchka,” he called hoarsely to his wife in the next room, “Where have we seen these young men before?”
“What, more young men … ?” moaned Varvara. She looked between the flowers in the window at Seryozha and Wilfred. Seryozha was squatting down, launching the hens into freedom, as though they were little ships. Like little ships in full sail they sprang away from him with wings out and bowsprit necks craning. Tatiana, watching them, had a simple hen’s relief written upon her face. Her fingers fluttered like rudimentary wings.
“The Chinese,” said Varvara, “is the man who came in once, with an Englishman and a French valet, when their car broke down. We gave them tea, you remember. We could only talk to them through the valet. I remember the Chinese because of his one gold tooth. That Russian lad is a stranger to me. So he is to you, Pavlik. You are muddled today. How could you ever have seen him before without me?”
“Yes, I have. His face is absolutely familiar. It is something about that line from jaw to ear; something, too, about his eyes—the lids so deeply tucked in. Who can it be?” He turned Seryozha’s face about in his memory as one turns an unopened letter, testing one’s instinct, yet refusing to prove it by a simple practical act.
“I have it,” said Pavel. “That boy is exactly like my sister’s husband’s cousin, Sergei Dmitrivitch Malinin. He had those eyes and that carriage of the head, exactly. I knew him when I was a child and he was this lad’s age. I may have met him once or twice later, too. He was in my brother-in-law’s business in Moscow. This boy’s height and build and coloring are all quite unlike—yet the eyes and the jaw. … I never saw such a likeness. Sergei Dmitrivitch was a silly lad, I see now, but I thought a lot of him then, because he could move his scalp and his ears by themselves—his hair slipped all of a piece right back, like this. Ah, tschah! I can’t do it. … How well I remember. … I used to say, ‘Wobble your hair, Seryozha,’ and he always did it for me. I think he was flattered by my admiration of his skill.”
“Your cousin Sergei Dmitrivitch,” said Varvara, assent dawning in her face. “The man who said that the seat of the soul was in the nape of the neck? He came to supper with us, in Moscow, soon after we were married. It must be twenty-five years ago. I have never forgotten the way he fingered the back of his neck as he talked, as if he were encouraging his soul. Yes,” she said, leaning tensely between the fuchsias in the window, “I can see what you mean about the eyes of this boy. But it must be imagination, Pavlik.”
Tatiana came in. She felt almost as if she had created Seryozha; it was quite important to her that her parents should approve of this new Russian that she and her hens had conjured out of empty air on a Korean trail where no new Russian had been heard of before. Russians in Far Eastern villages are so well used to living in watertight communities that they forget there are such things as strangers of their own race.
“A Russian young fellow is here,” said Tatiana. “And a Chinese who says he is the one that came with that imbecile Englishman whom you taught to say Za Vashe zdorovye papasha.”
Pavel was now feeling that exalted feeling that comes just after a drink and just before the reaction. He went to the door sparkling with handsomeness and enthusiasm. Seryozha, in the yard, still showing off a little in case someone might be looking out of the window, was making his dog jump over an upraised stick.
“Come in! Come in! Come in!” shouted Pavel Ostapenko. “It is seldom we meet strangers of our race—seldom indeed that we have the pleasure of—”
Wilfred Chew pushed in front of Seryozha and shook one of Pavel’s two generous outstretched hands. “You will remember me, I feel sure, Mr. Ostapenko,” he said in English. “I had the mutual pleasure of calling here with a gentleman called Sir Theo Mustard, of Leeds, England, about a month ago. And now I introduce another gentleman—”
Pavel laughed breezily. “Tell your friend,” he said in Russian to Seryozha, “that I can’t speak or understand English. I can understand it written down, because I have to depend for news on the English newspapers, but spoken it means nothing to me.” As usual, his pleased voice made this ignorance sound like a virtue or a cleverness. The spontaneous reply to the tone of Pavel’s voice explaining one of his shortcomings would have been, “Well, well—I congratulate you. …”
“Where do you come from, my dear sir, and may I know your name?”
“We come from Chi-tao-kou,” mumbled Seryozha, feeling too large for the door as he was drawn in. Wilfred Chew, coming across the sitting-room between the two big Russians, looked like a coconut palm between two oaks.
Then Pavel said, “Do you know my cousin, Sergei Dmitrivitch Malinin?”
“We know him,” said Seryozha, with the young boor’s natural instinct to begin by being
