There was a pause.
“Of course a moment of passion like that is not live passion, as it would be in a live woman. I’m sure it is not a sign of life. No man has ever seen a sign of life in her, though seven men have loved her—poor devils. Her hair is a bright dark red; that is supposed to be a passionate color for a woman’s hair—but like the rest of her beauty, it lies. She is always polite. She can whistle to bring tears into your eyes—so soft—so strong—though of course whistling is not a suitable gift for a woman. But she’s not a woman—that’s why she’s death to a man. I say, ‘Whistle for me, Tanya,’ and she whistles—for she is most polite and kind in doing whatever little thing you ask of her—but it is not for me she whistles; she whistles for the sky—for something far away. Such a girl, who can do nothing but whistle, and talk about cold fancies, and shake hands, and bite a man who has a right to caress her—well, her beauty is wasted, isn’t it, Anna Semionovna? If you can call it beauty; I am not even sure that one could call her beautiful.”
“She is not worth another thought,” said Anna.
“No, indeed,” said Alexander, looking at her with wet eyes and a guilty half smile. “It is a joy to be away from her, and to be with full-blooded men and women, after knowing such a dangerous ghost of a girl.”
Anna had for several minutes been bored with the subject of Tanya. “What a pity that my son left Chi-tao-kou just as you arrived. He could perhaps have found you work in the timber-yard. There are so few young fellows of his own age in this region for him to have as friends. Though you are a little older. Still, you would have liked him, I am sure, if you had known him better.”
“Yes, it is a pity. It is a terrible pity that I did not think of going down to Seoul with him. I wish I had. I wonder if he will go by Mi-san.”
“I never heard of Mi-san,” said Anna. “Is it one of the towns on his way to Seoul?”
“Almost on his way. Not more than, say, twelve hours out of his way if he goes on foot. If he goes by train, it is about three hours’ walk from the railway.”
“Well, why should he go there? Is the place of any special interest?”
Alexander, feeling that perhaps he had mentioned Tanya two or three times too many, and might have led this old woman to suppose that he was romantically interested in the hated girl, assumed an odd, secretive manner. “I do not think Mi-san is in the least interesting,” he said. “To be sure, there are some mounds which—well, a Russian horse-dealer whose name I do not care to mention—a man who lives there—says are prehistoric and must contain relics of the past. But what live man cares for such dead things? Then there is a magic well which the Koreans say cures a thousand and one ills—but I think every sick man who drinks there must be suffering from the thousand and second ill—for I have never heard of a cure. What is more, Mi-san is a downright ugly village; one large tree, to be sure—but trees are commoner in Korea than here in Manchuria. The houses there are common-looking, the street filthy and dusty. A particularly unattractive village indeed.”
“Then I am sure Seryozha will not go twelve hours out of his way to visit it. He has seen too many ugly dirty villages.”
“No, certainly he will not. He would be much wiser not to. I only mentioned it because, if one starts from Seoul by the late tourists’ train—the Gensan train—one can arrive in the small hours at Choan-san and, by walking quickly, be in Mi-san by breakfast-time, spend two-thirds of the day there, and walk back to the railway in time to catch the tourists’ day train back to Seoul—in this way only missing one day’s work.”
“But Seryozha would not dream of doing such a thing to visit an unattractive village in which he knows no one.” Anna looked at Alexander, her fat face screwed up with pity for this sad, gawky, inferior substitute for a son. “Perhaps, my dear, Mi-san is where your horrid Tanya lives.”
“Tanya? What Tanya? Oh, I had forgotten her,” said Alexander in confusion. “Ah yes, now I come to think of it, she does happen to live at Mi-san—I mean Tanya, this dreadful girl I mentioned to you. What of it? One knows so many girls … they all have to live somewhere. …”
Anna saw his Adam’s apple moving up and down. His very plainness seemed to her, in her over-sensitized mood, most heartbreaking.
“Alexander Petrovitch,” she said. “Won’t you come and live with my husband and me while our son is away?”
“Good God, no!” said Alexander, shutting his eyes as though he had been struck. “I mean—excuse me, Anna Semionovna—I hardly know what I am saying. I meant to say, thank you very much for your kindness, but” (his voice broke as he realized that he was being pitied)—“but I must stay with the Nikitins. I am not very well just now. … I have a touch of dysentery, I think. This pain in the pit of my stomach goes on and on. …”
“You could have Seryozha’s room,” said Anna, ardently, hiccuping with anxiety. “I can make a kind of gruel with arrowroot that would—”
“No—no—no!” said Alexander, and swung his clasped hands, as though in an agony of prayer, up from between his knees to his chin and down again. He looked intensely away across the river, and beat himself on his big mouth to steady his lips. After a long moment he said, in a high firm voice, “Have you ever noticed how few young Korean girls wear blue? They wear pink, green, yellow, white,
