the roar, ran quickly round her master, and broke into a shrill bark.
'Ha!' exclaimed her master. 'Uncle Fyodor Timofeyitch! Beloved Aunt, dear relations! The devil take you!'
He fell on his stomach on the sand, seized the cat and Auntie, and fell to embracing them. While he held Auntie tight in his arms, she glanced round into the world into which fate had brought her and, impressed by its immensity, was for a minute dumbfounded with amazement and delight, then jumped out of her master's arms, and to express the intensity of her emotions, whirled round and round on one spot like a top. This new world was big and full of bright light; wherever she looked, on all sides, from floor to ceiling there were faces, faces, faces, and nothing else.
'Auntie, I beg you to sit down!' shouted her master. Remembering what that meant, Auntie jumped on to a chair, and sat down. She looked at her master. His eyes looked at her gravely and kindly as always, but his face, especially his mouth and teeth, were made grotesque by a broad immovable grin. He laughed, skipped about, twitched his shoulders, and made a show of being very merry in the presence of the thousands of faces. Auntie believed in his merriment, all at once felt all over her that those thousands of faces were looking at her, lifted up her fox-like head, and howled joyously.
'You sit there, Auntie,' her master said to her., 'while Uncle and I will dance the Kamarinsky.'
Fyodor Timofeyitch stood looking about him indifferently, waiting to be made to do something silly. He danced listlessly, carelessly, sullenly, and one could see from his movements, his tail and his ears, that he had a profound contempt for the crowd, the bright light, his master and himself. When he had performed his allotted task, he gave a yawn and sat down.
'Now, Auntie!' said her master, 'we'll have first a song, and then a dance, shall we?'
He took a pipe out of his pocket, and began playing. Auntie, who could not endure music, began moving uneasily in her chair and howled. A roar of applause rose from all sides. Her master bowed, and when all was still again, went on playing. . . . Just as he took one very high note, someone high up among the audience uttered a loud exclamation:
'Auntie!' cried a child's voice, 'why it's Kashtanka!'
'Kashtanka it is!' declared a cracked drunken tenor. 'Kashtanka! Strike me dead, Fedyushka, it is Kashtanka. Kashtanka! here!'
Someone in the gallery gave a whistle, and two voices, one a boy's and one a man's, called loudly: 'Kashtanka! Kashtanka!'
Auntie started, and looked where the shouting came from. Two faces, one hairy, drunken and grinning, the other chubby, rosy-cheeked and frightened-looking, dazed her eyes as the bright light had dazed them before. . . . She remembered, fell off the chair, struggled on the sand, then jumped up, and with a delighted yap dashed towards those faces. There was a deafening roar, interspersed with whistles and a shrill childish shout: 'Kashtanka! Kashtanka!'
Auntie leaped over the barrier, then across someone's shoulders. She found herself in a box: to get into the next tier she had to leap over a high wall. Auntie jumped, but did not jump high enough, and slipped back down the wall. Then she was passed from hand to hand, licked hands and faces, kept mounting higher and higher, and at last got into the gallery. . . .
----
Half an hour afterwards, Kashtanka was in the street, following the people who smelt of glue and varnish. Luka Alexandritch staggered and instinctively, taught by experience, tried to keep as far from the gutter as possible.
'In sin my mother bore me,' he muttered. 'And you, Kashtanka, are a thing of little understanding. Beside a man, you are like a joiner beside a cabinetmaker.'
Fedyushka walked beside him, wearing his father's cap. Kashtanka looked at their backs, and it seemed to her that she had been following them for ages, and was glad that there had not been a break for a minute in her life.
She remembered the little room with dirty wall-paper, the gander, Fyodor Timofeyitch, the delicious dinners, the lessons, the circus, but all that seemed to her now like a long, tangled, oppressive dream.
NOTES
trains: horse-drawn streetcars
in sin my mother bore me: cf. Psalms 51:5
Gehenna: hell
Kamarinsky: the Kamarinskaya, a Russian folk dance
whistle: Russian audiences whistle to express disapproval
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Mon, Aug 13th, 2012, via SendToReader
