Yama (The Pit) Part 40

"Pa.s.s on, pa.s.s on," said he to the cadets sternly.

The cadets entered, blinking from the bright light. Petrov, who had been drinking to get up courage, swayed and was pale. They sat down beneath the picture of the Feast of the Russian n.o.blemen, and immediately two of the young ladies--Verka and Tamara--joined them on both sides.

"Treat me to a smoke, you beautiful little brunet!" Verka turned to Petrov; and as though by accident put against his leg her strong, warm thigh, closely drawn over with white tights. "What an agreeable little fellow you are!"

"But where's Jennie?" Gladishev asked of Tamara. "Is she busy with anybody?"

Tamara looked him in the eyes intently--looked so fixedly, that the boy even began to feel uncomfortable, and turned away.

"No. Why should she be busy? Only the whole day to-day her head ached; she was walking through the corridor, and at that time the housekeeper opened the door quickly and accidentally struck her in the forehead--and so her head started in to ache. The poor thing, she's lying the whole day with a cold pack. But why? Or can't you hold out?

Wait a while, she'll come out in five minutes. You'll remain very much satisfied with her."

Verka pestered Petrov:

"Sweetie, dearie, what a tootsie-wootsic.u.ms you are! I adore such pale brunets; they are jealous and very fiery in love."

And suddenly she started singing in a low voice:

"He's kind of brown, My light, my own, Won't sell me out, and won't deceive.

He suffers madly, Pants and coat gladly All for a woman he will give."

"How do they call you, ducky dear?"

"George," answered Petrov in a hoa.r.s.e, cadet's ba.s.s.

"Jorjik Jorochka! Ah, how very nice!"

She suddenly drew near to his ear and whispered with a cunning face:

"Jorochka, come to me."

Petrov was abashed and forlornly let out in a ba.s.s:

"I don't know ... It all depends on what the comrade says, now..."

Verka burst into loud laughter:

"There's a case for you! Say, what an infant it is! Such as you, Jorochka, in a little village would long since have been married; but he says: 'It all depends on the comrade!' You ought to ask a nurse or a wet nurse yet! Tamara, my angel, just imagine: I'm calling him to go sleeping, but he says: 'It all depends on the comrade.' What about you, mister friend, are you his bringer up?"

"Don't be pestering, you devil!" clumsily, altogether like a cadet before a quarrel, grumbled out Petrov in a ba.s.s.

The lanky, ricketty Roly-Poly, grown still grayer, walked up to the cadets, and, inclining his long, narrow head to one side, and having made a touching grimace, began to patter:

"Messieurs cadets, highly educated young people; the flower, so to speak, of the intelligentzia; future masters of ordnance, will you not lend to a little old man, an aborigine of these herbiferous regions, one good old cigarette? I be poor. Omnia mea mec.u.m porto. But I do adore the weed."

And, having received a cigarette, suddenly, without delay, he got into a free-and-easy, unconstrained pose; put forward the bent right leg, put his hand to his side, and began to sing in a wizened falsetto:

"It used to be that I gave dinners, In rivers flowed the champagne wine; But now I have not even bread crusts, Nor for a split, oh brother mine.

It used to be--in the Saratov The doorman rushed, and was so fine; But now all drive me in the neck, Give for a split, oh brother mine."

"Gentlemen!" suddenly exclaimed Roly-Poly with pathos, cutting short his singing and smiting himself on the chest. "Here I behold you, and know that you are the future generals Skobelev and Gurko; but I, too, in a certain respect, am a military hound. In my time, when I was studying for a forest ranger, all our department of woods and forests was military; and for that reason, knocking at the diamond-studded, golden doors of your hearts, I beg of you--donate toward the raising for an ensign of taxation of a wee measure of spiritus vini, which same is taken of the monks also."

"Roly!" cried the stout Kitty from the other end, "show the young officers the lightning; or else, look you, you're taking the money only for nothing, you good-for-nothing camel."

"Right away!" merrily responded Roly-Poly. "Most ill.u.s.trious benefactors, turn your attention this way. Living Pictures. Thunder Storm on a Summer Day in June. The work of the unrecognized dramaturgist who concealed himself under the pseudonym of Roly-Poly.

The first picture.

"'It was a splendid day in June. The scorching rays of the sun illumined the blossoming meadows and environs ...'"

Roly-Poly's Don Quixotic phiz spread into a wrinkled, sweetish smile; and the eyes narrowed into half-circles.

"'... But now in the distance the first clouds have appeared upon the horizon. They grew, piled upon each other like crags, covering little by little the blue vault of the sky."

By degrees the smile was coming off Roly-Poly's face, and it grew more and more serious and austere.

"'At last the clouds have overcast the sun ... An ominous darkness has fallen ...'"

Roly-Poly made his physiognomy altogether ferocious.

"'The first drops of the rain fell ...'"

Roly-Poly began to drum his fingers on the back of a chair.

"'... In the distance flashed the first lightning ... '"

Roly-Poly's eye winked quickly, and the left corner of his mouth gave a twitch.

"'... Whereupon the rain began to pour down in torrents, and there came a sudden, blinding flash of lightning...'"

And with unusual artistry and rapidity Roly-Poly, with a successive movement of his eyebrows, eyes, nose, the upper and the lower lip, portrayed a lightning zig-zag.

"'... A jarring thunder clap burst out--trrroo-oo. An oak that had stood through the ages fell down to earth, as though it were a frail reed ...'"

And Roly-Poly with an ease and daring not to be expected from one of his years, bending neither the knees nor the back, only drawing down his head, instantaneously fell down; straight, like a statue, with his back to the floor, but at once deftly sprang up on his feet.

"'But now the thunder storm is gradually abating. The lightning flashes less and less often. The thunder sounds duller, just like a satiated beast--oooooo-oooooo ... The clouds scurry away. The first rays of the blessed sun have peeped out ...'"

Roly-Poly made a wry smile.

"'... And now, the luminary of day has at last begun to s.h.i.+ne anew over the bathed earth ...'"

And the silliest of beatific smiles spread anew over the senile face of Roly-Poly.

The cadets gave him a twenty-kopeck piece each. He laid them on his palm, made a pa.s.s in the air with the other hand, said: ein, zwei, drei, snapped two of his fingers, and the coins vanished.

"Tamarochka, this isn't honest," he said reproachfully. "Aren't you ashamed to take the last money from a poor retired almost-head-officer?

Why have you hidden them here?"