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“Green goggles, green goggles,
The glass is so green. . . . “
(Russian Folk Song.)
The servant girl, wearing a red, sleeveless blouse, brought in
the samovar. “But it is
impossible to speak of a concrete ideal,” thought Dimitri
Tchernikofskoi. “In the first place,
concrete is a composition. It is not a pure substance. Therefore
it must be divided against
itself.”
“There is a gentleman in the passage,” bawled the
servant girl. Dimitri Tchernikofskoi
disguised his nervousness by frowning deeply and plucking at the
corners of his collar, as
though the starch were permeating his skin and stiffening the throat
muscles. “Show him in,”
he muttered, “and,” - he closed his eyes for a moment
- “bring some cucumbers.”
“Even so, Little Father.”
A young man, wearing a bear-skin coat and brown top boots, entered
the room. His head was
completely covered in an astrakhan cap, having enormous ear-flaps,
and his pale, kind eyes
smiled timidly from behind a pair of green goggles. “Please
to sit down,” said Dimitri
Tchernikofskoi; and he thought: “How do I know those eyes?
Are they green? Da, if they
were green I should not know them. I feel that they are blue. Lord
help me! I must try to keep
calm, at all events.” The young man sat down and pulled his
coat over his knees. Twice he
opened his mouth and twice he closed it. A round spot of red, about
the size of a five-rouble
piece, shone on his cheek-bones. Dimitri Tchernikofskoi fumbled
in his waistcoat pocket for
his watch, and then he remembered that he had pawned it three months
before - or sold it, he
could not remember which - to Ivan Dvorsniak. And he saw again the
little evil-smelling
shop and the grotesque, humped figure of the Jew, bending over a
green-shaded lamp,
weighing the watch on the index finger of his right hand. He fancied
he heard it ticking quite
sharply and distinctly. Then he realised it was the voice of the
young man. “My name is Olga
Petrovska “Eh? What’s that? What’s that you are
saying?” Olga Petrovska. raised her band.
“Please do not speak so loudly. You must remember we are only
on the fifth floor, and the
servant girl may be listening in the basement.” Her brilliant
grasp of the technique of the
house calmed him. He waited for her to explain. “I came to
see you,” she said, “because I
could not stay away,
Dimitri Tchernikofskoi. I am leaving Russia to-night, and I felt
that I owed it to you to
explain my reasons. For I shall not return -at least, not for a
long time. And - people speak so
falsely. Truth must be first-hand.” Her words fell upon his
soul like flakes of snow; he
counted them - one, two, three, four-wondering, grimly, how large
his soul was, how many
flakes it would take to cover it completely. “Why are you
going?” he asked gently. The
young girl stiffened. “I am going because they will not arrest
me. Think of it! I have killed
five officials, I have kidnapped the children of three noblemen-and
look at me!” She
stretched out her arms, lifting her bosom so that it strained the
buttons of her coat. “Ah, it is
shameful - shameful! I do not mind about the noblemen, but the children”
- she suddenly
spoke in French - “ je sais ce que je dis; even the noblest
soul does not care to have three
children thrust upon him without . . .” She paused, and for
the first time in his life Dimitri
saw her smile. It caught his heart; it was miraculous, as the unfolding
of a lily on a desolate
sea. His emotion was so terrible that he turned up his coat collar
and began to pace the room.
Olga Petrovska continued speaking: “But that is all over now.
Da, da; I am free again,”
“But,” stammered the unfortunate man, pouring out a
glass of tea and thoughtlessly stirring
into it a spoonful of peach preserve, “what have you done
with the children?” “Now that
was quite simple. I borrowed this suit from a young coachman, then
I hired a sleigh, and,
having carefully labelled the little ones with their correct names
and addresses, I drove them
to the chief Post Office. They were very good. Only Ani cried a
little-the darling - she bit off
the fingers of her gloves and her hands grew quite cold. When we
arrived I told them to wait
for me while I posted a letter, and I simply disappeared round a
corner. They are bound to be
found you know.” she added confidently. His admiration for
her knew no bounds. Taking a
book from a shelf covered in black “American” cloth,”
bound in red cotton, he turned the
pages feverishly. “The women of Russia do not only hear children,
they keep them alive,” he
read. Yes, that was deep! Olga Petrovska removed her cap. He sat
down opposite to her and
searched her face: the red colour had faded, giving place to green
shadows cast by the
goggles.
“Where are you going?” She did not know. All she knew
was that, like all of them, “she was
going on.” “But,” he cried, “you must take
a ticket, Olga Petrovska.” With a quick movement
she seized his hands and bent her face over them. He felt her tears
falling - her tears on his
hands. “Ah,” he thought, with fierce, intense joy, “they
must never be washed again. They
are purified. They must never know sweeter water.” “Sometimes,”
she whispered, “it seems
to me that the universe itself is nothing but an infernal machine
hurtling through space and
destined to shiver, ’- a crack of laughter, harsh as blood,
burst from her lips - “the hosts of
heaven.” He did not answer; he was infinitely troubled at
this. In the silence they heard the
servant girl wiping down the stair rails with a greasy rag. Olga
raised her head. “Have I white
hairs?” The
fringe of her stiff black hair was covered in fine white snow-crystals.
“They will melt, Olga
Petrovska.” At that she laid her cheek a moment against his
hands. “What a child you are,”
she murmured; “I did not mean that.”
And suddenly all that he had imagined and thought and dreamed -
the values and revalues
and supervalues of good and evil, his hopes, his ambitions - faded
away. He knew only one
thing. He must go with this woman. That settled, action became easy.
He drew his
handkerchief from his pocket and spread it on the table. She watched
him. He went over to
the washstand and, taking a toothbrush and a half-used cake of some
yellowish soap, he
wrapped them neatly in the handkerchief. ‘‘What are
you doing?” she asked? vaguely
troubled. Come,” he said, “it is time.”
KATHERINE MANSFIELD
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