FullReads

“What a big baby I have got!” she thought. “A boy!”

XII

An hour and a half later the lieutenant awoke. He fancied in his sleep that someone touched him, bent over him, breathed over him. He fumbled, and pulled off the kerchief. Emilie was on her knees close beside him; the expression of her face struck him as queer. She jumped up at once, walked away to the window and put something away in her pocket.

Kuzma Vassilyevitch stretched.

“I’ve had a good long snooze, it seems!” he observed, yawning. “Come here, meine zusse Fraulein!”

Emilie went up to him. He sat up quickly, thrust his hand into her pocket and took out a small pair of scissors.

“Ach, Herr Je!” Emilie could not help exclaiming.

“It’s … it’s a pair of scissors?” muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch.

“Why, of course. What did you think it was … a pistol? Oh, how funny you look! You’re as rumpled as a pillow and your hair is all standing up at the back…. And he doesn’t laugh…. Oh, oh! And his eyes are puffy…. Oh!”

Emilie went off into a giggle.

“Come, that’s enough,” muttered Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and he got up from the sofa. “That’s enough giggling about nothing. If you can’t think of anything more sensible, I’ll go home…. I’ll go home,” he repeated, seeing that she was still laughing.

Emilie subsided.

“Come, stay; I won’t…. Only you must brush your hair.”

“No, never mind…. Don’t trouble. I’d better go,” said Kuzma Vassilyevitch, and he took up his cap.

Emilie pouted.

“Fie, how cross he is! A regular Russian! All Russians are cross. Now he is going. Fie! Yesterday he promised me five roubles and today he gives me nothing and goes away.”

“I haven’t any money on me,” Kuzma Vassilyevitch muttered grumpily in the doorway. “Good-bye.”

Emilie looked after him and shook her finger.

“No money! Do you hear, do you hear what he says? Oh, what deceivers these Russians are! But wait a bit, you pug…. Auntie, come here, I have something to tell you.”

That evening as Kuzma Vassilyevitch was undressing to go to bed, he noticed that the upper edge of his leather belt had come unsewn for about three inches. Like a careful man he at once procured a needle and thread, waxed the thread and stitched up the hole himself. He paid, however, no attention to this apparently trivial circumstance.

XIII

The whole of the next day Kuzma Vassilyevitch devoted to his official duties; he did not leave the house even after dinner and right into the night was scribbling and copying out his report to his superior officer, mercilessly disregarding the rules of spelling, always putting an exclamation mark after the word but and a semi-colon after however. Next morning a barefoot Jewish boy in a tattered gown brought him a letter from Emilie–the first letter that Kuzma Vassilyevitch had received from her.

“Mein allerliebstep Florestan,” she wrote to him, “can you really so cross with your Zuckerpuppchen be that you came not yesterday? Please be not cross if you wish not your merry Emilie to weep very bitterly and come, be sure, at 5 o’clock to-day.” (The figure 5 was surrounded with two wreaths.) “I will be very, very glad. Your amiable Emilie.” Kuzma Vassilyevitch was inwardly surprised at the accomplishments of his charmer, gave the Jew boy a copper coin and told him to say, “Very well, I will come.”

XIV

Kuzma Vassilyevitch kept his word: five o’clock had not struck when he was standing before Madame Fritsche’s gate. But to his surprise he did not find Emilie at home; he was met by the lady of the house herself who–wonder of wonders!–dropping a preliminary curtsey, informed him that Emilie had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to go out but she would soon be back and begged him to wait. Madame Fritsche had on a neat white cap; she smiled, spoke in an ingratiating voice and evidently tried to give an affable expression to her morose countenance, which was, however, none the more prepossessing for that, but on the contrary acquired a positively sinister aspect.