FullReads

XV

Colibri gave a short, queer laugh … like a clink of glass in her throat. She shook her head, looked round, laid her guitar on the table and going quickly to the door, abruptly shut it. She moved briskly and nimbly with a rapid, hardly audible sound like a lizard; at the back her hair fell below her knees.

“Why have you shut the door?” asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch.

Colibri put her fingers to her lips.

“Emilie … not want … not want her.”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch grinned.

“I say, you are not jealous, are you?”

Colibri raised her eyebrows.

“What?”

“Jealous … angry,” Kuzma Vassilyevitch explained.

“Oh, yes!”

“Really! Much obliged…. I say, how old are you?”

“Seventen.”

“Seventeen, you mean?”

“Yes.”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch scrutinised his fantastic companion closely.

“What a beautiful creature you are!” he said, emphatically. “Marvellous! Really marvellous! What hair! What eyes! And your eyebrows … ough!”

Colibri laughed again and again looked round with her magnificent eyes.

“Yes, I am a beauty! Sit down, and I’ll sit down … beside.”

“By all means! But say what you like, you are a strange sister for Emilie! You are not in the least like her.”

“Yes, I am sister … cousin. Here … take … a flower. A nice flower. It smells.” She took out of her girdle a sprig of white lilac, sniffed it, bit off a petal and gave him the whole sprig. “Will you have jam? Nice jam … from Constantinople … sorbet?” Colibri took from the small chest of drawers a gilt jar wrapped in a piece of crimson silk with steel spangles on it, a silver spoon, a cut glass decanter and a tumbler like it. “Eat some sorbet, sir; it is fine. I will sing to you…. Will you?” She took up the guitar.

“You sing, then?” asked Kuzma Vassilyevitch, putting a spoonful of really excellent sorbet into his mouth.

“Oh, yes!” She flung back her mane of hair, put her head on one side and struck several chords, looking carefully at the tips of her fingers and at the top of the guitar … then suddenly began singing in a voice unexpectedly strong and agreeable, but guttural and to the ears of Kuzma Vassilyevitch rather savage. “Oh, you pretty kitten,” he thought. She sang a mournful song, utterly un-Russian and in a language quite unknown to Kuzma Vassilyevitch. He used to declare that the sounds “Kha, gha” kept recurring in it and at the end she repeated a long drawn-out “sintamar” or “sintsimar,” or something of the sort, leaned her head on her hand, heaved a sigh and let the guitar drop on her knee. “Good?” she asked, “want more?”

“I should be delighted,” answered Kuzma Vassilyevitch. “But why do you look like that, as though you were grieving? You’d better have some sorbet.”

“No … you. And I will again…. It will be more merry.” She sang another song, that sounded like a dance, in the same unknown language. Again Kuzma Vassilyevitch distinguished the same guttural sounds. Her swarthy fingers fairly raced over the strings, “like little spiders,” and she ended up this time with a jaunty shout of “Ganda” or “Gassa,” and with flashing eyes banged on the table with her little fist.

XVI

Kuzma Vassilyevitch sat as though he were in a dream. His head was going round. It was all so unexpected…. And the scent, the singing … the candles in the daytime … the sorbet flavoured with vanilla. And Colibri kept coming closer to him, too; her hair shone and rustled, and there was a glow of warmth from her–and that melancholy face…. “A russalka!” thought Kuzma Vassilyevitch. He felt somewhat awkward.

“Tell me, my pretty, what put it into your head to invite me to-day?”

“You are young, pretty … such I like.”

“So that’s it! But what will Emilie say? She wrote me a letter: she is sure to be back directly.”

“You not tell her … nothing! Trouble! She will kill!”

Kuzma Vassilyevitch laughed.

“As though she were so fierce!”

Colibri gravely shook her head several times.