Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

and Helfreich ordered some tea. I stirred mine with a spoon and listened, as, just alongside me, a short fat brunette with a gipsy type of face, slowly, and with a tone of dignity in her voice which betrayed a strong German accent and some pride, replied to a query from the young man with whom she was sitting as to whether she often came here.

“I come here once a week. I cannot come oftener, because I have to go to other places. The day before yesterday I was at the German Club; yesterday at the Orpheus; today here; tomorrow at the Bolshoi Theatre; the day after tomorrow at the Prikazchick; then to the operetta and the Château de Fleurs.⁠ ⁠… Yes, I go somewhere every day, and so the time passes, ‘die ganze Woche.’⁠ ⁠…” And she proudly looked at her companion, who had already curled up at hearing so magnificent a programme of delights.

We got up, and began to stroll through the rooms. At the extreme end a wide door led into a hall for dancing. The windows had yellow silk blinds, the ceiling was a painted one; and there were rows of cane chairs along the walls; whilst in a corner of the hall there was a large white alcove, shell-shaped, in which the orchestra of fifteen men sat. The women, for the most part arm-in-arm, walked up and down the hall in pairs; the men sat on the chairs and watched them. The musicians were tuning their instruments. The face of the first violin seemed familiar to me.

“Is it you? Theodore Carlovich!” I asked, touching him on the shoulder.

Theodore Carlovich turned round towards me. My goodness! how flabby he had become! bloated and grey.

“Yes, it is I, Theodore Carlovich. And what do you want?”

“Don’t you remember me at the Gymnasium?⁠ ⁠… You used to come with your violin for the dancing lessons.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ach! yes. And now I sit here on a stool in a corner of the hall. I remember you.⁠ ⁠… You waltzed very well.”

“Have you been long here?”

“This is my third year.”

“Do you remember how you came early, and in the empty room played Ernst’s Elegy, and I listened?”

The musician’s bleary eyes glistened.

“You heard! you listened! I thought that no one heard. Yes, I could play once. Now I cannot. Here now, on all holidays. At the booths in the daytime, and nighttime here.⁠ ⁠…” He remained silent for a bit. “I have four boys and one girl,” he murmured quietly. “One of the boys finishes at the Anne Schule this year, and is going to the University. I cannot play Ernst’s Elegy.”

The leader waved his baton several times, and the small but loud orchestra broke into a deafening polka. The leader, having marked the time three or four times, joined with his squeaky violin in the general noise. Couples began to revolve whilst the orchestra thundered.

“Come on, Senia,” I said; “this is boring. Let’s go home and have some tea, and talk of something nice.”

“ ‘Of something nice?’ ” he inquired, with a smile. “All right; let’s go.”

We began to push our way through towards the exit, when suddenly Helfreich stopped.

“Look!” said he. “Bezsonow!”

I looked, and saw Bezsonow. He was sitting at a marble-topped table, on which stood bottles of wine, glasses, and something else. Bending over, his eyes sparkling, he was whispering something in an animated manner to a woman dressed in black silk sitting at the same table, but whose face I could not see. I could only note her well-made figure, delicate hands and neck, and her black hair smoothly done up on the top of her head.

“Thank Fate!” said Helfreich to me. “Do you know who she is? Rejoice! That is your Charlotte Corday.”

“She? Here!”

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