A Hero of Our Time - Mikhail IUr'evich Lermontov [40]
Toward evening, I stopped her at the door and conducted the following conversation with her:
“Tell me, pretty girl,” I asked, “what were you doing today on the roof?”
“Uh, I was looking to see whence comes the wind.”
“What for?”
“Whence the wind, hence happiness also.”
“What? Were you summoning happiness with your song?”
“Where there is song, there is happiness.”
“And suppose you sing sorrow to yourself?”
“What of it? Where things aren’t better, they are worse, and from worst to best is not far.”
“Who was it that taught you this song?”
“No one taught it to me. As it occurs to me, so I sing. Whoever hears it, hears it. And he who should not hear it, won’t understand it.”
“And what is your name, my songbird?”
“Whoever christened me knows.”
“Who christened you?”
“How should I know?”
“What secrecy! But I have found out something about you.”
Her face didn’t change, her lips didn’t stir; it was as if the matter didn’t concern her.
“I found out that you went to the shore last night.”
And then, with great emphasis, I related to her everything that I had seen, thinking it would disturb her—not in the least! She burst into loud laughter.
“You have seen much, but know little. So keep it under lock and key.”
“And what if I, for example, thought to take this to the commandant?” Then I adopted a very serious, even severe, stance. She suddenly leapt up, broke into song, and escaped like a little bird that has been flushed out of a bush. My last words were entirely inappropriate. At the time, I didn’t suspect their importance, but afterward I had the opportunity to regret them.
As soon as it became dark, I ordered the Cossack to heat the kettle, as he would in the field, and I lit the candle and sat at the table, smoking from my traveling pipe. I had finished a second cup of tea, when suddenly the door creaked, and I heard steps and the light rustle of a dress behind me. I shuddered and turned—it was her, my water sprite! She sat down opposite me, quietly and wordlessly, and aimed her eyes at me, and I don’t know why but this gaze seemed miraculously gentle to me. It reminded me of those gazes that, in the old days, had so tyrannically toyed with my life. She, it seemed, was waiting for a question, but, full of inexplicable confusion, I didn’t say anything. A dull pallor had spread over her face, indicating a disturbance of the soul. Her hand wandered around the table without aim, and I noticed a light trembling. Her breast would rise up high at times; at other times she seemed to be holding her breath. This comedy had started to bore me, and I was ready to break the silence in the most prosaic way, that is, by offering her a glass of tea, when suddenly she jumped up, threw her arms around my neck, and a moist, fiery kiss sounded on my lips. My vision darkened, my head was spinning, I squeezed her in an embrace with all the strength of youthful passion, but she, like a snake, slipped from my arms, whispering in my ear: “Tonight, when everyone goes to sleep, go down to the shore.” And like an arrow she ran out of the room, knocking over the candle and the kettle that stood on the floor by the entrance.
“What a she-devil!” cried out the Cossack, who was dreaming about heating up the remains of the tea, having made himself comfortable in the straw. Only then did I come to my senses.
After about two hours, when everything had fallen silent at the jetty, I roused my Cossack.
“If I fire my pistol,” I said to him, “then run down to the shore.”
He opened his eyes widely and replied mechanically, “Yes, sir.” I thrust my pistol in my belt and left. She was waiting for me at the edge of the slope; her attire was very light, a small shawl wrapped around her lithe figure.
“Come with me!” she said, taking me by the hand, and we started to descend. I don’t understand how I didn’t break my neck. At the bottom we turned right and went down the very path along which I