The Little Demon, Fyodor Sologub [reading the story of the TXT] 📗

how much will you give?” asked the cabman.

“You can take which half you like.”

Sasha laughed.

“You’re a cheerful young lady,” said the cabby with a grin. “You might add another five-kopeck piece.”

“Thank you for escorting me, my dear,” said Liudmilla, as she pressed Sasha’s hand tightly and seated herself in the drozhky.

Sasha ran back to the house thinking cheerfully about the cheerful maiden.

Liudmilla returned home in a cheerful mood, smiling and thinking of something pleasant. The sisters awaited her. They sat at a round table in the dining-room, lit up by a hanging lamp. The brown bottle of cherry-brandy on the white tablecloth looked very cheerful; the silver paper round the bottle’s neck glittered brightly. It was surrounded by plates containing apples, nuts, and sweets made of honey and nuts.

Darya was slightly tipsy. Her face was red and her clothes were a little dishevelled; she was singing loudly. Liudmilla as she came heard the last couplet but one of the well-known song:

“Her dress is gone, her reed is gone.
Naked, he leads her naked along the dune.
Fear drives out shame, shame drives out fear,
The shepherdess is all in tears:
‘Forget what you have seen.’ ”

Larissa was also present. She was sprucely dressed. She was tranquilly cheerful and eating an apple, cutting off the slices with a small knife and was laughing.

“Well,” she asked, “what did you see?”

Darya stopped singing and looked at Liudmilla. Valeria leaned her head on her hand with the little finger against her temple and smiled responsively at Larissa. She was slender, fragile, and her smile was unreposeful. Liudmilla poured herself a cherry-red liqueur and said:

“It’s all nonsense! He’s a real boy and quite sympathetic. He’s very dark and his eyes sparkle, but he’s quite young and innocent.”

Then she burst into a loud laugh. The sisters when they looked at her began to laugh also.

“Well, what’s one to say? It’s all Peredonovian nonsense,” said Darya, and waved her hand contemptuously; she grew thoughtful for a moment, leaning her head on her hands, with her elbows on the table. “I might as well go on singing,” she said, and began to sing with piercing loudness.

There was an intensely grim animation in her squeals. If a dead man should be released from the grave on condition of his singing perpetually, he would sing in this way. But the sisters had already become used to Darya’s tipsy bawling, and at times even joined in with her in purposely ranting voices.

“Well, she’s let herself loose,” said Liudmilla laughing. It was not that she objected to the noise, but she wanted her sisters to listen to her. Darya shouted angrily, interrupting her song in the middle of a word:

“What’s the matter with you? I’m not interfering with you!”

And immediately she took up the song at the very place she had left off. Larissa said amiably:

“Let her sing.”

“It’s raining hard on me,
There’s no roof for a girl like me⁠—”

bawled Darya, imitating the sounds and drawing out the syllables as the simple folk-singers do to make a song more pathetic. For example, it sounded like this:

“O-o-oh; it’s a-rai-ai-ning ha-a-a-rd on me-e-e!”

Particularly unpleasant were the sounds stretched out where the accents did not fall. It produced a superlative impression: it would have brought a mortal depression on a new listener. A sadness resounding through our native fields and villages, a sadness consuming with a hideous flame the living word, debasing a once living song with senseless howling.⁠ ⁠…

Suddenly Darya sprang up, put her hand on her hips and began to shout out a gay song,24 dancing and snapping her fingers:

“Go away, young fellow, go away⁠—
I am a robber’s daughter
A fig for your good looks⁠—
I’ll stick a knife in your belly.
I’ll not have a muzhik.
I’m going to love a bossiak.”25

Darya danced and sang, and her eyes seemed as motionless as the dead moon in its orbit. Liudmilla laughed loudly⁠—and her heart now felt faint, now felt oppressed, from gay joyousness or from the cherry-sweet cherry brandy. Valeria laughed quietly with glass-sounding laughter, and looked enviously at her sisters; she wished she were as cheerful as they, but somehow she felt anything but cheerful⁠—she thought that she was the last, the youngest, “the leftover”; hence her frailty and her unhappiness. And though she was laughing she was almost on the point of bursting into tears.

Larissa looked at her, and winked⁠—and Valeria suddenly grew more cheerful. Larissa rose, and moved her shoulders⁠—presently, in a single instant, all four sisters were whirling round madly, as in a mystic dance, and, following Darya’s lead, were shouting new chastushki, one more gay and absurd than the other. The sisters were young, handsome, and their voices sounded loud and wild⁠—the witches on the Bald hill might have envied this mad whirl.

All night Liudmilla dreamt such sultry African dreams!

Now she dreamt that she was lying in a smotheringly hot room, and her bedcover slipping from her left her hot body naked⁠—and then a scaly, ringed serpent crept into the room, and climbing up a tree coiled itself round the branches of its naked, handsome limbs.⁠ ⁠…

Then she dreamt of a hot summer evening by a lake under threatening, cumbrously-moving clouds⁠—she was lying on its bank, naked, with a smooth golden crown across her forehead. There was a smell of tepid stagnant water and of grass withered by the heat⁠—and upon the dark, ominous, calm water floated a white, powerful swan of regal stateliness. He beat the water noisily with his wings, and, hissing loudly, approached her and embraced her⁠—and it felt delicious, and languorous and sad.⁠ ⁠…

And both the serpent and the swan, in bending over her, showed Sasha’s face, almost bluely pale, with dark, enigmatically sad eyes⁠—their blue-black eyelids, jealously covering their witching glance, descended heavily and apprehensively.

Then Liudmilla dreamt of a magnificent chamber with low, heavy arches⁠—it was crowded with strong, naked, beautiful boys⁠—the handsomest of all was Sasha. She was sitting high, and the naked boys in turn beat one another. And