Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

alone,” Valeria Mikhailovna persisted. “You have no one. Here’s a chance for you to do a good deed at Eastertime! At least, you’ll have someone with whom to exchange the kiss of Easter.”

“I beg you to tell me, Valeria Mikhailovna, what am I to do with a child?”

“You might engage a governess. Fate itself is sending the boy to you.”

Saksaoolov looked with amazement and involuntary tenderness at the girl’s flushed, animated face.

When Tamar again appeared to him that evening he seemed already to know her wish. It was as though, in the silence of the room, he heard her tranquilly spoken words: “Do as she advised you.”

Saksaoolov rose joyously and rubbed his drowsy eyes with his hand. He saw a sprig of white lilac on the table, and was astonished. How did it come there? Did Tamar leave it there as a sign of her wish?

And he suddenly thought that if he married the Gorodischeva girl and took Lesha into his house he would be carrying out the will of Tamar. He breathed in the lilac’s aroma happily. He suddenly remembered that he himself had bought the sprig of lilac that same day.

Then he argued with himself: “It really doesn’t matter that I had bought it myself; its real significance is that I had an impulse to buy it; and that later I forgot that I had bought it.”

VI

Next morning he went to fetch Lesha. The boy met him at the gate and showed him where he lived. Lesha’s black mamma was drinking coffee, and was quarrelling with her red-nosed lodger. Saksaoolov learnt something about Lesha from her.

The lad lost his mother when he was three. His father married this black woman, and himself died within a year. The black woman, Irina Ivanovna, had her own son, now a year old. She was about to marry again. The wedding would take place in a few days and after the ceremony she would go with her husband to the provinces. Lesha was a stranger to her and she would rather do without him.

“Give him to me,” suggested Saksaoolov.

“With great pleasure,” said Irina Ivanovna with unconcealed and malignant joy.

She added after a short silence: “Only you will pay for his clothes.”

And so Lesha was presently installed at Saksaoolov’s. The Gorodischeva girl helped in the finding of a governess and in other details of Lesha’s comfort. This required her to visit Saksaoolov’s apartments. She assumed a different appearance in Saksaoolov’s eyes as she busied herself in these various cares. It was as though the door to her soul opened itself to him. Her eyes had become beaming and gentle, and she was permeated with almost the same tranquillity that breathed from Tamar.

VII

Lesha’s stories about the white mamma won over Fedota and his wife. As they put him to bed on Easter eve, they hung a white candied egg above his head.

“It’s from the white mamma,” said Christina, “only you darling mustn’t touch it; at least not until the resurrection, when you’ll hear the bell ring.”

Lesha lay down obediently. He looked long at the egg of joy and at last fell asleep.

Saksaoolov was sitting alone in another room. Just before midnight an unconquerable drowsiness again closed his eyes, and he was glad that he would soon see Tamar.

At last she came, all in white, joyous, bringing with her glad tidings from afar. She smiled gently, then bent over him, and⁠—unspeakable happiness!⁠—Saksaoolov’s lips felt a tender contact.

A sweet voice said softly: “Christoss Voskress!” (Christ has risen).

Saksaoolov, without opening his eyes stretched out his arms and embraced a slender, gentle body. It was Lesha who climbed on his knees and gave him the kiss of Easter.

The church bell had awakened the boy. He seized the white egg and ran to Saksaoolov.

Saksaoolov opened his eyes. Lesha laughed as he showed him the egg.

“White mamma has sent it,” he lisped, “and I’ll give it to you, and you can give it to Aunt Valeria.”

“Very well, my dear boy, I’ll do as you say,” said Saksaoolov.

He put Lesha to bed, then went to Valeria Mikhailovna with Lesha’s white egg, a gift from the white mamma, but which really seemed to him at that moment to be a gift from Tamar herself.

Wings

A peasant girl was feeding geese, and she wept. The farmer’s daughter came by and asked, “What are you blubbering about?”

“I haven’t got any wings,” cried the peasant girl. “Oh, I wish I could grow some wings.”

“You stupid!” said the farmer’s daughter. “Of course you haven’t got wings. What do you want wings for?”

“I want to fly up into the sky and sing my little songs there,” answered the little peasant girl.

Then the farmer’s daughter was angry, and said again, “You stupid! How can you ever expect to grow wings? Your father’s only a farm-labourer. They might grow on me, but not on you.”

When the farmer’s daughter had said that, she went away to the well, sprinkled some water on her shoulders, and stood out among the vegetables in the garden, waiting for her wings to sprout. She really believed the sun would bring them out quite soon.

But in a little while a merchant’s daughter came along the road and called out to the girl who was trying to grow wings in the garden, “What are you doing standing out there, red face?”

“I am growing wings,” said the farmer’s daughter. “I want to fly.”

Then the merchant’s daughter laughed loudly, and cried out, “You stupid farm-girl; if you had wings they would only be a weight on your back.”

The merchant’s daughter thought she knew who was most likely to grow wings. And when she went back to the town where she lived she bought some olive-oil and rubbed it on her shoulders, and went out into the garden and waited for her wings to grow.

By and by a young lady of the Court came along and said to her, “What are you doing out there,