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

“I am Lohengrin, thy champion knight from heaven.”

Then the features and the whole figure of Lohengrin became strangely altered. An unhealthy-looking little man with reddish beetle-like whiskers, his fur hat pushed to the back of his head, his little red ears almost hidden by the fur collar of his overcoat, waving his hands awkwardly in his grey fur gloves, slipping in his shiny galoshes on the icy pavement of Pea Street, sang these same words. His voice was as sweet and melodious as that of the stage Lohengrin, and yet it sounded a little ridiculous and repulsive.

After that evening Mashenka met the young man every day as she was going home from school. He walked behind her like a tiresome and amusing shadow from which she could not escape, and accompanied her to the very door of her home. Sometimes he even entered the gate of the courtyard and came up the outside staircase, and when Mashenka went indoors and slammed the door behind her she felt that he was still waiting outside. Her heart beat quickly, her cheeks crimsoned, her eyes glistened as she smiled to herself and thought:

“Who can he be, this red-haired Lohengrin?”

But at length she began to get tired of it. One day when Lohengrin was walking close behind her in the street Mashenka turned sharply round, went up to him, and said:

“What is it you want? Why do you follow me every day?”

Her cheeks were crimson and her voice trembled a little as she spoke; her hands, gloved and hidden away inside her muff, were hot and shaking. It seemed to her that even her shoulders under her thick winter dress must be shaking and crimson too, and that a fever of trembling ran through her whole body.

The eyes of the young man looked guiltily away from her. He raised his hat, then put it on again, and bowing awkwardly, began to speak in a pleasant though slightly hoarse voice, as if he had a cold.

“I beg your pardon, please forgive me, Marya Constantìnovna.”

“However do you know my name?” cried Mashenka angrily.

She was astonished to find that the young man’s voice, which she heard now for the first time, had in it a slight reminiscence of the voice of the singer who had taken the part of Lohengrin in the theatre⁠—the same Russian tone and the same gentle sweetness. It would even have sounded more like it if it had not been so unpleasantly hoarse.

“I learnt your name from the dvornik of your house, Marya Constantìnovna,” answered the young man. “I had no means of getting to know it otherwise, as I have no friends who are acquainted with you.”

“That means, I suppose, that you asked the dvornik all about me,” said Mashenka in a tone of annoyance. “It was a nice occupation for you, I must say.”

But the young man was not at all abashed.

“Yes, I asked him about you and about your honoured mother and your nice little brother. I got all the information on the evening when I first met you.”

“But why did you want to know about us?” asked Mashenka.

Not noticing what she was doing the girl turned and walked again in the direction of her home, and the red-haired young man walked by her side. He answered her with a strange circumstantiality.

“Of course you yourself understand, Marya Constantìnovna, that in the present day one needs to be very particular in making new acquaintances,” said he. “One can’t make friends with everybody one meets; one ought to know beforehand something of the person one is dealing with.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Mashenka with a laugh. “Please be particular and don’t try to get acquainted with me.”

“Pardon me, Marya Constantìnovna,” replied the young man seriously, “but that would be quite impossible.”

“What would be impossible?” asked the young girl in astonishment.

“It is impossible for me not to get to know you,” answered the young man quietly, “because at our first meeting at the opera when Lohengrin was being played⁠—if you will allow me to remind you of that night⁠—you made such an indelible impression on me that I felt at once that I loved you with a great and wonderful love. And so I couldn’t help following you and getting to know all I could about you from the dvornik at your door.”

Mashenka smiled and said:

“But it’s no use your taking the trouble to find out about me. I have quite enough friends as it is, and I don’t need any more. It’s not very nice for me to have you continually following me, and as you seem to be a respectable young man, I ask you now not to do so any more. I shouldn’t like any of my friends to notice it and think badly of me.”

The young man walking beside her listened attentively to what she said, and did not try to interrupt her. When she had finished it seemed as if he thought he had given her an answer, and Mashenka suddenly thought to herself:

“Now he will raise his hat and go away and never try to see me any more.”

And this thought, which should have soothed and calmed her, somehow made her feel suddenly annoyed and sad about something⁠—as if she had become quite accustomed to her silent, ugly, awkward companion and didn’t want him to leave her. However he acted quite differently from what she had thought. He did raise his hat, but only to say:

“Allow me, Marya Constantìnovna, to have the honour of introducing myself to you⁠—Nikolai Stepanovitch Sklonyaef.”

Mashenka shrugged her shoulders.

“It’s no use your introducing yourself,” said she. “What makes you think I want to know you? Haven’t I just told you that I am not on the lookout for any new acquaintances?”

The young man looked timidly into her eyes as he answered:

“Marya Constantìnovna, don’t send me away from you. I won’t ask you anything just now, but because I love you so that I cannot