“Yes, yes, only sit down.”
“And I will dance. Shall I?”
“You dance? Well, I should like to see
that. But can’t that be afterwards?”
“No, now.... But I love you very much.”
“You love? Mind now ... dance away, then,
you queer creature.”
Colibri stood on the further side of the table and
running her fingers several times over the strings
of the guitar and to the surprise of Kuzma Vassilyevitch,
who was expecting a lively, merry song, began singing
a slow, monotonous air, accompanying each separate
sound, which seemed as though it were wrung out of
her by force, with a rhythmical swaying of her body
to right and left. She did not smile, and indeed
knitted her brows, her delicate, high, rounded eyebrows,
between which a dark blue mark, probably burnt in with
gunpowder, stood out sharply, looking like some letter
of an oriental alphabet. She almost closed her
eyes but their pupils glimmered dimly under the drooping
lids, fastened as before on Kuzma Vassilyevitch.
And he, too, could not look away from those marvellous,
menacing eyes, from that dark-skinned face that gradually
began to glow, from the half-closed and motionless
lips, from the two black snakes rhythmically moving
on both sides of her graceful head. Colibri went
on swaying without moving from the spot and only her
feet were working; she kept lightly shifting them,
lifting first the toe and then the heel. Once
she rotated rapidly and uttered a piercing shriek,
waving the guitar high in the air.... Then the
same monotonous movement accompanied by the same monotonous
singing, began again. Kuzma Vassilyevitch sat
meanwhile very quietly on the sofa and went on looking
at Colibri; he felt something strange and unusual
in himself: he was conscious of great lightness
and freedom, too great lightness, in fact; he seemed,
as it were, unconscious of his body, as though he were
floating and at the same time shudders ran down him,
a sort of agreeable weakness crept over his legs,
and his lips and eyelids tingled with drowsiness.
He had no desire now, no thought of anything ... only
he was wonderfully at ease, as though someone were
lulling him, “singing him to bye-bye,”
as Emilie had expressed it, and he whispered to himself,
“little doll!” At times the face of the
“little doll” grew misty. “Why
is that?” Kuzma Vassilyevitch wondered.
“From the smoke,” he reassured himself.
“There is such a blue smoke here.”
And again someone was lulling him and even whispering
in his ear something so sweet ... only for some reason
it was always unfinished. But then all of a sudden
in the little doll’s face the eyes opened till
they were immense, incredibly big, like the arches
of a bridge.... The guitar dropped, and striking
against the floor, clanged somewhere at the other end
of the earth.... Some very near and dear friend
of Kuzma Vassilyevitch’s embraced him firmly
and tenderly from behind and set his cravat straight.
