CONQUERED CITY
17
bla'ck bread cut in thin slices, and pickled herring; they pushed
forward the sugar bowl in which the sugar had been thriftily
crumbled into little bits. The voice said:
"Vadime, we will have butter. They promised me fourteen
pounds of it in exchange for the Scotch plaid."
A far, fleeting image flashed into the two minds, so distant,
so swift, that they did not remark on it to themselves, or each
other; the image of a couple in a blue carriage, the Scotch plaid
on their knees; and the white peaks, the fir-trees, the torrents, the
green valleys strewn with bell towers, the feudal villages of the
Tyrol, had flown just as had youth and life.
"Vadime, they searched the Stahl's house last night and took
a gold chronometer. . . . Vadime, Pelagueya Alexandrovna has
received a letter saying that her son was killed at Bougoulma.•••
Vadime, milk is up to thirty roubles.... Vadime, the pains in my
back are beginning again."
Vadime listened to these remarks, always of the same order,
and gave himself over to a kind of melancholy well-being. This
warmth was certain, and that other life, that other part of his life,
immensely irrelevant, though very near at hand. He answered
what he had to answer, gently, absentmindedly, but with an air of
attentiveness. Relieved of the day's burdens, he felt his usual
restlessness coming on.
"Thank you, Marie," he said, as he had said thirty years
before, but in a wholly different way. "I am going to work for a
while." Having carried the lamp behind the screen which set off
his corner of the room, he bent over a book opened to no purpose,
and drew out one of the old envelopes, the backs of which he used
for making notes, and set himself to sketching patiently such geo–
metric designs as the Arab artists liked, childish profiles, bits of
landscapes, and animal silhouettes. The same temptation to sketch
faces of women with enormously long lashes always returned to
him
in these moments of meditation; but he suppressed it with
some shame, not really knowing whether the
sh~me
was for the
temptation or for himself for not yielding.... He remained so for
an hour, face to face with his own thoughts, which no longer ex–
pressed themselves in words, but were like those of a blind man
shut up in a strangely shaped room, more anxiety than thoughts.
