01 GRASSO
237
violet shawl with a fringe; a woman with all the makings of a
grenadier she was, a figure stretching right out to the steppes, and
with a sleepy little crumpled face at the far end. When the curtain
fell this face was drenched in tears.
"Now you see what love means," she said to Nick as they were
leaving the theater.
Stomping ponderously, Madame Schwarz moved along Langeron
Street; tears rolled from her fishlike eyes, and the shawl with the
fringe shuddered on her obese shoulders. Dragging her mannish soles,
rocking her head, she reckoned up, in a voice that made the street
re-echo, the women who got on well with their husbands.
"'Ducky' they're called by their husbands; 'sweetiepie' they're
called ..."
The cowed Nick walked along by his wife, quietly blowing on
his
silky mustaches. From force of habit I followed on behind, sob–
bing. During a momentary pause Madame Schwarz heard my sobs
and turned round.
"See here," she said to her husband, her fish-eyes agoggle, "may
I not die a beautiful death
if
you don't give the lad his watch back!"
Nick froze, mouth agape; then came to and, giving me a vicious
pinch, thrust the watch at me sideways.
"What can I expect of him," the coarse and tear-muffled voice
of Madame Schwarz wailed disconsolately as it moved off into the
distance; "what can I expect but beastliness today and beastliness to–
morrow? I ask you, how long is a woman supposed to put up with it?"
They reached the comer and turned into Pushkin Street. I stood
there clutching the watch, alone; and suddenly, with a distinctness
such as I had never before experienced, I saw the columns of the
Municipal Building soaring up into the heights, the gas-lit foliage of
the boulevard, Pushkin's bronze head touched by the dim gleam of
the moon; saw for the first time the things surrounding me as they
really were: frozen in silence and ineffably beautiful.
(Translated from the Russian
by
Walter Morison)
