MAHOGANY
441
was burning in the bathhouse and three girls were waiting for
the guests. They had covered up all the chinks in the windows
with curtains and moved the table to the brick steps in the middle
of the bathhouse. The girls were in their Sunday best and they
greeted their visitors with great ceremony.
The Bezdetov brothers drew bottles of cognac and port
wine, brought with them from Moscow, out of their pockets.
On the table, which was covered with paper, the girls laid
out salami, sprats, candy, tomatoes and apples. Klavdia, the eld–
est of them, produced a bottle of vodka from behind the stove.
They all spoke in whispers. The Bezdetov brothers sat down side
by side on the brick steps, where an iron lantern was burning.
Within an hour the girls were drunk, yet even so they continued
to speak in whispers. When people are drunk-and this is particu–
larly true of women-the expression induced by alcohol tends,
the drunker they get, to become fixed on their faces. Klavdia was
sitting at the table, propping her head on her hands like a man;
her teeth were bared in a fixed grin of contempt. Sometimes her
head slipped from her hands and then she would tear her bobbed
hair, without feeling pain. She smoked one cigarette after
another and drank cognac. She was crimson-cheeked and beauti–
ful in a monstrous way. Disgustedly she said:
"I'm drunk? All right, I'm drunk. What of it? Tomorrow
I'll be teaching in school again. But what do I know? What the
hell am I teaching? And at six
0'
clock I go to a parents' meeting
that I called myself. Look at my notebook here, I've got it all
down.... So I'm drinking ... well, what the hell ... and now
I'm drunk. And who the hell are you? Relatives of mine or some–
thing? You buy mahogany? Antiques? And you want to buy us
as well, with wine? You think I don't know the facts of life, but
I know 'em all right! Going to have a kid before long ... don't
know who the father is ... but what the hell !"
The lips were drawn back from her teeth and her eyes had
a
fixed stare. Pavel was pestering Zina, the youngest of the girls.
She was a short-legged giggly girl with very flaxen hair. Her legs
