The Sleepwalkers Read Free Page B

among the Tartars. He was sorry for Ruzena, although she reminded him somewhat of a humble little beast of prey in whose throat a dark cry is strangled, dark as the Bohemian forests, and he longed to know whether one could talk to her as one talked to a lady; for all this was so terrifying and yet seductive, and in a way justified his father and his father’s lewd intentions. He was afraid that Ruzena, too, would see through these, and he sought for an answer in her face; she noticed it and smiled to him; yet she let the old man fondle her hand which was hanging languidly over the edge of the table, and the old man did it quite openly, and tried at the same time to summon up his scraps of Polish to erect a lingual hedge round the girl and himself. Of course it was wrong of her to allow him such liberties, and when at Stolpin they maintained that Polish maids were quite unreliable perhaps they were right. Yet perhaps she was only weak, and one’s honour demanded that she should be protected from the old man’s advances. But that would be the duty of her lover; if Bertrand possessed the slightest vestige of chivalry he was in duty bound to appear now to put everything in order with a word. And suddenly Joachim began to talk about Bertrand to his fellow-officers: hadn’t they heard any word of Bertrand lately and of what he was doing; yes, a curiously reserved fellow, Eduard von Bertrand. But his comrades, who had already drunk a good deal of champagne, gave him confused answers and were beyond being surprised at anything, even at the pertinacity with which Joachim harped on the theme of Bertrand; and cunningly and persistently as he brought out the name in a loud and distinct voice, not even the girls twitched an eyelash, and the suspicion mounted within him that Bertrand might have sunk so low as to come here under an assumed name; and so he turned directly to Ruzena and asked whether she didn’t know von Bertrand—until the old man, keen of hearing, and officious as ever in spite of the champagne, askedwhy Joachim was so hot on the track of this von Bertrand: “You’re as eager about him as if he were hidden somewhere in the place.” Joachim reddened and denied it, but the old man had been set going: yes, he had known the father well, old Colonel von Bertrand. He had departed this life, very likely it was this Eduard who had brought him to his grave. When his waster of a son had chucked the army he had taken it, people said, very much to heart; nobody knew why, or whether there mightn’t have been something shady behind it. Joachim became indignant. “Pardon me, but that’s only empty gossip—and the last thing that Bertrand can be called is a waster!” “Gently, gently,” replied the old man, turning again to Ruzena’s hand, on which he now pressed a long kiss; Ruzena calmly permitted it and regarded Joachim, whose soft fair hair reminded her of the children at the village school in Bohemia. “I not will flatter you,” she said in her staccato voice to the old man, “but nice hair has your son.” Then she seized the head of her friend, held it pressed to Joachim’s, and was delighted to see that the colour of the hair was the same. “Would be beautiful pair,” she declared to the two heads, and ran her hands through their hair. The other girl shrieked, because her coiffure was being disarranged; Joachim felt a soft hand touching the back of his head, he had a slight sensation of dizziness and threw his head back as if he wished to catch the hand between his neck and his collar and force it to remain there; but then the hand slipped of its own accord down to the back of his neck, and stroked it quickly and timorously, and was gone. “Gently, gently!” he heard his father’s dry voice again, and then he noticed that the old man had taken out his pocket-book, had drawn out two large notes, and was on the point of pressing them on the two girls. Yes, that was just how he used to throw marks to the