his storytelling with no attention to his friend’s upset look.
III
In the streetlamp scanty light, Vadim now blushed, now grew pale, as his friend’s narration got more and more playful, and the shattered reality, broken to pieces, began to sound and recover.
“…my note has had an effect,” Lodie spoke loudly and boastfully, and Vadim listened to him, enviously, “Have you ever noticed her build? Going on sixteen, and Prince Borislav Aldan-Ussuri, with who I pal around, says that…” It was clear as noon, Lodie was good at love affairs like he never was at math or history, like nobody else among Vadim’s mates, and Vadim trusted all the stories of Lodie’s courtly adventures. “…then she said ‘Moments of pure bliss. I can feel my femininity growing wetter and hotter. Oh baby boy what is a girl to do, but lay back and exhale?’…”
Last year, Lodie told about a steamy romance with a lady who was older than he and married and whose name Lodie kept secret. He had more than one rendez-vous amoureux with the lady, and after she left for traveling abroad, he showed Vadim a new inscription on his pocket watch where in the center of the solid gold cover, instead of initials or words, the enigmatic numbers were incised: 3 x 4 = 12. Impressed and intrigued, Vadim did not ask, though he did not feel certain about the exact sense of the inscription, and Lodie did not explain, but Vadim guessed it was apparently an amatory arithmetic which was to impress an inexperienced person like him.
“…she ravished my mouth with hers. Her kisses so sweet, so teasing and oh so very pleasing as I moved within her. Our moans meeting and mixing till I cannot hear the difference in my ears of what was she and what’s me. I gasped, I felt my body trembling. My mind started spinning as my body climaxed over and over again…” Here Lodie remembered of Vadim. “Now listen to this. Keep our company at supper. I have a carriage nearby. Let’s go right now…”
Here Vadim remembered of his finances. He had only five rubles in his pocket which was all his money tonight and which he had to live on till his uncle’s return, and this fact made his mind sober; besides, he was afraid that he might be acting like a droop in company with the couple of lovers therefore he ultimately refused to go along with his friend to a woman.
Lodie took out his pocket watch. If they headed for the theater, they saw Act Two of the ballet show “Triumph of Galatea” close to final --pirouetting for the last time Mlle Lavelle flying away to the pink side-scene and the corps-de-ballet girls smiling at their admirers –it was rather nice, but Lodie, this young restless connoisseur in the restless sphere of the winter holidays night life, remembered some show that was to take place at the Red Pub tonight, within easy reach as soon as the friends took a cab.
IV
The Red Pub, an old dive in the old basement of a big apartment house, famous from the Peter the Great times, was brightly lit, warm, smoke-filled and busy.
A group of tipsy students unsuccessfully began singing a Latin song while the small group of gypsy musicians --one guitar, two violins, drum and harp –played something quietly on the small stage at the west wall, when Lodie and Vadim came in, going downstairs.
“Be mirthful now, for nothing stays…
Our good and evil both are brief!
Capricious Fate leads many ways…
Sometimes to joy, sometimes to grief!”
It was a sort of Cabaret to night --a musical performance first, and then a show or a Séance of something new and unbelievable –that’s why, as soon as the Pub was full, the pub-owner tried to pacify the most unruly or noisy guests sitting on chairs or benches at long tables, drinking or awaiting drinks. Taking off their hats and ungloving hands, Vadim and Lodie could find seats only on a bench at a table underneath one of vaults of the ceiling at the east wall. By the oil-lamps Vadim could see well-dressed people and smell rich fragrant scents. Before he looked attentively at his neighbours, one chic lady attracted his attention.
A lady in a hat with a black and white feather plume. He undid the fur neckband of her fur coat and one could see her necklace so large and blinding that it might belong to a queen of diamonds, and more, one could see that she was apparently very slender. Her fair complexion, the deliberate artificialness of her brightly rouged lips and festively decorated eyes made her looking like a living doll who took no notice of anyone’s attention. Lodie said in undertones, “She may be after the ballet show, she may be with someone…Une pâlotte efflanquée… Flattish.” Lodie watched the Unknown Lady too. And Vadim recognized the smile, her smile, the same damned indifferent smile --like a derisive ghost that could flaunt out of sight any minute --Smile the phantom, Smile the lost, Smile the memory, whose reality the woman had suddenly proved. However beautiful this phantom, the smile meant conventionality, slavery, deceit, denying his love for her and fettering his heart, because her eyes looked as though she peered into darkness in the middle of nowhere. Lodie was whispering something in Vadim’s ear so excitedly that one of their neighbours grunted and got his ear closer to them. Vadim said, “That’ll do, that’ll do… please calm down.” Meanwhile, the gypsy small orchestra began playing louder, or rather they simply came forward from the back of the stage, but this didn’t prevent Vadim from hearing his neighbours who talked apparently about the Unknown Lady--
“An Italian woman. Count Radziwil has brought her to the city.”
“No. That one is fat.”
“She’s lost weight.”
“What for?” The reasonable reply made the two burst out laughing.
The laughter created a strange vibration at the table; it seemed to Vadim that the humans could turn into laughing phantoms and fly away in search of a vent out somewhere below the ceiling; but Lodie and he got their drinks, and any oddity of the moment vanished.
The Pub walls were decorated with small oval portraits of each of Russian Emperors. One of the neighbours, a tall and nosy middle-aged gentlemen looked at the portrait of the current Emperor Nicholas I above their table, he looked at the stage and the bar at the south wall with tables close to it, and he began talking with his companion, “Red Pub. Their faces’ rubedo explains this name. By the by, did you know, gentlemen, that Count Orloff used to visit this pub to take a drink, at least once, sixty-seven years ago, on the long night before elevation of his Empress to the throne? Maybe our table was taken by the Count, or most probably he took his glass of vodka, standing up, in a hurry. Apropos, His Lordship’s King was born sixty-seven years ago,” looking round his table mates, he gave a resonant slap on the top of the table and looked at his companion who he called “His Lordship.”
Sniffing his own glass --blush wine --Vadim glanced at “His Lordship,” the well-dressed young man with coiffured blond hair. A gold-laced waistcoat of paduasoy, perlmutter haliotis buttons, diamond tie-pin and ivory lorgnette were visible between the sides of his undone calabar-edged coat, but it was not his clothing what betrayed the young man’s foreign origin. His complexion too fresh; even after his wind-reddened face got back to its normal colour, his look too youngish, his blue eyes too bright; and his hand was white and manicured, nails looked quite sharp, and the left little finger was adorned with a gold and black stone ring –these details about the blond-haired stranger were too bright to remain unnoticed.
A voice said in a loud friendly voice, “Gentlemen, be quiet, please!”
The Pub-Owner, the big panting man wearing a loose-fitting jacket and trousers, passed by with a tray in hands. “Rozamira will sing Wondrous Moment, latest song, so beautiful.”
The
