‘Oh, Mamma, you’ve done your share of fortune-telling,’ said her daughter.
‘What’s this about fortune-telling in a barn?’ asked Sonya.
‘Oh, like now, for instance, you just go into a barn and listen. And it all depends on what you hear – if there’s a rapping and a banging, that’s bad, but if you hear a scattering of corn, it’s good. But sometimes what you hear is . . .’
‘Mamma, tell us what happened when you went into the barn.’
Mme Melyukov gave a smile.
‘Oh, I’ve forgotten all that,’ she said. ‘Anyway, nobody here is going.’
‘Yes, I will. Let me go. I want to,’ said Sonya.
‘Oh well, if you’re not too scared.’
‘Madame Schoss, may I?’ asked Sonya.
Whether they had been playing the ring-on-the-string game or the rouble game or just talking as they were now, Nikolay had never left Sonya’s side and now he looked at her in a completely new way. It was if he was looking at her for the first time, all because of that corked moustache, and seeing her for what she really was. That evening Sonya certainly looked happier, livelier and prettier than Nikolay had ever seen her before.
‘So, this is what she’s like. What a fool I’ve been!’ he kept thinking, looking at her sparkling eyes and the happy, rapturous smile dimpling her cheeks alongside that moustache, a smile he had never seen before.
‘I’m not scared,’ said Sonya. ‘Can I go straightaway?’ She got to her feet. They told her where the barn was, and how to stand, keep quiet and listen, and they gave her a heavy coat. She threw it over her head and glanced at Nikolay.
‘That girl is gorgeous!’ he thought. ‘What have I been thinking about all this time?’
Sonya went out into the corridor to walk over to the barn. Nikolay hurried out on to the front steps, saying he was too hot. It certainly was stuffy indoors from the crowd of people.
Outside there was the same frosty stillness and the same moonlight, except that it was even brighter than before. The light was so bright, and there were so many stars sparkling in the snow that the sky was no attraction and the real stars were hardly noticeable. The sky was nothing but dreary blackness, the earth as bright as day.
‘I’m a fool, a complete fool! What have I been waiting for all this time?’ thought Nikolay, skipping down from the porch and scuttling round the corner of the house along the path leading to the back door. He knew Sonya would come this way. Half-way round he saw the dark shadow cast by a snow-covered stack of logs criss-crossed all over by a network of other shadows from the bare old lime-trees that fell on the snow and the path to the barn. The log wall and roof of the barn glittered in the moonlight, as if they had been hewn out of some precious stone. There was a crackling of twigs in the garden, and then everything relapsed into perfect stillness. Nikolay’s lungs seemed to breathe in something more than air, something like the power and joy of eternal youth.
Footsteps could be heard tip-tapping down the steps of the back porch and crunching on the last step which was thick with snow, and an old maid-servant’s voice called out, ‘Straight down the path, miss. Mind you don’t look round!’
‘I’m not scared,’ answered Sonya’s voice, and her little feet in their thin slippers came rasping and crunching down the path towards Nikolay.
Sonya was walking along muffled up in the big coat. She was no more than a couple of paces away when she saw him. She saw him now not as he had always been, slightly intimidating. He was wearing his woman’s dress, his hair was all tousled, and there was a blissful smile on his face, one that Sonya had never seen before. She rushed up to him.
‘Totally different, and just the same,’ thought Nikolay, staring down at her face, bright in the moonlight. He slipped his hands under the coat that she had thrown over her head, put his arms round her, pulled her close and kissed the lips, which sported a moustache and smelt of burnt cork. Sonya kissed him back full on the lips, freed her tiny hands and cupped his cheeks with them.
‘Sonya!’
‘Nikolay!’
That was all they said.
They ran over to the barn and when they returned to the house they went by different porches.
CHAPTER 12
As they were setting off home from Mme Melyukov’s Natasha, who never missed anything worth noticing, managed to get them all to change places so that she and Mme Schoss got into one sledge with Dimmler, leaving Sonya to travel in another one with Nikolay and the maids.
