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A Dill Pickle
And then, after six years, she saw him again. He was seated at one of those little bamboo tables decorated with a Japanese vase of paper daffodils. He was peeling an orange.
He must have felt that shock of recognition in her for looked up and met her eye! Incredible! He didn't know her. She smiled, he frowned. She came towards him. He closed his eyes an instant, but opening them his face lit up as though he had struck a match in a dark room. He laid down the orange and pushed back his chair.
\ \Won't you sit down? Won't you have some coffee?\
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\lighted look. \
\ She raised her veil and unbuttoned her high fur collar. \don't feel very well. I can't bear this weather, you know.\
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He interrupted her. \bring some coffee and cream.\
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\that's settled.\And smiling he took up the orange again. \were saying--the older one grows--\
\trick of his--the trick of interrupting her--and of how it used to exasperate her six years ago.
\colder,\he echoed her words, laughing too. \ah. You still say the same things and there is another thing about you that is not changed at all-- your beautiful voice. I don't know what it is-- I've often wondered--that makes your voice such a --haunting memory... Do you remember that first afternoon we spent together at Kew Garden? You were so surprised because I did not know the names of any flowers. I am still just as ignorant for all your telling me. But whenever it's very fine and warm, and I see some bright colour I hear your voice saying:\
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and verbena,\
\mind of that particular afternoon was an absurd scene. A great many people taking tea in a Chinese pagoda, and he behaving like a maniac about the wasps--waving them away, flapping at them with his straw hat, serious and infuriated out of all proportion to the occasion. How she had suffered.
But now, as he spoke, that memory faded. His was the truer.
Yes, it had been a wonderful afternoon, full of flowers and --warm sunshine. Her thoughts lingered over the last two words. And in the warmth, as it were, another memory unfolded. She saw herself sitting on a lawn. He lay beside her, and suddenly, he rolled over and put his head in her lap.
\in a low, troubled voice,\I wish that I had taken poison and were about to die-- here now!\
She leaned over him.
\
But he gave a kind of soft moan, and taking her hand he held it to his cheek.
\Vera, because you never, never will love me.\
He was certainly far better looking now than he had been then. He had lost all that dreamy vagueness and indecision. Now he had the air of a man who has found his place in life. He must have made money, too. His clothes were admirable, and at that moment he pulled a Russian cigarette case out of his pocket.
\
\
\much, but when I do, they must be delicious. Smoking isn't a habit with me; it's a luxury--like perfume. Are you still so fond of perfumes? Ah, when I in Russia...\
She broke in:\
\going there?\
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\
He gave a strange half laugh and leaned back in his chair.
\fact, I have spent the last three years of my life travelling all the time. Spain, Corsica, Siberia, Russia, Egypt. The only country left is China, and I mean to go there, too, when the war is over.\
As he spoke, so lightly, tapping the end of his cigarette against the ashtray, she felt the strange beast that had slumbered so long within her bosom stir, stretch itself, yawn, prick up its ears, and suddenly bound to its feet, and fix its longing, hungry stare upon those far away places. But all she said was, smiling gently:\you.\
\a river boat on the Volga. DO you remember that boatman's song that you used to play?\
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He was amazed at that. \
She made a little grimace.\
\
\
He let it go at that.\That river life,\he went on, \something quite special. After a day or two you can't realize that you have even known another. And it is not necessary to know the language-- the life of the boat creates a bond between you and the people that's more than sufficient. You eat with them, pass the day with them, and in the evening there is that endless singing.\
She shivered, hearing the boatman's song break out again loud and tragic, and seeing the boat floating on the darkening river with melancholy trees on either side...
\like almost everything about Russia life,\he said warmly. \so informal, so impulsive, so free. And then the peasants are so splendid. I remember the
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evening some friends and I went for a picnic by the Black Sea. We took supper and champagne and ate and drank on the grass. And while we were eating the coachman came up.\so right, so --you know what I mean?\
And she seemed at that moment to be sitting on the grass beside the mysteriously Black Sea, black as velvet, and rippling against the banks in silent, velvet waves. She saw the little group on the grass, their faces and hands white in the moonlight. Apart from them, with his supper in a cloth on his knees, sat the coachman. \a dill pickle,\greenish glass jar with a red chili like a parrot's beak.
\
In the pause that followed they looked at each other. In the past when they had looked at each other like that they had felt that their souls had, as it were, put their arms round each other and dropped into the same tea, content, to be drowned, like mournful lovers. But now, he said:\What a marvelous listener you are. When you look at me with those wild eyes I feel that I could tell you things that I would never breathe to another human being.\
Was there just a hint of mockery in his voice? She could not be sure.
\tree, telling you all about my childhood. And of how I was miserable that I ran away and lived under a cart in our yard for two days without being discovered. And you listened, and your eyes shone, and I felt that you had even made the little Christmas tree listen too, as in a fairy story.\
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But he did not follow.\
\
He laughed and snapped the cigarette case to.
\back to that time.\table \I've often thought how I must have bored you. And now I understand so perfectly why you wrote to me as you did-- although at the time that letter nearly finished my life. I found it again the other day, and I couldn’t help laughing as I read it, It was so clever--such a true picture of me.\He glanced up. \
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She had buttoned her collar again and drawn down her veil.
\
\her gloves from the table and clutched at if as if that would hold her. \people to talk to nowadays, that I have turned into a sort of barbarian,\I said something to hurt you?\
\gently, gently, her anger really did die down.
\walk on so that you need not be hurt by the sharp stones and the mud you hated so. It was nothing more selfish than that. Only I did desire, eventually, to turn into a magic carpet and carry you away to all those lands you longed to see.\
As he spoke she lifted her head as though she drank something; the strange beast in her bosom began to purr . . .
\you were more lonely than anybody else in the world,\\yet, perhaps, that you were the only person in the world who was really, truly alive.
Ah, God! What had she done! How had she dared to throw away her happiness like this! This was the only man who had ever understood her. Was it too late? Could it be too late?
\then the fact that you had no friends and never had made friends with people. How I understood that, for neither had I. Is it just the same now?\
\
\
Suddenly with a quick gesture he handed her back the glove and scraped his chair on the floor. \now. And to you, too, of course. . . . It simply was that we were such egoists, so self-engrossed, so wrapped up in ourselves that we hadn't a corner in our hearts for anybody else. Do you know,\
She had gone. He sat there, thunder-struck, astounded beyond words.
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