A girl of fifteen years old, wearing a diocesan uniform, opened the door, made a klixen (like a curtsy) and said in a slightly audible voice:
- Hello.
- Sister Katya," said Karnovsky.
They undressed in the hallway. Another older woman showed up at the door and made a bookie too:
- Hello.
- Sister Nina," said Karnowski.
The girls stood up. It was obvious that they were breathless.
Then, when Lisa and Karnovsky sat in the room, which was obviously a dining room and bedroom - there was an iron bed by the wall - came in and something mumbled bass shaggy, like a Karnovsky gymnast in a uniform shirt and tall soldier's boots.
- Fedya's brother.
The gymnast left, and immediately came, greeted her dryly, and began to set the table with Anna Ignatievna - a large one, with rough hands, wearing glasses, with a hard face. She was wearing a long yellow-green striped dress with wide sleeves trimmed with glass beads and white and black, caged boots. Then, at lunch, Lisa thought that Anna Ignatievna hated her for the fact that for her sake had to wear these dresses and boots, which must have been lying in the dresser for ten years.
Lisa told Karnovsky about the Shchukin Gallery, he listened with the cheerful attention that she loved and which he always responded to everything that was interesting to her. But when her mother came, their conversation became a touch of tension.
They didn't call him to the table for a long time, and he started showing Lisa the apartment. She was surprised: the girls' room on the table was covered with cut-off underpants. The girls kept silent, treading on their faces, and Karnovsky explained that this was their share of the gifts that the Kazan diocese sends to the front.
He lived in an adjoining room, with his brother, who jumped out of bed when they entered. Above the desk was a lithograph of the Rubelian Pan. "Your gift," said Lisa Karnovsky gently. He was wary again, but now it's different. "Afraid I won't like it here," Lisa thought tenderly.
Lavrov came in breathless breathlessness and brought wine.
- Homemade, but not prude! - He announced with triumph.
He was called to the table.
This wine, which Anna Ignatievna barely took advantage of when Lavrov offered to drink to Lisa in humorous, high-calibre terms (intelligent jokes), was used for his chatter, which was listened to, overcoming the desire that apparently possessed all of them - to get up and leave - and this painful, endless dinner took place. The wine was bad, but really not a prude.
- My dears, I wouldn't have had enough money for the prude!
Hanja (hypocrite) cost from six to ten rubles a scale, cognac - thirty rubles a bottle.
And Lavrov talked about the high cost, then about the call of second category soldiers, then about the prisoners of war - the zemstvo (Local Parliament in the history of ancient Russia) requires prisoners of war to work in the village, and the city agreed to give only nine hundred people.
Suddenly, neither to the village nor to the city, he told about how last summer he was on the condition that he was in the family of a mad breeder, preparing his two sons for the maturity certificate. On the table, behind which the family gathered, doctors, some nestle and nestle, there was a huge dish of fried sterlet fish (species of sturgeon). It was lunch. They ate in silence and only sterlet fish (species of sturgeon). It was forbidden to talk. As soon as anybody started talking, the madman raised his blood-stained, rabid, suffering eyes on him.
Lavrov suddenly stopped talking, and was embarrassed. Something passed between everyone. Karnovsky began to rub his forehead with his hand - and Lisa intercepted his restrained look. Her "looks" were something like this dinner, which told Lavrov. In a yellow-green striped dress, in white and black chess shoes, stationary, angular, straight, with lips tightened, with a glance from under the glasses, from which a piece of stuck in the throat, Anna Ignatievna sat at the table. And Lisa, as on a white sheet of paper, read all her thoughts. While talking about the high cost, about the prude, about the hypocrisy, about the fact that the Germans seem to use some "lethargic bullets" - from the muzzle comes a cloud of gas, depriving the consciousness for two or three hours - about Rasputin, about the death of Emperor Franz Joseph, Anna Ignatievna thought with despair, with horror that her son leaves her, the house collapses, she stays with three children, who still need to be put on his feet. She thought unrelentingly, hopelessly, angrily, that this young lady is to blame for everything, long-legged, eye-catching and stunted! Kostya lies that in the Crimea she recovered, she lies on her head!
Finally, this flour, this dinner, at which the girls did not get a roast: Anna Ignatyevna carefully divided between them soup meat.
We went out together. Lavrov said goodbye, and Lisa noticed that Karnovsky gently clenched his hand above his hand.
To be continued...