Difficult was the word for it, reflected Heidekopfer, munching away at something that appeared to be a combination of cabbage and boiled nuts with a sour sauce. He said, "You seem to have laws about almost everything. Clothes, too?"
She surveyed him with an air of puzzlement, and he noticed that in the candlelight her eyes had a singularly deep quality. "Of course. How would we know how to act without laws?"
"Tell me, what does 'concisionary' mean?"
"It means—" she gave him that glance again "—I don't quite know how to define it, but something against the will of all. As you stay in happy Tolstoia, you will understand." For a moment, looking into her eyes, it seemed to Heidekopfer that he almost did understand. Then she said, "Alexei Ivanovich is concisionary."
"Who?"
"Alexei Ivanovich Dubrassov. The traditionalist. He wished to become patriarch when Pitrim Androvich did, but he would have led Tolstoia back to the days before the brotherhood of man was achieved." She looked around the table and clapped her hands as a signal that the meal was over, and a couple of girls came hurrying in to gather the plates.
Heidekopfer said, "Pardon me, but didn't someone tell me that you had a law against serving one another?"
"It is the will of all that the patriarch be served," she said. Nobody seemed to be leaving the table and the reason became apparent when two men with goose-necked stringed instruments came in, accompanied by a girl who began to sing as they played. The music had certain haunting strains, but was so disjointed that Heidekopfer decided he didn't like it, and looked down the table to see how the others were taking it. He got a shock. Samsonov, seated between Rosa Lanzerotti and Ann, had his arm around the latter's shoulders, and she was leaning back with her eyes half-closed and the smile of a smug kitten.
IV