"I came home for my supper," I said. "I have some trash in the pantry."
While I was preparing in the so-called kitchen something nice out of a piece of frozen pilmeni—hashed meat and an old can of sardines (my pride) she began to arrange the room. She acted as if she were trying to justify her presence, it was clear. But with all the pleasure of seeing someone around my house, I simply could not think what had happened to her. Baroness B.—a lady who would not hesitate in olden times to play a thousand pounds on a horse or order ten dresses at Pâquin's,—here, asking my hospitality! If she were a Russian—I could understand it,—wives of Privy Counsellors and Ambassadors are selling cheese in Petrograd now. But she—a Foreign Lady?… It was clear, she was in some intrigue as usual, and it had led her too far.
Possibly she is after me…. And besides—her very presence would affect my work, and endanger myself. "I must give her something to eat, and then get out of here. The L. would keep me for a while, and then I shall go away. Let her stay in this house with all of her strange intrigues, for I cannot throw her out."
Thus trying to understand, I finished my cooking and asked her to the salle-à-manger—the same little kitchen.
But no matter how proud I felt of my housekeeping, the Baroness found fault with everything. "Don't we have a table cloth? Or napkins? What are these daggers for?"
"Good God, Syvorotka," she said, "we cannot live in such a miserable way. I'll have to change it. There are no reasons why we should revert to cannibalism!"
Talking in that manner, jumping from one subject to another and always very nervously, she arranged the table more or less decently, and even put the salt in the lid of a little powder box. "Now," she said, "I want you to wash your hands, and comb your hair, and brush your khaki, and …" until I got almost civilized.
When we were through with the meal and a half of bottle of beer (they call "beer" this indecent looking beverage in Tumen) I asked her what brought her to Tumen?
She told me some story—of which I believed only the fact that she was here, in my house, and that a great embarrassment had fallen on my shoulders.
"I'm glad," I said, "you did not change at all, Lucie. It is just as true—all this story of yours, as the one you told me in Petrograd. But I have no use for reforming you. Now—take me as an example of sincerity: in me, my dear lady, you see now, nothing but a poor man in hiding. All for me is in the past…. And you,—I see it—are still plotting, nothing could persuade me that you and I are here by mere coincidence. You come to me—have time to curl your hair—and you even don't tell me whether your intrigue could reveal my existence to those that persecute me. You wouldn't hesitate to pass over my dead body—for the sake of your affairs…. Again,—please do not feel offended,—there is another side. I am a working man. Tomorrow I must be at my job early in the morning. The night is growing old. So, regardless of other things,—what would you advise me to do now?"