How can Trude remain simple and genuinely Puritanical beneath her trappings of beaded crimson plush and cuirass of some hodgepodge of gold caught in at the hips. I fancy she is too simple for finery to add to her personality. Real or imitation the fineries give way; it is she who adorns them. Whatever she wears is sanctified and comes to resemble her, everything except her threefold name, Gertrude, Trude, Trudel.
She has the peculiar brilliance of the Russians, sombre, subterranean, almost undefinable. Whatever she does, whether she laughs, or is excited, or talks with fire of ordinary things, she always has a finger lifted in the air and her wide gaze raised Christ-like. She has the mouth of an evangelist. Her irises set in clear white have glints of jet. She wears the glossy foliage of her black locks straight back from her forehead, an intense forehead crowning her like a diadem.... What other woman would dare the supreme immodesty of displaying a bare forehead? What woman would gain by doing it? The strange thing is, Trude is beautiful only by a kind of miracle; the least little bit more, and her cheeks would stick out over the cheekbones of a Tartar; the least little bit less, and her nose would be obliterated. The lakes of her eyes tranquilly conceal the raging waves in their depths. How many, by a shade of ill-luck, have escaped beauty? Trude, by a miracle, has escaped ugliness.
Mania, her sister, so different with her agile, insinuating body, lovingly fingers the presents. "You have not seen everything, Trude. Do come." Books, prints, china, and elegant embroidered articles—pretty things all from poor people who will soon be setting out on foot in the darkness for their distant lodgings in order to save carfare. For we are all as poor as poor can be. Except Markowitch. Mania told me he was "immensely rich," had at least two hundred dollars a month spending money.
It is hard to say whether it is our poverty that creates this comradeship among us. You come in and you feel at ease, you feel good, you love all of them, even Lonnie, the little Swiss with cheeks lacquered with rouge, and even Michael with his tight compressed nose peaking out of the profile of a hen—Michael perhaps more than the others.
So much the worse for Markovitch: we are going to begin. The hubbub dies down a little; everyone finds a place, two on the same chair, some on the bed, a good many on the floor, young men, young girls holding each other's hands, so close together, so pure, that I can still not accustom myself....
"It is your turn, Mania."
A song, liquid, then fiery, comes from among the reeds and carries you far off—down there—to those wild plains chiseled by the wind where the streams, driven to the surface and threshed by their rocky beds, have the fury of torrents. What a potency of attention on these serious faces!
Isn't that Markovitch?
"Come in!"
With his hardened features wrought in granite he, too, is a force. His bulbous eyes search the gathering and find what they are looking for.... Dahlia raises her head, blushes, and is veiled in delicate purple up to the golden edge of her hair. She is aware of the love of this great spoilt boy; we are all aware of it; but she has refused to be his wife because she does not love him. He will not speak of it again; nevertheless they continue to meet straightforwardly. With a free, rounded movement of her arms, like the handles of an amphora, she points to a vacant place beside her. "Here." Then in dismay: "Don't make a noise."