“I left something there yesterday: one of my tools. I must fetch it,” he explained.
Tatiana looked at him, and her intuition told her, firstly, that this was not true, and, secondly, that it was not well for Petrushka to go to the river. She begged him not to go. Petrushka laughed and said he would be back quickly. Tatiana cried, and implored him on her knees not to go. Then Petrushka grew irritable and almost rough, and told her not to vex him with foolishness. Reluctantly and sadly she gave in at last.
Petrushka went to the river, and Tatiana watched him go with a heavy heart. She felt quite certain some disaster was about to happen.
At seven o’clock Petrushka had not yet returned, and he did not return that night. The next morning the carpenter and two others went to the river to look for him. They found his body in the shallow water, entangled in the ropes of the raft he had made. He had been drowned, no doubt, in setting the raft straight.
During all that Sunday night, Tatiana had said no word, nor had she moved from her doorstep: it was only when they brought back the dripping body to the village that she stirred, and when she saw it she laughed a dreadful laugh, and the spirit went from her eyes, leaving a fixed stare.
THE OLD WOMAN
The old woman was spinning at her wheel near a fire of myrtle boughs which burnt fragrantly in the open yard. Through the stone columns the sea was visible, smooth, dark, and blue; the low sun bathed the brown hills of the coast in a golden mist. It was December. The shepherds were driving home their flocks, the work of the day was done, and a noise of light laughter and rippling talk came from the Slaves’ quarter.
In the middle of the stone-flagged yard two little boys were playing at quoits. Their eyes and hair were as dark as their brown skin, which had been tanned by the sun. In one of the corners of the yard a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl was nursing a kitten and singing it to sleep. The old woman was singing too, or rather humming a tune to herself as she turned her wheel. She was very old: her hair was white and silvery, and her face was furrowed by a hundred wrinkles. Her eyes were blue as the sky, and perhaps they had once been full of fire and laughter, but all that had been quenched and washed out long ago, and Time, with his noiseless chisel, had sharpened her delicate features and hollowed out her cheeks, which were as white as ivory. But her hands as they twisted the wood were the hands of a young woman, and seemed as though they had been fashioned by a rare craftsman, so perfect were they in shape and proportion, as firm as carved marble, as delicate as flowers.
The sun sank behind the hills of the coast, and a flood of scarlet light spread along the West just above them, melting higher up into orange, and still higher into a luminous blue, which turned to green later as the evening deepened. The air was cool and sharp, and the little boys, who had finished their game, drew near to the fire.