The dramshop enveloped him in its sounds and smells, and eased his suffering with its well-known coloring of something intimate, free, something he had lived through in the past.
But, little by little, his thoughts withdrew from the dramshop, and “she” appeared once more, and would no longer leave him.
She was now in the costume of a “mermaid,” with the body of a fish covered with silver scales, radiant under the many colored rays of the reflector, seductively beautiful. She lured him after her with her enticing smile, and swam away far, far into the boundless sea. And the man in love with a mermaid felt that he was perishing, that he would never more return to his former carelessness, power, and strength of soul. And he recollected his former life before he knew the mermaid and her kisses. True, he had caroused then, but that was not drunkenness, it was dare-deviltry, his power was seeking a free outlet. His heart was athirst for dash and merriment. So, like the legendary fisherman, he had found in his net a mermaid. He lifted her in his arms, kissed and caressed her, and—good-by to carefree life! The man was ruined by the mermaid!
“Oh, devil!” Kostovsky roared, draining his glass, and thinking thereby to drive off the troublesome thoughts; but “she” continued to torture him pitilessly, appearing before him every moment in another costume, now as a fairy, a shepherdess, and again as a mermaid, or she swam close to him in a wide house-gown, and her thick, black curls fell over her forehead and upon her full, pink cheeks. And her whole figure was as if flooded by radiant, poetic rays.
“And when with friends I drain the heady cup, I see before me all the while Julia, Julia,” came from the billiard-room the merry, tenor voice. Gradually the dramshop filled with a mist, through which the lights burned very low, and the noise of the revelers reached but indistinctly and seemed far off, resembling far-away sea-breakers. The dramshop filled with sea-waves, which rose and fell. And from the waves swam out a mermaid who was laughingly luring Kostovsky to her.
For a moment he lifted his head, and again saw before him the bottle, poured out another glass, and drained it; the mist became denser, rolled before his eyes. But he still saw, rising amidst the wine-vapors high over the bottle, her poetic, sweet image.
When Kostovsky was at last found again after a search of several days in the different dramshops of the city, and brought to his senses, the opera, with its “sea-bottom” and mermaids, was again produced.
Now Kostovsky once more looked his old self: the unkempt, carelessly dressed scene-painter was even more gloomy than before; his locks bristled and his mustaches stood on end worse than ever.
He stood gloomily on his elevation behind the scenes, lighting up the mermaids with the rays from his reflector. His soul was filled with cold and gloom and obduracy. Now he himself kept aloof from everybody, hated the whole troupe, and lived alone.