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And, almost unconscious with shame and terror, he jumped up without waiting for an answer, and ran out into the open air as though he had received a thrashing.... "I'll stay here outside till she calls me," he thought. "I'll give her time to recover, and to think it over...." The porter Yermolay passed him with his balalaika, glanced at him and shrugged his shoulders.
She could hardly believe that she was really going to escape from the old woman at last, and have a hut of her own, where there would be no one to scold her. She wondered who the young man was. She hoped he was Fedor Ivanovitch, who had such kind eyes, and such nimble fingers on the balalaika, and such a merry way of flinging out his heels when he danced the Russian dance.
The thin films of dust, yellow in the evening sun, hovered like golden smoke under the station roof. At last with a reluctant jerk and shiver the train was slowly persuaded to totter into the evening air; the evening scents were again around us, the balalaïka, now upon the train, hummed behind us, as we pushed out upon her last night's journey.
In Bélgorod sits on a wall. Glory! In a strange land he looks about. Glory! Her ring and fortune will come out. Glory!" PELAGÉYA EGÓROVNA. Yes, let them in; let them have a dance. And you girls can sing afterwards. The same and mummers; an OLD MAN with a balalaika or guitar, a TRAINER with a bear and goat, EGÓRUSHKA with molasses.
From time to time I heard their sad songs or the haunting music of the balalaika; but the sound mingled with the great silence of the steppes, and left me with a terrible questioning pain in which Occidental hopefulness grew pale. It was in this mood that I set out for China to seek a new hope. Where the Chinese came from is a matter of conjecture.
The soft notes of the balalaika at twilight came to him, and the dim shapes of dancing peasants, whirling like aspen-leaves in a fresh breeze. He remembered the noonday laughter of skylarks; the pear-trees bending patiently beneath their harvest; the placid river winding its willow-hedged way, cutting the plain like a thin silver knife. A fresh current of air began to blow upon him.
He turned his head away, but only to confront another empty sack that was intended for him. Then he closed his eyes. The sound of music came from somewhere outside, notes of the balalaika. He said to himself, "Well, we certainly are in Finland"; for he knew that, if the guzla is Russian the balalaika certainly is Finnish.
Groups of mariners, Arnaouts in their quaint costume, and girls as graceful of shape as those who of old joined in the choric dances of Cytherea, wound their way up the steep path to the fortress, or tripped in mirthful measures to the shrill music of a balalaika.
It reminded us of the scene in "War and Peace" after the hunt, when charming young Countess Natalya Ilinitchna astonishes her old relative by her artistic performance of the Russian dance, which she must have inherited with the traditions of her native land, since she had never learned it. Balalaika duets were one of the joys of our evenings under the trees, after dinner.
These are Russians." And she took a white box of pink-coloured cigarettes from a little golden birchwood table. "I have everything Russian and Japanese so far as I can; I think they help more than anything with atmosphere. I've got a balalaika; you can't play on it, can you? What a pity! If only I had a violin! I SHOULD have liked to hear you play again."
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