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No, the man rowing was not Serejka. He rows strong but clumsily. If Serejka were rowing Malva would not take the trouble to hold the rudder. "Hey there!" cried Vassili impatiently. The sea gulls halted in their flight and listened. "Hallo! Hallo!" came back from the boat. It was Malva's sonorous voice. "Who's with you?" A laugh replied to him. "Jade!" swore Vassili under his breath.
He mocks me and you too and yet you are what I have dearest to me." He moved away from her and was silent. Squatting on the sand, with her legs drawn up to her chin, Malva balanced herself gently to and fro, idly gazing with her green eyes over the dazzling joyous sea, and she smiled with triumph as all women do when they understand the power of their beauty. "Why don't you speak?" asked Vassili.
And they went back to the fishing grounds side by side. They walked slowly on account of the soft sand. Suddenly, as they were nearing the boats, Iakov stopped short and seized Malva by the arms. "Are you driving me desperate on purpose? Why do you play with me like this?" he demanded. "Leave me alone, I tell you," she said, calmly disengaging herself from his grasp.
I was nearly seventeen when he left the village." They entered the cabin, the air of which was suffocating from the heat and the odor of cooking fish. They sat down. Between them there was a roughly-hewn oak table. They looked at each other for a long time without speaking. "So you want to work here?" said Malva at last. "I don't know. If I find something, I'll work."
"I know," said Iakov, shrugging his shoulders. "It is well if you know," said the father, with a look of distrust. "I only warn you not to forget it." Vassili sighed deeply. For a few minutes all were silent. Then Malva said: "The work bell will soon ring." "I'm going," said Vassili, rising. And all rose. "Goodbye, Serejka. If you happen to be on the Volga, maybe you'll drop in to see me."
And to these a couple of highly objectionable trees, known, I think, by the name of Malva, which made an inordinate show of cheap blossoms that they were continually shedding, and one or two dwarf oaks, with scaly leaves and a generally spiteful exterior, and you have what was not inaptly termed by our Milesian handmaid "the scrubbery."
Night was falling. The shadows came down from the slow-moving clouds to the seas beneath. The waves murmured. Vassili's fire had gone out on the distant headland, but Malva continued to gaze in that direction. The father and son were seated in the cabin facing each other, and drinking brandy which the youth had brought with him to conciliate the old man and so as not to be weary in his company.
Solitary and as if lost in the darkening shadows, the flame leaped high at times and then fell back as if broken. And Malva felt a certain sadness as she watched that red dot abandoned in the desert of ocean, and palpitating feebly among the indefatigable and incomprehensible murmur of the waves. "What are you doing there?" asked Serejka's voice behind her.
Then she went out and tired herself, poor soul, so that when she got home she had an attack of the nerves. Now these foreigners, who are a pack of silly people, do not have themselves bled and drink malva water as we do when we get a fit of anger. But they take opium; that is, a thing they call chloral. God knows what it is made of, but it puts them to sleep, like opium.
He tried, however, to appear absorbed in the meal so as to be able to watch Malva and Iakov at his ease. After awhile, when Iakov had eaten his fill he said he was sleepy. "Lie down here," said Vassili. "We'll wake you up." "I'm willing," said Iakov, sinking down on a coil of rope. "And what will you do?"
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