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Updated: May 12, 2025
Serafima Aleksandrovna laid her cheek upon the edge of Lelechka's coffin, and whispered: "Tiu-tiu, little one!" The little one did not reply. Then there was some kind of stir and confusion around Serafima Aleksandrovna; strange, unnecessary faces bent over her, some one held her and Lelechka was carried away somewhere.
Lelechka's mother bent over her, and Lelechka, her vision grown still more dim, saw her mother's pale, despairing face for the last time. "A white mamochka!" whispered Lelechka. Mamochka's white face became blurred, and everything grew dark before Lelechka. She caught the edge of the bed-cover feebly with her hands and whispered: "Tiu-tiu!"
This charming inability to speak always made, Serafima Aleksandrovna smile with tender rapture. Lelechka then ran away, stamping with her plump little legs over the carpets, and hid herself behind the curtains near her bed. "Tiu-tiu, mamochka!" she cried out in her sweet, laughing voice, as she looked out with a single roguish eye.
The mother's heart seemed to stop Lelechka lay there so small, so frail, so quiet. Lelechka smiled gently, closed her eyes and said quietly: "The eyes tiu-tiu!" Then even more quietly: "Lelechka tiu-tiu!" With these words she fell asleep, her face pressing the pillow. She seemed so small and so frail under the blanket that covered her. Her mother looked at her with sad eyes.
But as she had got into the habit of hiding from her mother in some corner, and of crying out "Tiu-tiu!" so even that day she returned more than once to the game. Serafima Aleksandrovna tried desperately to amuse Lelechka. This was not so easy because restless, threatening thoughts obtruded themselves constantly. "Why does Lelechka keep on recalling the tiu-tiu?
Her mother covered her with a blue blanket. Lelechka drew her sweet little hands from under the blanket and stretched them out to embrace her mother. Her mother bent down. Lelechka, with a tender expression on her sleepy face, kissed her mother and let her head fall on the pillow. As her hands hid themselves under the blanket Lelechka whispered: "The hands tiu-tiu!"
The next day Serafima Aleksandrovna, absorbed in her joyous cares for Lelechka, had forgotten Fedosya's words of the day before. But when she returned to the nursery, after having ordered the dinner, and she heard Lelechka suddenly cry "Tiu-tiu!" from under the table, a feeling of fear suddenly took hold of her.
Mamma hid behind the cupboard, and exclaimed: "Tiu-tiu, baby girl!" Lelechka ran round the room and looked into all the corners, making believe, as her mother had done before, that she was seeking though she really knew all the time where her mamochka was standing. "Where's my mamochka?" asked Lelechka. "She's not here, and she's not here," she kept on repeating, as she ran from corner to corner.
Serafima Aleksandrovna stood up erect, sighed in a lost way, smiled, and called loudly: "Lelechka!" Lelechka was being carried out. The mother threw herself after the coffin with despairing sobs, but she was held back. She sprang behind the door, through which Lelechka had passed, sat down there on the floor, and as she looked through the crevice, she cried out: "Lelechka, tiu-tiu!"
She glanced at her mother with her dimmed eyes, and lisped in a scarcely audible, hoarse voice: "Tiu-tiu, mamochka! Make tiu-tiu, mamochka!" Serafima Aleksandrovna hid her face behind the curtains near Lelechka's bed. How tragic! "Mamochka!" called Lelechka in an almost inaudible voice.
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