'You know what?' she says, not looking at me.
'What?' I ask.
'Let's .. . let's go down again.'
So we climb up the steps beside the hill. Again I seat Nadenka pale and trembling on the toboggan, again we hurtle into the terrible abyss, again the wind roars and the runners hiss, and again just as we are travelling fastest and the noise of the toboggan is at its height, I say under my breath:
'I love you, Nadenka !'
When the toboggan comes to a halt, Nadenka glances quickly back up the hill, then stares me in the face for a long time and listens hard to my indifferent, emotionless voice, and all of her, even her muff, her very hood, her whole figure, expresses the most extreme perplexity. And written all over her face is:
'What's going on? Who said those words? Was it him, or did I just think I heard them?'
The uncertainty nags her, she can't bear not to know. The poor girl doesn't answer my questions, frowns, is on the point of bursting into tears.
'Perhaps we should be going home?' I ask.
'I .. • I quite like tobogganing,' she says, blushing. 'Couldn't we go down once more?'
She 'likes' tobogganing, yet just as before, when she sits down on the toboggan she is pale, can scarcely breathe for fear, and is trembl- ing all over.
We go down a third time, and I can see that she is looking at my face to see if my lips move. But I put a handkerchief to my mouth, cough, and just as we re.ach the middle of the slope I manage to say the worih:
'I love you, N.adya!'
And the mystery remams a mystery! Nadenka is silent, thinking abom something . . . When I accompany her home from the slopes, she tries to make us take our time, slows down her pace, and keeps waiting to see if I will say those words to her. And I can see her soul suffering, I can see she is making a tremendons effort to stop herself saymg:
'It couldn't possibly have been the wind that said them! And I don't want it to have been the wind, either!'
The next morning I receive a note, which reads: 'Ifyou are going to the slopes today, please call for me. N.' And thenceforth I start going out to the slopes with Nadenka every day, and each time as we hurtle downwards on the toboggan I say under my brcnth the same words:
'I love you, Nadya !'
Before long Nadenka has grown addicted to this phrase, as though it were wine, or morphinc. She can't live without it. True, she is as fnghtened of flying down the hill as ever, but now the fear and danger add a special charm to these words about love, words which remain a mystery as before, and make her soul ache. She still suspects the same two of saying them - myself and the wind . . . Which of these two is declaring his love for her, she does not know, but obviously she doesn't care, either: any vessel's good enough, when you just want to get drunk.
Once, at midday, I wentout to the slopes alone. Minglingwith the crowd, I suddenly see Nadenka come up to the hill and start looking round for me ... Then she timidly climbs the steps up the side . . . Oh, it's so frightening to go down on one's own, so frightening! She is pale as the snow, trembling, looks as though she is climbing the scaffold, yet she climbs on without looking back, quite resolved. So at last she has decided to find out for herself whether she will still hear those amazing, sweet words when I am not there. I watch her sit on the toboggan, face pale and mouth parted in fear; she closes her eyes, and, bidding the Earth farewell forever, moves off . . . ZHZHZHzhzhzhshshsss . . . hiss the runners. Whether Nadenka hears those words, I don't know . . . All I see is that she gets off the toboggan looking quite faint and exhausted. And I can see from her face that she doesn't know herself whether she heard anything or not. Her fear as she was plummeting downwards made her incapable of hearing, of distinguishing the sounds, taking anything in ...
But now March comes, and with it the spring . . . The sun becomes gentler. Our hill of ice darkens, loses its shine, and finally melts away. We stop going out tobogganing. Now there is nowhere left for poor Nadenka to hear those words, and no one to say them, either, for the wind is silent and I am about to leave for Petersburg for a long time, if not for ever.
At dusk one evening, a couple of days before my departure, I am sitting in our garden, which is separated from Nadenka's house by a high fence topped with nails . . . It is still fairly cold, there is still snow beneath the manure on the garden, the trees are dead, but spring is already in the air, and the rooks caw noisily as they settle for the night. I go over to the fence and peep through a crack in it for a long time. I see Nadenka come out onto the porch and gaze sadly, yearn- ingly into the sky . .. The spring breeze is blowing straight into her pale, dejected face . . . It reminds her of the wind that roared past us those times on the slope, when she used to hear those four words, and her face grows sad, so sad, and a tear trickles down her cheek . . . And the poor girl stretches out her hands as though begging the breeze to send her those words again. And I wait for the wind to pick up, and just at that moment I say in a low voice:
'I love you, Nadya!'
Goodness, what a change that brings to Nadenka! Shegives a little scream, smiles all over her face, and stretches her arms out to the wind, joyful, full of happiness, beautiful.
I go off and start to pack . ..
That was a long time ago. Now Nadenka is married: she was given away to -or herselfchose, it makes no difference -the secretary of a court of wards of the nobility, and has three children. She hasn't forgotten how we used to go tobogganing every day and how the wind whispered to her 'I love you, Nadenka'; now this is the hap- piest, tenderest and most beautiful memory of her life ...
And now that I am older, I cannot understand why I said those words, why I played that joke on her ...
The Objet d'Art
Holding under his arm an object carefully wrapped up in No. 223 of the Stock Exchange Gazette, Sasha Smirnoff (an only son) pulled a long face and walked into Doctor Florinsky's consulting-room.
'Ah, my young friend!' the doctor greeted him. 'And how are we today? En-rythmg wcll, I trust?'
Sasha hlinkcd his eyes, pressed his hand to his hcart and said in a voice trembling with emotion:
'Mum scnds her rcgards, Doctor, and tuld me to thank you . .. I'm a mother's only son and you saved my life -cured me of a dangerous illness . . . .and Mum and me simply don't know how to thank you.'
'Nonsense, lad,' interrupted the doctor, simpering with delight. 'Anyone clse would have done the same in my place.'
'I'm a mother's only son . . . We'rc poor folk, Mum and me, and of course we can't pay you for your services . . . and we feel very bad ahout it, Doctor, but all the same, we - Mum and me, that is, her one and only — we do beg you most earnestly to accept as a token of our gratitude this . . . this object here, which . . . lt's a very valuable amique bronze - an exceptional work of an.'
'No, rcally,' said the doctor, frowning. 'I couldn't possibly.'
'Yes, yes, you simply must accept it!' Sasha mumbled away as he unwrapped the parcel. 'If you rcfuse, we'll be offended, M urn and me . . . lt's a very fine piece . . . an antique bronze . .. lt came to us when Dad died and we've kept it as a precious memento . .. Dad used to buy up antique bronzes and sell them to collectors . . . Now Mum and me are running the business . ..'