The Crimson Tide: A Novel

“I don’t think so.”

“They’re rather modern poems. The lines don’t rhyme and there’s no metrical form,” explained Palla.

“Are they any good?”

“They’re a little difficult to understand. She leaves out so many verbs and nouns–”

“I know. It’s a part of her disease–”

“Jim, please be careful. She is taken seriously–”

“Taken seriously ill? There, dear, I won’t guy your guests. What an absolutely deathly face she has!”

“She is considered beautiful.”

“She has the profile of an Egyptian. She’s as dead-white as an Egyptian leper–”

“Hush!”

“Hush it is, sweetness! Who’s the good-looking chap over by Ilse?”

“Stanley Wardner.”

“And his star trick?”

“He’s a secessionist sculptor.”

“What’s that?”

“He is one of the ultra-modern men who has seceded from the Society of American Sculptors to form, with a few others, a new group.”

“Is he any good?”

“Well, Jim, I don’t know,” she said candidly. “I don’t think I am quite in sympathy with his work.”

“What sort is it?”

“If I understand him, he is what is termed, I believe, a concentrationist. For instance, in a nude figure which he is exhibiting in his studio, it’s all a rough block of marble except, in the middle of the upper part, there is a nose.”

“A nose!”

“Really, it is beautifully sculptured,” insisted Palla.

“But–good heavens!–isn’t there any other anatomical feature to that block of marble?”

“I explained that he is a concentrationist. His school believes in concentrating on a single feature only, and in rendering that feature as minutely and perfectly as possible.”

Jim said: “He looks as sane as a broker, too. You never can tell, can you, sweetness?”

He glanced at several other people whose features were not familiar, but Palla’s explanations of her friends had slightly discouraged him and he made no further inquiries.

Vanya Tchernov was there, dreamy and sweet-mannered; Estridge sat by Ilse, looking a trifle careworn, as though hospital work were taking it out of him. Marya Lanois was there, too, with her slightly slanting green eyes and her tiger-red hair–attracting from him a curious sort of stealthy admiration, inexplicable to him because he knew he was so entirely in love with Palla.

A woman of forty sat on his right–he promptly forgot her name each time he heard it–who ate fastidiously and chose birth-control as the subject for conversation. And he dodged it in vain, for her conversation had become a monologue, and he sat fiddling with his food, very red, while the silky voice, so agreeable in pitch and intonation, slid smoothly on.

Afterward Palla explained that she was a celebrated sociologist, but Jim remained shy of her.

Other people came in after dinner. Vanya seated himself at the piano and played from one of his unpublished scores. Ilse sang two Scandinavian songs in her fresh, wholesome, melodious voice–the song called Ygdrasil, and the Song of Thokk. Wardner had brought a violin, and he and Vanya accompanied Marya’s Asiatic songs, but with some difficulty on the sculptor’s part, as modern instruments are scarcely adapted to the sort of Russian music she chose to sing.

Marya had a way, when singing, which appeared almost insolent. Seated, or carelessly erect, her supple figure fell into lines of indolently provocative grace; and the warm, golden notes welling from her throat seemed to be flung broadcast and indifferently to her listeners, as alms are often flung, without interest, toward abstract poverty and not to the poor breathing thing at one’s elbow.

She sang, in her preoccupied way, one of her savage, pentatonic songs, more Mongol than Cossack; then she sang an impudent burlatskiya lazily defiant of her listeners; then a so-called “dancing song,” in which there was little restraint in word or air.

The subtly infernal enchantment of girl and music was felt by everybody; but several among the illuminati and the fair ultra-modernettes had now reached their limit of breadth and tolerance, and were becoming bored and self-conscious, when abruptly Marya’s figure straightened to a lovely severity, her mouth opened sweetly as a cherub’s, and, looking up like a little, ruddy bird, she sang one of the ancient Kolyadki, Vanya alone understanding as his long, thin fingers wandered instinctively into an improvised accompaniment:

I

“Young tears
Your fears disguise;
He is not coming!
Sweet lips
Let slip no sighs;
Cease, heart, your drumming!
He is not coming,

Lada![1 - The ancient Slavonic Venus.]
He is not coming.
Lada oy Lada!

“Gaze not in wonder,–
Yonder no rider comes;
Hark how the kettle-drums
Mock his hoofs’ thunder;
Hark to their thudding,
Pretty breasts budding,–
Setting the Buddhist bells
Clanking and banging,–
Wheels at the hidden wells
Clinking and clanging!
(Lada oy Lada!)
Plough the flower under;
Tear it asunder!

“Young eyes
In swift surprise,
What terror veils you?
Clear eyes,
Who gallops here?
What wolf assails you?