Chapter 18 eighteen

When I woke up in the morning, I felt a headache.The excitement of yesterday was gone.Instead, however, there was painful doubt and a sadness that hadn't been there before—as if some part of him was dying. "Why do you look like a rabbit with half its head cut off?" Lushin said to me when he met me. At breakfast, I glanced furtively at my father and at my mother: he was as calm as ever, and she was secretly angry as usual.I waited to see if my father would talk to me as kindly as he sometimes does... But he didn't even show me his usual cold caress. "Tell Zinaida everything? . . . " I thought to myself.You know it's the same anyway.It's all over between us. "I went to her, but not only didn't tell her anything, I didn't even have the opportunity to talk to her, although I wanted to talk to her so much. One of the Duchess's sons of twelve years-a student at the Armed School- — came from Petersburg for vacation. Zinaida immediately entrusted me with her brother.

"I leave it to you," she said. "My dear Volodya (it was the first time she called me that), I would like to introduce you to a friend. His name is also Volodya. I hope you will like him. He is still afraid of strangers, but he has a good heart. Take him to see the Neskucciny Park, go for a walk with him, and tell him that you will take good care of him. You will do that, won't you? You are a man too Good boy!" She put her hands on my shoulders affectionately, but I was completely flustered.The arrival of this child made me a child too.I silently looked at this student from Wubei Middle School, and he also stared at me silently.Zinaida couldn't help laughing out loud, and pushed us together.

"Children, hug!" We hugged. "Do you want me to take you to the garden?" I asked the student of the Wubei Middle School. "Please," he replied in a hoarse, quite cadet-like voice. Zinaida burst into laughter again... I realized in time that she had never had such a charming blush before.I went out with the cadets at the military school. We have an old fashioned swing in our garden.I sat him on a narrow thin board and shook him up.He sat motionless and held fast to the rope, and he wore a new dungaree uniform trimmed with broad gold and silver sash. "Undo your collar," I said to him.

"It's okay, we're used to it," he said, coughing a bit. He looks exactly like his sister, especially those eyes.I am happy to serve him.Meanwhile the above-mentioned unrelieved sorrow still quietly tore my heart. "Now I'm really a boy," I thought, "but yesterday..." I remembered where the knife had fallen last night, and found it.The cadet lent me this knife, and he took a thick-stemmed lovage, whittled it into a flute, and blew it.Othello also plays the flute. But in the evening, Zinaida found him in a corner of the garden, and when he asked him why he was so sad, this Othello wept in Zinaida's arms.I burst into tears, and she was taken aback.

"What's the matter with you, what's the matter with you, Volodya?" she asked repeatedly, and seeing that I didn't answer her, and that I didn't stop crying, she wanted to kiss my tear-soaked cheek. But I turned my face away, and while weeping loudly, I said in a low voice: "I all said: Why are you teasing me?... What do you need my love for?" "I'm sorry, Volodya..." Zinaida whispered. "Cough, I'm so sorry..." She added, clenching her hands. : How many bad, dark, and sinful things are in me... But I'm not teasing you now, I love you, and don't wonder why, how... But what do you know? "

What can I say to her?She stood in front of me and looked at me, and if she only looked at me, I would be hers from head to toe... A quarter of an hour later I was running with the cadet and Zinaïda. ;I did not cry, I laughed, though tears fell from my swollen eyelids; I tied Zinaïda's ribbon around my neck like a tie, when I could hug her waist. I cried out with joy.Now she can play various games with me freely.