Part 14

A look of pleased vanity floated over the face of my Mingrelian host. He was at least quite human.

Before going to bed we drank one another's healths.

"HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"

This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.

I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried out to me from the darkness of the steppe. I stopped and looked and listened. In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskin hat came careering towards me, and called out: "Do you want a place to sleep? My mother's coffee-house is the best you'll find. The coffee-house down the hill is nothing to it. There it is, that dark house you passed. I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shall come in a minute."

Sharp boy! He was only eight years old. How did he guess my need so well?

I retraced my footsteps very happily, and came to the dark inn I had missed. It stood fifty yards back from the road, and had no light except what glimmered from the embers of a wood fire. At the door was a parrot that cried out, "Choozhoï, choozhoï, choozhoï preeshhòl"--"A stranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived."

The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me with perturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked. "Because if you're a beggar," etc. I cut her short as soon as I could. I assured her I should be much pleased to be a customer.

I ordered tea. The boy came in and claimed me as his find, but was snubbed. My hostess proceeded to ask me every question known to her. To my replies, which were often not a little surprising, she invariably replied with one of these exclamations, "Say it again, if you please." "Indeed!" "With what pleasure!"

That I was a tramp and earned my living by writing about my adventures pleased her immensely. I earned my living by having holidays, and gained money where other travellers never did anything but spend.

"With what pleasure" did she hear that literary men were paid so many roubles a thousand words for their writings. One could easily write an immense quantity, she thought.

The little boy looked at me with bright eyes, and listened. Presently, when his mother was dilating on the inferiority of painting as a profession, he broke in.

The mother was saying, "Not only does the painter catch cold standing still so long in marshy places, but when he has finished his pictures he has to hawk them in the fairs, and even then he may not be able to sell them."

"What fairs?" asked the boy.

"The fairs of Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, and the great towns. Some sell for fifty roubles, some for five hundred, some for five thousand and more. A little picture would go for five roubles perhaps."

"What size pictures would one buy for fifty roubles?" asked the boy.

"Oh, about the same size as from the floor to the ceiling."

"What size would one be that cost five thousand roubles?"

"Oh, an immense picture; one could build a country house out of it."

The boy reflected.

"And five hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted, "Silence! Don't make yourself a nuisance."

"But how big would it be?" whined the boy. "Tell me."

"Oh, the same, but bigger, stupid!"

Thereupon my little friend was very happy, and he apparently ascribed his happiness to me.

A few minutes later he abruptly asked permission to take me up a mountain to show me a castle next morning, and his mother agreed, pointing out how extremely profitable it would be for me. The little boy rejoiced; he had apparently wanted to go up to that castle for a long while. How excited and happy he was!

His mother paid little attention to her child, however, and her interest lay in the bubbling cauldron where the soup was cooking. "You have a very clever boy," I said, but she did not agree with me. His pranks and high spirits were to her evidence of stupidity. I must say I felt we were the stupid party, and the boy was a little wonder. We went on gossiping, and presently he proved us stupid.

He started up with one finger to his ear and then darted out, leaving the door open and letting the steppe air pour in.

The mother listened, and then said discontentedly after a pause, "That child is not usual."