"What a
capacity he had for living! He was always aglow with joy, buoyant,
childlike joy!"
"Childlike," repeated the mother to herself, and shook her head as
if agreeing with something.
"Ye-es," said Nikolay, pulling his beard, "his soul was always singing."
"When I played this piece for him the first time, he put it in these
words." Sofya turned her face to her brother, and slowly stretched
out her arms. Encircled with blue streaks of smoke, she spoke in a
low, rapturous voice. "In a barren sea of the far north, under the
gray canopy of the cold heavens, stands a lonely black island, an
unpeopled rock, covered with ice; the smoothly polished shore
descends abruptly into the gray, foaming billows. The transparently
blue blocks of ice inhospitably float on the shaking cold water and
press against the dark rock of the island. Their knocking resounds
mournfully in the dead stillness of the barren sea. They have been
floating a long time on the bottomless depths, and the waves
splashing about them have quietly borne them toward the lonely rock
in the midst of the sea. The sound is grewsome as they break
against the shore and against one another, sadly inquiring: 'Why?'"
Sofya flung away the cigarette she had begun to smoke, turned to the
piano, and again began to play the ringing plaints, the plaints of
the lonely blocks of ice by the shore of the barren island in the
sea of the far north.
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