Читать книгу Modern Swedish Masterpieces: Short Stories - Hjalmar Soderberg - Страница 9

THERE was dancing in the salon, but in the darkened smoking-room sat several men who did not dance. The younger ones had white flowers in their button-holes, the older ones had decorations. In the corner of a sofa sat a man a little apart from the others; he sat very silent and smiled as at a happy dream. His face was brown, but his forehead was white. His frock coat was as correct as anyone else’s, and he had also a white flower in his button-hole; but his left hand, which hung over the arm of the sofa, was tattooed with a blue anchor.

As a matter of fact it was not a ball; there had merely been a dinner, and afterwards there was dancing.

A man with a decoration was standing in front of him.

“You don’t dance, Mr. Fant?” he inquired.

Fant replied, “I’ve just been dancing with Miss Gabel.”

But as he said this, he felt that he blushed. Why should he have added “with Miss Gabel.” It was surely a matter of indifference with whom he had danced. Because he believed he had said something stupid, he was annoyed with the man to whom he had said it, and set to staring at his decoration without saying anything. Since this was a bogus foreign decoration of the worst sort, the man grew embarrassed, coughed drily, and passed on.

Fant remained seated and stared into a mirror which faced him on an oblique wall. But it was not himself that he saw in the mirror, it was the flooding light of the dancing hall and the sinuous lines of the women. They seemed to move silently in time with the music. Look at their red lips, look at the white curves of their arms!—

There she was again! For the third time she glided past across the mirror. It was her cousin she was dancing with, a boy, lately a student—ah, well!

No, he could not sit still, he could not look on any more. It surely signified nothing that the boy danced with his own cousin, but he could not look on. He rose and went out of the room.

Someone asked, “Who is this Mr. Fant?”

“He has invented something—a gas-burner, I believe. He is already on the way to make a fortune.”

“But did you see,” said the man with the foreign order, “did you see that he has a blue anchor tattooed on one hand?”

They suddenly burst into guffaws.