"Her nose is all over blood.... It is running down," Senka informed
them.
"Ah! good heavens! What a terror, what a wretch he is!" cried some
women, full of sympathy.
The men regarded the matter from a more abstract and philosophic point
of view.
"He will certainly end by killing her," they said.
The accordion-player remarked in a prophetic voice--
"He'll stick a knife into her some day; you take my word for it He'll
get tired of always knocking her about, and some day will put an end to
the whole business in a hurry."
"Now he has let go of her," said Senka in a whisper, springing up
from the ground, and bounding on one side like an india-rubber ball.
Immediately afterwards he took up another post of observation in a
corner of the court, for he knew that Grischka Orloff would now appear
above ground.
Most of the spectators went off rapidly, for they had no desire to come
face to face with the enraged cobbler. Now that the fight was over
Grischka had lost all interest in their eyes, and besides it was not
without danger to come across him under these circumstances.
So it happened that when Orloff emerged from his cellar, there was
generally, with the exception of Senka, no living soul to be seen in
the courtyard. Breathing heavily, his shirt torn, his hair tumbled,
with fresh scratches on his still excited and perspiring face, Grischka
Orloff, with bloodshot eyes would glance suspiciously round the court.
With his hands behind his back, he would walk slowly towards an old
sledge which was leaning against the wall of a dilapidated wool-shed.
Sometimes he would whistle and throw threatening glances around, as if
he were challenging all the dwellers in Petounukoff's house to battle.
Then he would sit down on the sledge, and with the sleeve of his shirt
wipe the blood away from his face. He would remain for a long time
motionless, glowering darkly at the wall of the opposite house, where
the plaster was crumbling away, and where a variety of colours had been
smeared on by the house-painter Soutchkoff's apprentices, who had the
habit, when they left off work, of cleaning their brushes on this part
of the wall.
The cobbler Orloff was about thirty years old. His dark, nervous,
finely-cut face was adorned with a black moustache, under which showed
full red lips. Above a prominent nose thick black eyebrows were drawn
close together; dark restless flashing eyes looked out from under them.
The curly hair that hung forward on his forehead fell behind over his
brown strong neck in thick ringlets. Orloff was of middle height, a
little bent with a slight stoop--the result of his special work,--
muscular and full-blooded; but now he sat on the sledge as if in a dull
state of stupor, and gazed blankly at the variegated wall, his breath
coming in heavy gasps and throbs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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