Hide and Seek

by Fyodor Sologub

Everything in Lelechka's room was bright, pretty and cheerful. Lelechka's sweet voice delighted her mother. Lelechka was a lovely child. There was no other child like her, there never had been and there never would be. Lelechka's mother, Serafima, was sure of that. Lelechka's eyes were dark and large, her cheeks were rosy, her lips were made for kisses and for laughter. Lelechka was her mother's only child. That was why every movement of Lelechka's made her mother so very pleased. It was a great happiness to hold her on her knees and to cuddle her; to feel the little girl in her arms – as lively and bright as a little bird.

To tell the truth, Serafima felt happy only in her daughter's room. She felt cold with her husband.

Perhaps it was because he himself loved the cold – he loved to drink cold water and to breathe cold air. He was always fresh and cool, with a polite smile, and wherever he passed cold air seemed to move with him.

Sergey and Serafima had married without love or calculation, because it was the accepted thing. He was a young man of thirty-five, she a young woman of twenty-five; both were from the same class and well brought-up; he was expected to take a wife and the time had come for her to take a husband.

It even seemed to Serafima that she was in love with her future husband and this made her happy. He was handsome; his intelligent grey eyes always showed pride; but he was a gentle fiance.

The bride was also good-looking. She was a tall, dark-eyed, dark-haired girl, somewhat shy. He was not after her money, though it pleased him to know that she had something. He had connections and his wife came of good, influential people. This might prove useful. Sergey got on in his position, not so fast that anyone should be jealous of him, nor so slow that he should be jealous of anyone else – everything came at the proper time.

After their marriage there was nothing in Sergey to suggest anything wrong. Later, however, when his wife was about to have a child, Sergey enjoyed a few casual, temporary affairs. Serafima found this out and, to her own astonishment, she was not particularly hurt; she waited for her baby with an impatience that made every other feeling unimportant.

A little girl was born. Serafima thought of nothing else. In the beginning, she used to tell her husband, with great happiness, all the details of Lelechka's existence. But she soon found that he listened to her without the slightest interest, only from the habit of politeness. Serafima moved farther and farther away from him. She loved her little girl with a passion that other women, cheated by their husbands, show their young lovers.

"Mummy, let's play hide and seek", cried Lelechka, with a delightful lisp.

This sweet inability to speak always made Serafima smile. Lelechka then ran away, escaping with her plump little legs over the carpet, and hid herself behind the curtains near her bed.

"Tiu-tiu, Mummy!" she cried out in her sweet, laughing voice, as she looked out with a single naughty eye.

"Where's my baby girl?" the mother asked, as she pretended that she didn't see her.

And Lelechka poured out her laughter in her hiding place. Then she came out a little farther and her mother, as though she had only just caught sight of her, took her little shoulders and shouted: "Here she is, my Lelechka!"

The child laughed long and happily, her head close to her mother's knees, and all of her between her mother's arms. Her mother's eyes shone with feeling.

"Now, Mummy, you hide," said Lelechka, as she stopped laughing.

Her mother went to hide. Lelechka turned away, pretending not to see, but watched her Mummy secretly all the time. Mamma hid behind the cupboard and shouted: "Tiu-tiu, baby girl!"

Lelechka ran round the room and looked into all the corners, pretending, as her mother had done before, that she was looking – though she really knew all the time where her Mummy was standing.

"Where's my Mummy?" asked Lelechka. "She's not here, and she's not here," she kept on repeating, as she ran from corner to corner.

Her mother stood, hardly breathing, her head against the wall, her hair a little untidy. A smile of absolute love played on her red lips.

The nurse, Fedosya, a good-natured and fine-looking, if rather stupid, woman smiled as she looked at Serafima with her usual expression, which seemed to say that it was not her job to complain about a lady's habits. She thought to herself: "The mother is like a little child herself – look how excited she is."

Lelechka was getting nearer her mother's corner. Her mother was growing more absorbed every moment by the game; her heart beat fast, and she stood even closer to the wall, making her hair even more untidy. Lelechka suddenly glanced toward her mother's corner and screamed with happiness.

"I've found you," she shouted loudly, mispronouncing her words in a way that again made her mother happy.

She pulled her mother by her hands to the middle of the room and they laughed; and Lelechka again hid her head by her mother's knees and went on lisping her sweet little words, so sweetly and so awkwardly.

Sergey was coming towards his daughter's room at this moment. Through the half-closed doors he heard the laughter, the sound of play. He entered, smiling his polite, cold smile; he was well-dressed and he looked fresh. He spread round him an atmosphere of cleanliness, freshness and cold. He entered in the middle of a lively game. Even Fedosya felt ashamed, now for her mistress, now for herself. Serafima at once became calm and apparently cool – and this mood communicated itself to the little girl, who stopped laughing and looked silently at her father.

Sergey gave a quick glance round the room. He liked coming here, where everything was beautifully arranged; this was done by Serafima, who wanted to surround her little girl with only the loveliest things. There was one thing Sergey was not happy about, and that was his wife's almost continuous presence in the girl's room.

"It's just as I thought... I knew that I'd find you here," he said with a cool smile.

They left the room together. As he followed his wife through the door, Sergey said indifferently, giving no importance to his words: "Don't you think it would be good for the little girl if she were sometimes without you? The child should feel its own individuality," he explained in answer to Serafima's puzzled glance.

"She's still so little," said Serafima.

"In any case, this is only my opinion. It's your kingdom here."

"I'll think it over," his wife answered, smiling, as he did, coldly but politely.

Then they began to talk about something else.

TWO

Fedosya, sitting in the kitchen that evening, was telling the silent maid and the talkative old cook, Agathya, about the young lady of the house, and how the child loved to play hide and seek with her mother.

"She hides her little face, and cries 'tiu-tiu'!

"And the lady herself is like a little one," added Fedosya, smiling.

Agathya listened and shook her head doubtfully, while her face became serious.

"That's bad," said Agathya with certainty. "Terribly bad! She'll hide and hide and hide away," said Agathya, in a mysterious whisper, as she looked carefully towards the door.

"What are you saying?" exclaimed Fedosya, frightened.

"It's the truth, remember my words," Agathya went on with the same certainty and secrecy.

The old woman had invented this, quite suddenly; and she was clearly very proud of it.

THREE

Lelechka was asleep, and Serafima was sitting in her own room, thinking happily about her. Lelechka was in her thoughts, first a sweet, tiny girl, then a sweet, big girl, then again a delightful little girl; but she remained Mummy's little Lelechka.

Serafima did not even notice that Fedosya came and paused before her. She had a worried, frightened look.

"Madam, madam," she said quietly.

Serafima had a shock. Fedosya's face made her worried.

"What is it, Fedosya?" she asked with great concern. "Is there anything wrong with Lelechka?"

"No, madam," said Fedosya, as she moved her hands about and tried to make Serafima sit down. "Lelechka is asleep! Only I'd like to say something – you see – Lelechka is always hiding – that's not good."

"Why not good?" asked Serafima, with annoyance, but still beginning to feel afraid.

"I can't tell you how bad it is," said Fedosya, and her face expressed definite confidence.

"Please speak sensibly," said Serafima. "I understand nothing of what you're saying."

"You see, madam, it's a kind of sign," explained Fedosya.

"Nonsense!" said Serafima.

She did not wish to hear any more about the sort of sign it was or what it meant. But, somehow, a sense of fear and sadness crept into her and it was shameful to feel that a ridiculous story could disturb her so much.

"Of course I know that ladies and gentlemen don't believe in signs, but it's a bad one, madam," Fedosya went on in a sad voice, "The young lady will hide and hide..."

Suddenly she burst into tears, crying loudly: "She'll hide and hide and hide, little darling, in the grave," she continued, as she wiped her tears and blew her nose.

"Who told you all this?" asked Serafima in a dark, low voice.

"Agathya says so, madam," answered Fedosya; "She knows."

"Knows!" shouted Serafima angrily, as though she wanted to protect herself from this sudden anxiety. "What nonsense! Please don't come to me with ideas like this in the future. Now you may go."

Fedosya, her feelings hurt, left her lady.

"What nonsense! As though Lelechka could die!" thought Serafima to herself, trying not to listen to the feeling of cold fear which she had at the thought of the possible death of Lelechka. Serafima, calming down, decided these women's beliefs were signs of ignorance. She saw clearly that there could be no possible connection between a child's games and her death. She made a special effort that evening to think of other things, but her thoughts kept returning to the fact that Lelechka loved to hide.

Recently, at those rare moments when she was not in the child's room, Fedosya had again played hide and seek with Lelechka; and when her mother came in and saw how lovely the child looked when she was hiding, she herself began to play hide and seek with her tiny daughter.

FOUR

The next day Serafima, busy with Lelechka, had forgotten Fedosya's words of the day before.

But when she returned to the child's room, after deciding on that evening's dinner, she heard Lelechka suddenly cry 'Tiu-tiu!' from under the table and fear suddenly took control of her. Though she blamed herself at once for this superstition, she could not play Lelechka's favourite game with her usual interest and tried to get her to do something else.

Lelechka was an obedient child. But as she had got into the habit of hiding from her mother in some corner, and of crying out 'Tiu-tiu!', that day she returned more than once to the game.

"Why does Lelechka keep on remembering hide and seek? Why doesn't she get tired of the same thing – of always closing her eyes and hiding her face?

"Perhaps," thought Serafima, "she is not as strongly attracted to the world as other children. If this is true, isn't it a sign of bodily weakness? Isn't it a desire to die?"

Serafima was tortured by her silly ideas. She felt ashamed of stopping playing hide and seek with Lelechka in front of Fedosya. But this game had become painful to her, all the more painful because she had a real desire to play it. Serafima herself began the game once or twice, though she played it with a heavy heart. It was a sad day for Serafima Aleksandrovna.

FIVE

Lelechka was about to fall asleep. She had just climbed into her little bed and her eyes began to close. Her mother covered her with a blanket. Lelechka drew her sweet little hands from under it and pushed them out to hold her mother. Lelechka, with a lovely expression on her sleepy face, kissed her mother and let her head fall on the pillow. As her hands hid themselves under the blanket, Lelechka whispered: "The hands tiu-tiu!"

The mother's heart seemed to stop – Lelechka lay there so small, so quiet. She smiled, closed her eyes and said quietly: "The eyes tiu-tiu!"

Then even more quietly: "Lelechka tiu-tiu!"

With these words she fell asleep. Her mother looked at her with sad eyes.

Serafima remained standing by Lelechka's bed a long while, looking at her with love and fear.

"I'm her mother. Is it possible that I can't protect her?" she thought, as she imagined the various dangers that might happen to her.

SIX

Several days passed. Lelechka caught cold. The fever came at night. When Serafima, awoken by Fedosya, came to Lelechka and saw her looking so hot and restless, she immediately remembered the evil sign and felt hopeless.

A doctor was called, and everything usual was done. Serafima told herself that Lelechka would get well and laugh and play again – but this seemed to her an unthinkable happiness! And the child grew weaker from hour to hour.

Everyone pretended to be calm, so as not to frighten Serafima, but their masked faces only made her sad.

Nothing made her so unhappy as Fedosya repeatedly saying: "She hid herself and hid herself, our Lelechka!"

But Serafima's thoughts were confused and she could not quite understand what was happening.

Fever was eating Lelechka up, and there were times when she lost consciousness or seemed half mad. But when she returned to herself she put up with her pain and her tiredness quietly; she smiled weakly at her Mummy, so that her Mummy would not see how sick she was. Three days passed like a nightmare. Lelechka did not know that she was dying.

She glanced at her mother with her dim eyes and lisped almost inaudibly: "Tiu-tiu, Mummy!"

Serafima hid her face behind the curtains near Lelechka's bed.

"Mummy!" she called.

Her mother bent over her, and the child saw her mother's pale, hopeless face for the last time.

"A beautiful, pale Mummy!" whispered Lelechka.

Mummy's beautiful, pale face faded and everything grew dark for Lelechka. She held the blanket with her hands and whispered: "Tiu-tiu!"

She made a noise in her throat; Lelechka opened and closed her white lips, and died.

Serafima was in despair as she left Lelechka, and went out of the room. She met her husband.

"Lelechka is dead," she said in a quiet, dull voice.

Sergey looked anxiously at her pale face.

SEVEN

Lelechka was dressed and placed in a little coffin. Serafima was standing next to it, looking dully at her dead child. Sergey went to his wife and, saying some cold, empty words, tried to take her away from the coffin. Serafima smiled.

"Go away," she said quietly. "Lelechka is playing. She'll be ready in a minute."

"Serafima, my dear, don't!" said Sergey in a whisper. "You must accept it."

"She'll be up in a minute," she continued, her eyes fixed on the dead little girl.

Sergey looked round him carefully: he was afraid of the ugly and of the ridiculous.

"Serafima, don't!" he repeated. "That would be a miracle, and miracles don't happen in the nineteenth century."

He took his wife by the arm, and took her away from the coffin. She did not try to stop him.

Her face seemed calm and her eyes were dry. She went into the girl's room and began to walk round it, looking into those places where Lelechka used to hide. She walked all around the room and stopped now and then to look under the table or the bed, and kept on repeating cheerfully: "Where's my little one? Where's my Lelechka?"

After she had walked round the room once she began again. Fedosya sat in a corner and looked frightened; then she suddenly started crying:

"She hid and hid, our Lelechka!"

Serafima paused, looked at Fedosya, began to cry and left the room quietly.

EIGHT

Sergey hurried the funeral. He saw that Serafima was terribly shocked and, as he was worried about her sanity, he thought it might be better when Lelechka was buried.

Next morning Serafima dressed with particular care – for Lelechka. There was a feeling of heaviness in her head as she went to the child. The little girl lay there, still and pale. Serafima laid her cheek on Lelechka's coffin and whispered: "Tiu-tiu, little one!"

The little one did not reply. There was some kind of confusion around Serafima; strange, unnecessary faces, someone held her – and Lelechka was carried away somewhere.

Serafima stood up in a lost way, smiled, and called loudly: "Lelechka!"

Lelechka was being carried out. The mother tried to throw herself on the coffin, but she was held back. She sat behind the door, sat down there on the floor, and as she looked, she cried out: "Lelechka, tiu-tiu!"

Then she began to laugh. Lelechka was quickly carried away from her mother, and those who carried her seemed to run rather than to walk.