The day was spent with a reckless zest;
At night she lay upon his breast.
So when they took him, a while thereafter
She watched at the window--with laughter.
He sent word pleading "Oh come to me,
I need you, need you bitterly,
Yes, here and in the hereafter."
Her little head shook with laughter.
At six in the morning they swung him high;
At seven the turf on his grave was dry;
At eight, however, she quaffed her
Red wine and sang with laughter!]
And still further a convict song:
I'm a ruined laddie,
Ruined for alway;
While year after year
The days go away.
And also:
Don't you cry, my Mary,
You'll belong to me;
When I've served the army
I will marry thee.
But here suddenly, to the general amazement, the stout Kitty,
usually taciturn, burst into laughter. She was a native of Odessa.
"Let me sing one song, too. It's sung by thieves and badger queens
in the drink shops on our Moldavanka and Peresip."
And in a horrible bass, in a rusty and unyielding voice, she began
to sing, making the most incongruous gestures, but, evidently,
imitating some cabaret cantatrice of the third calibre that she
had sometime seen:
"Ah, I'll go to Dukovka,
Sit down at the table,
Now I throw my hat off,
Toss it under table.
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