"I can't help it. You know I do.
Maybe it's because he came on Easter day, I don't know. And he's never out
of mischief one minute!"
I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered--about her teeth,
for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the things that she
had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else was gone, Antonia
had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown and hardened, had not
that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it had been secretly drawn
away.
While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in and sat
down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. He wore a
funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, and his hair
was clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. He watched us
out of his big, sorrowful gray eyes.
"He wants to tell you about the dog, mother. They found it dead," Anna
said, as she passed us on her way to the cupboard.
Antonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by her chair, leaning his elbows
on her knees and twisting her apron strings in his slender fingers, while
he told her his story softly in Bohemian, and the tears brimmed over and
hung on his long lashes. His mother listened, spoke soothingly to him, and
in a whisper promised him something that made him give her a quick, teary
smile. He slipped away and whispered his secret to Nina, sitting close to
her and talking behind his hand.
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