The Beginning of Spring

by Penelope Fitzgerald

Since it was supposed to be devoted to tea-drinking, the walls were frescoed from smoky ceiling to floor in red-gold and silver-gold and painted with dancing, embracing and tea-swilling figures overlapping with horses, horse-collars with golden bells, warriors, huts prancing along on chickens’ legs, simpering children, crowned frogs, dying swans, exultant storks and naked women laughing in apparent satisfaction and veiled, to a slight extent, by the clouds of a glowing sunset. Service at Rusalochka’s was in principle a simple matter, since nothing was served but tea, cakes, vodka and listofka, slievanka, vieshnyovka and beryozovitsa, the liqueurs of the currant-leaf, plum, cherry and birch-sap. But the great silver tea-pots, each like a kettle-drum on its wheeled stand, crossed and recrossed the aisles between the tables, which became smaller and smaller as the room filled up, only avoiding collision with each other and the trollies of strong alcohol through the manipulation of the waiters, who seemed to be chosen for strength rather than skill, and as a result of the threats and warnings of the customers bellowing either for further orders or, as it seemed, to encourage the racing tea-pots, as in a sporting event.