Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

his lips there passed that same smile which had engraved itself upon the captain’s memory in the morning.

“Don’t be alarmed, Captain. I have come to you without evil intention,” said he. “Try to abstain from murder till the morning.”

The voice of the strange visitant was as enigmatical as his smile, even monotonous, and as it were without timbre. Long, long ago, in his earliest childhood, Markof had occasionally heard voices like this when he had been left alone in a room, he had heard such voices behind him, voices without colour or expression, calling him by his own name. Obedient to the incomprehensible influence of this smile and this voice, the captain put his revolver under his pillow and lay down again, leaning his head on his elbow, and never taking his eyes from the dark figure of the unknown person. For some minutes the room was filled with a deep and painful silence; there was only heard the ticking of Markof’s watch, hurriedly beating out the seconds, and the burnt-out fuel in the grate falling with a weak, yet resounding and metallic, crackle.

“Tell me, Markof,” began the old man at length, “what would you answer, not to a judge or to the authorities, or even to the emperor, but to your own conscience, should it ask you, ‘Why did you enter upon this terrible, unjust slaughter?’ ”

Markof shrugged his shoulders as if in mockery.

“You speak rather freely, old man,” said he, “for one who is going to be shot in four hours’ time. However, we’ll have a little conversation, if you like. It’s a better occupation for me than to toss about sleeplessly in fever. How shall I answer my conscience? I shall say first that I am a soldier, and that it is my duty to obey orders implicitly; and secondly, I am a Russian by birth, and I would make it clear to the whole world that he who dares to rise up against the might of the great power of Russia shall be crushed as a worm under the heel, and his very tomb shall be made level with the dust.⁠ ⁠…”

“O Markof, Markof, what a wild and bloodthirsty pride speaks in your words!” replied the old man. “And what untruth! If you look at an object and put your eyes quite close to it you see only the smallest of its details, but go further away, and you see it in its true form. Do you really think that your great country is immortal? Did not the Persians think so once, and the Macedonians, and proud Rome, who seized the whole world in her iron claws, and the wild hordes of Huns who overran Europe, and mighty Spain, lord over three-fourths of the globe? Yet ask history what has become of their immeasurable power. And I can tell you that thousands of centuries before these there were great kingdoms, stronger, prouder, and more cultured than yours. But life, which is stronger than nations and more ancient than memorials, has swept them aside in her mysterious path, leaving neither trace nor memory of them.”

“That’s foolishness,” objected the captain, in a feeble voice, lying down again upon his back. “History follows out its own course, and we can neither guide it nor show it the way.”

The old man laughed noiselessly.

“You’re like that African bird which hides its head in the sand when it is pursued by the hunter. Believe me, a hundred years hence your children’s children will be ashamed of their ancestor, Alexander Vassilitch Markof, murderer and executioner.”

“You speak strongly, old man! Yes, I’ve heard of the ravings of those enthusiastic dreamers who want to change swords into ploughshares.⁠ ⁠… Ha-ha-ha! I picture to myself the sort of state these scrofulous neurasthenists and rickety idiots of pacifists would make. No, it is only wax that can forge out an athletic body and an iron character. However⁠ ⁠…”⁠—Markof pressed his hand to his forehead, striving to remember something⁠—“however, this is all unimportant.⁠ ⁠… But what was it I wanted to ask you?⁠ ⁠… Ah, yes! Somehow I don’t think you will tell me untruths. Do you belong to these parts?”

“No.” The old man shook his head.

“But surely you were born in the district?”

“No.”

“But you are a⁠—European? What are you, French? English? Russian? German?”

“No, no.⁠ ⁠…”

Markof, in exasperation, struck the side of the bed with his fist.

“Well, who are you, then? And why the devil do I know your face so well? Have we ever met anywhere?”

The old man bent his head still lower and sat for a long time saying no word. At last he began to speak, as if hesitating:

“Yes, we have met, Markof, but you have never seen me. Probably you don’t remember, or you’ve forgotten, how once, during an epidemic of plague, your uncle hanged in one morning fifty-nine persons. I was within two paces of him that day, but he didn’t see me.”

“Yes⁠ ⁠… that’s true⁠ ⁠… fifty-nine⁠ ⁠…” muttered Markof, feeling himself overwhelmed by an intolerable heat. “But they⁠ ⁠… were⁠ ⁠… rioters.⁠ ⁠…”

“I saw your father’s cruel exploits at Sevastopol, and your work after the capture of Ismaila,” the old man went on in his hollow voice. “Before my eyes has been shed enough blood to drown the whole world. I was with Napoleon on the fields of Austerlitz, Friedland, Jena, and Borodina. I saw the mob applauding the executioner when he held up before them on the platform of the guillotine the bloody head of Louis XVI. I was present on the eve of St. Bartholomew, when the Catholics, with prayers on their lips, murdered the wives and children of the Huguenots. In the midst of a crowd of enraged fanatics I gazed whilst the holy fathers of the Inquisition burned heretics at the stake, flayed people alive for the glory of God, and poured white-hot lead into their mouths. I followed the hordes of Attila, Genghis Khan, and Solyman the Magnificent, whose paths were marked by mountains of human skulls. I was with the noisy Roman crowd in the circus when they