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

me, Vladimir Ivanovich, do you know anything of the Fleet?”

“No, nothing.⁠ ⁠… Is there any news?”

“There’s an incredible story, Kondrashov heard from a friend on the Naval Staff. Hi! Pathological Case! Tell Schavinsky.”

The Pathological Case, a man with a black tragedy beard and a chewed-up face, spoke through his nose:

“I can’t guarantee it, Vladimir Ivanovich. But the source seems reliable. There’s a nasty rumour going about the Staff that the great part of our Fleet has surrendered without fighting⁠—that the sailors tied up the officers and ran up the white flag⁠—something like twenty ships.”

“That’s really terrible,” said Schavinsky in a quiet voice. “Perhaps it’s not true, yet? Still⁠—nowadays, the most impossible things are possible. By the way, do you know what’s happening in the naval ports⁠—in all the ships’ crews there’s a terrible underground ferment going on. The naval officers ashore are frightened to meet the men in their command.”

The conversation became general. This inquisitive, ubiquitous, cynical company was a sensitive receiver, unique of its kind, for every conceivable rumour and gossip of the town, which often reached the private saloon of “The Glory of Petrograd” quicker than the minister’s sanctum. Each one had his news. It was so interesting that even the Three Musketeers, who seemed to count nothing in the world sacred or important, began to talk with unusual fervour.

“There’s a rumour going about that the reserves in the rear of the army refuse to obey orders. The soldiers are shooting the officers with their own revolvers.”

“I heard that the general in command hanged fifty sisters of mercy. Well, of course, they were only dressed as sisters of mercy.”

Schavinsky glanced round at Ribnikov. Now the talkative captain was silent. With his eyes screwed and his chest pressed upon the hilt of his sword, he was intently watching each of the speakers in turn. Under the tight-stretched skin of his cheekbones the sinews strongly played, and his lips moved as if he were repeating every word to himself.

“My God, whom does he remind me of?” the journalist thought impatiently for the tenth time. This so tormented him that he tried to make use of an old familiar trick⁠ ⁠… to pretend to himself that he had completely forgotten the captain, and then suddenly to give him a quick glance. Usually that trick soon helped him to recall a name or a meeting-place, but now it was quite ineffective.

Under his stubborn look, Ribnikov turned round again, gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly.

“Awful news! Do you believe it? What? Even if it is true we need not despair. You know what we Russians say: ‘Whom God defends the pigs can’t eat,’⁠—that’s to say, I mean that the pigs are the Japanese, of course.”

He held out stubbornly against Schavinsky’s steady look, and in his yellow animal eyes the journalist noticed a flame of implacable, inhuman hatred.

Piestrukhin, the poet asleep on the sofa, suddenly got up, smacked his lips, and stared at the officer with dazed eyes.

“Ah!⁠ ⁠… you’re still here, Jap mug,” he said drunkenly, hardly moving his mouth. “You just get out of it!”

And he collapsed on the sofa again, turning on to his other side.

“Japanese!” Schavinsky thought with anxious curiosity, “That’s what he’s like,” and drawled meaningly: “You are a jewel, Captain!”

“I?” the latter cried out. His eyes lost their fire, but his lips still twitched nervously. “I am Captain Ribnikov!” He banged himself on the chest again with curious pride. “My Russian heart bleeds. Allow me to shake your hand. My head was grazed at Liao-Yang, and I was wounded in the leg at Mukden. You don’t believe it? I’ll show you now.”

He put his foot on a chair and began to pull up his trousers.

“Don’t!⁠ ⁠… stop! we believe you,” Schavinsky said with a frown. Nevertheless, his habitual curiosity enabled him to steal a glance at Ribnikov’s leg and to notice that this infantry captain’s underclothing was of expensive spun silk.

A messenger came into the saloon with a letter for Matanya.

“That’s for you, Vladimir Ivanovich,” said Matanya, when he had torn the envelope. “The race-card from the stable. Put one on Zenith both ways for me. I’ll pay you on Tuesday.”

“Come to the races with me, Captain?” said Schavinsky.

“Where? To the races? With pleasure.” Ribnikov got up noisily, upsetting his chair. “Where the horses jump? Captain Ribnikov at your service. Into battle, on the march, to the devil’s dam! Ha, ha, ha! That’s me! Eh, what?”

When they were sitting in the cab, driving through Cabinetsky Street, Schavinsky slipped his arm through the officer’s, bent right down to his ear, and said, in a voice hardly audible:

“Don’t be afraid. I shan’t betray you. You’re as much Ribnikov as I am Vanderbilt. You’re an officer on the Japanese Staff. I think you’re a colonel at least, and now you’re a military agent in Russia.⁠ ⁠…”

Either Ribnikov did not hear the words for the noise of the wheels or he did not understand. Swaying gently from side to side, he spoke hoarsely with a fresh drunken enthusiasm:

“We’re fairly on the spree now! Damn it all, I adore it. I’m not Captain Ribnikov, a Russian soldier, if I don’t love Russian writers! A magnificent lot of fellows! They drink like fishes, and know all about life. ‘Russia’s joy is in the bottle.’ And I’ve been at it from the morning, old man!”

III

By business and disposition Schavinsky was a collector of human documents, of rare and strange manifestations of the human spirit. Often for weeks, sometimes for months together, he watched an interesting type, tracking him down with the persistence of a passionate sportsman or an eager detective. It would happen that the prize was found to be, as he called it, “a knight of the black star”⁠—a sharper, a notorious plagiarist, a pimp, a souteneur, a literary maniac, the terror of every editor, a plunging cashier or bank messenger, who spends public money in restaurants and gambling hells with the madness of a man rushing down the steep; but no