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

draw it out a handful of shimmering diamonds drips into the water, and for a long time delicate, bluish phosphoric lights glow on my fingers. This is one of those magic nights when, as the fishermen say, “the sea is ablaze.”

Another shoal of fish darts under the boat, furrowing the deep with short, silvery arrows. I hear the snorting of the dolphin near at hand. Here he is, at last! He appears alongside the boat, disappears for a second under the keel and immediately forges ahead. He swims deep under the water, but with extraordinary clearness I distinguish his powerful body, strained in the race. Wrapped in the shimmer of infusoria, his contours set off by myriads of spangles, he looks like a shining glass skeleton, darting at a terrific speed.

Khristo rows with absolute noiselessness, and Yani only once hits the side of the boat with the lead plummets. We have unwound the entire net, and now we can start.

We cross to the opposite shore. Yani plants himself firmly on the prow, his feet wide apart. A large, flat stone, tied to a rope, quietly slides from his hands and sinks to the bottom, hardly splashing the water. A big cork buoy rises to the surface, a scarcely visible black dot on the surface of the bay. Now we make our boat trace a half-circle, as far as the length of our net allows, then we come again to the shore and lower another buoy. We are inside a closed half-circle.

If, instead of poaching, we had been working openly and freely, the next thing to do would have been to make as much noise as possible with our oars and otherwise, so as to drive the fish within our half-circle, into the nets, where they would become entangled in the meshes. But our business needs secrecy, so that all we can do is to go twice from buoy to buoy, noiselessly churning the water with our oars and making it boil in beautiful pale-blue knolls. Then we return to the first buoy. Yani cautiously lifts up the stone which served us as an anchor and drops it without the slightest noise to the bottom of the boat. Standing on the prow and leaning on his left foot, which is put forward, he draws out the net, rhythmically raising and lowering his hands in turn. Slightly leaning overboard, I see the net emerging from the water, and I distinguish clearly every mesh of it, every thread, like an enchanting fiery web. Little, flickering lights slide down Yani’s fingers, and fall back into the water.

And I hear the fish, large and alive, fall to the bottom of the boat with a heavy, wet thud, writhe vigorously, and strike the boards with their tails. Gradually we come to the second buoy and cautiously raise it out of the water.

It is now my turn to row. Khristo and Yani again examine the nets and pick out the mullets from the meshes. Khristo cannot refrain from throwing a big, fat, silvery mullet to my feet over Yani’s head.

“Some fish!” he whispers in my ear, chuckling with bliss.

Yani quietly stops him.

When their work is done and the wet net again lies on the prow platform of the long boat, I see that the entire bottom is carpeted with fish, which are still alive and writhing. But we must make haste. We describe a few more circles, although prudence bids us return to town. Finally, we land in a spot which is but little frequented. Yani brings a basket, and armfuls of big, plump fish, which spread a fresh, delightful odor, fall into it with a savory smack.

Ten minutes later we come back to the coffeehouse, one after another. Everyone invents some pretext for his absence. But our trousers and jackets are wet, Yani has fish-scales in his mustache and beard, and we all smell of the sea and wet fish. Khristo, who cannot control the excitement he has just been through, now and then throws in an allusion to our adventure.

“I was just on the beach.⁠ ⁠… Lots of swine in the bay⁠—it’s simply terrible!” And he would dart a sly, mischievous glance at us.

Yani, who, with Khristo, had carried and hid the basket, sits near me and mumbles into his cup of coffee in a scarcely audible whisper:

“About two thousand, all big. I brought some thirty over to your place.”

This is my share of the booty. I nod. But now I am somewhat ashamed of my crime. Still there is comfort in catching quick, knowing glances around us. It seems that we were not the only ones poaching that night.

IV White Sturgeon

Winter is setting in. One evening it began to snow, and during the night everything had become white, the embankment, the boats on the beach, the roofs, the trees. Only the water of the bay remains black and sombre, and splashes restlessly in this calm white frame.

All along the shores of Crimea⁠—at Anapa, Sudak, Kerch, Theodosia, Yalta, Balaklava, and Sebastopol⁠—the fishermen prepare for the white-sturgeon season. They clean the fishing-boots, enormous horse-leather boots reaching to the thigh, each weighing some twenty pounds; they repair their waterproof coats painted with yellow oil-paint, and their leather trousers; they mend sails and knit seines.

Long before the beginning of the white-sturgeon season the devout fisherman Fyodor, from Oleiz, burns wax tapers and lamps filled with the finest olive-oil before the image of St. Nicholas, the miracle-worker of Myra in Lycia and the patron saint of seamen. When he will put out to sea with his crew of Tartars, the image of the sea saint will be taken from his shanty and nailed to the prow, as a guide and loadstar of luck. This is known to all the seamen of Crimea, because Fyodor does it every year and because he has the reputation of a brave and lucky fisherman.

At last, with a fair wand blowing, in the early dawn that is still a part of the