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

was to be placed. Salvatore Trama, smoking a cigarette, calmly watched these preparations and lazily smiled, passing careless remarks from time to time. Then he flung the cigarette end overboard, waddled over to the case, and slid into it. Several mechanics busied themselves over him for a long time, setting up all sorts of apparatus, and it must be said that when the work was done, the diver presented quite a dreadful spectacle. Only his arms remained outside, the rest of his body being shut up in a solid pale-blue enamelled coffin of tremendous weight. A huge pale-blue ball, with three bull’s-eyes⁠—one in the front and two on the sides⁠—and with an electric lantern in the forehead, hid his head; the main cable, a rubber pipe for air, a signalling rope, a telephone wire, and a light-conducting wire seemed to cover the apparatus with a net, increasing the air of oddity and dread which rested on this pale-blue massive mummy, provided with living human arms.

The steam-engine gave a signal, and the air resounded with the clatter of chains. The bizarre, pale-blue box separated itself from the deck of the raft and it sailed through the air calmly, twirling on its vertical axis, then started downward slowly. First it touched the surface of the water, then plunged down to its feet, its waist, its shoulders.⁠ ⁠… Presently the head, too, disappeared, and finally nothing was seen except the steel cable, slowly descending into the water. Silently and seriously the fishermen exchanged glances and shook their heads.⁠ ⁠…

Engineer Restucci is at the telephone. From time to time he flings short commands to the mechanic who regulates the movements of the rope. All around in the boats reigns complete, deep silence, interrupted only by the hissing of the air-pumping machine, the noise of pinions, the whizzing of the steel cable on the pulleys, and the abrupt words of the engineer. All eyes are fixed on the spot where the terrible ball-like head had disappeared.

The descent is painfully long. It lasts more than an hour. But finally Restucci becomes animated, speaks several times into the telephone receiver, and suddenly utters a short command:

“Stop!⁠ ⁠…”

Now all the spectators understand that the diver has reached the bottom, and everyone heaves a sigh of relief. The most terrible part is over.⁠ ⁠…

Squeezed into his metallic case, with only his arms free, Trama was unable to move on the sea bottom. The only thing he could do was to order through the telephone that he be transported forward together with the raft or moved to the side by means of the crane, lifted up, or lowered down. Without leaving the telephone, Restucci calmly and imperiously repeated his orders and it seemed as if the raft, the crane, and all the machines were set in motion by the will of an invisible, mysterious being under the water.

Twenty minutes later Salvatore Trama gave a signal that he be lifted up. Slowly, as before, he was dragged up to the surface, and when he was again suspended in the air, he gave the odd impression of a terrible and at the same time helpless animal, miraculously extracted from the deep.

At last the case stood on the deck. The sailors quickly and adroitly took off the helmet and unpacked the case. Trama emerged from it sweating, choking, his face almost black with blood congestion. He seemed to make an effort to smile, but the result was a grimace of suffering and weariness. The fishermen in their boats remained respectfully silent and shook their heads as a sign of amazement and, according to the Greek custom, clacked their tongues significantly.

An hour later all Balaklava knew what the diver had seen on the sea bottom, at the White Stones. Most of the ships were so thoroughly buried in mud and all sorts of dirt, that there was no hope of lifting them up. As for the three-mast frigate with gold, which had been sucked in by the sea bottom, the only part of it which was still visible was a bit of the prow on which were the green copper letters: “… ck Pr.⁠ ⁠…”

Trama also told that around the sunken squadron he saw many boat anchors, and this news moved the fishermen, because each of them, at least once in his life, had to leave his anchor there, caught in the rocks and the fragments of the ill-fated fleet.

VII

The Balaklava fishermen, too, once succeeded in offering the Italians an extraordinary and, in a sense, magnificent spectacle. It was on the 6th of January, on the day of our Lord’s baptism, which at Balaklava is celebrated in quite a peculiar manner.

By this time the Italian divers were completely convinced of the uselessness of further efforts to lift up the squadron. In a few days they were to sail home to their beloved gay Genoa, and they were hastily putting the steamer in order, scrubbing and washing the deck, and cleaning the engines.

The church procession, the clergy in gold-wrought vestures, the banners, the cross, and the saints’ images, the church singing⁠—all this attracted their attention and they stood on the deck, leaning over its railing.

The clergy ascended the boards of the landing-place. Behind them women, old men, and children were crowded together. As for the younger men, they sat in their boats, which formed a narrow semicircle around the landing-place.

The day was sunny, transparent, and cold. The snow which had fallen the night before covered the streets, roofs, and the bald, brown hills; the water in the bay was an amethyst blue, and the azure of the heavens smiled festively.

The young fishermen wore underwear merely for the sake of decorum, and many of them were stripped to the waist. They all shivered with cold, and rubbed their frozen hands and chests. The singing of the chorus, harmonious and sweet, floated over the motionless stretch of the clear waters.

“On the river Jordan⁠ ⁠…” sang the priest in a thin falsetto, and the cross, raised high, sparkled in