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

“My poor grandpa. You are so poor and so old.⁠ ⁠… Do you know what we will do? We have no grandpa.⁠ ⁠… Do you want to be our grandpa? Can you tell fairytales?”

“Yes, my dear child. I can tell beautiful old tales. About iron men, and victories, and bloody festivals.⁠ ⁠…”

“Well, that’s fine. I will go out for a walk with you and get flowers for you, and make garlands. We will each put on a garland, and that will be fine. You see, I have some flowers now. The blue ones are violets, and the white ones snowdrops. I will sing you all the songs that I know. Will you come?”

And then a strange thing happened. The old king whom neither arguments, nor the words of his politicians, nor the cruel lessons of life, nor history had convinced, suddenly realized with his whole soul how ludicrous and useless was his stubborn faith in what was past. There suddenly awakened in him a desire for a family, for caresses, attention, childish prattle. And kissing the girl’s light hair, he said in a scarcely audible voice:

“All right, my dear girl, I shall come. I was so lonely during my whole life.⁠ ⁠… But what will your papa say?⁠ ⁠…”

Then the girl ran away and returned in a minute, leading by the hand a tall and sunburnt man with calm and deep-gray eyes, who said, taking off his hat:

“If you should consent, your Majesty, to do what the girl suggests, we should all be infinitely happy, your Majesty.”

“Let my Majesty alone⁠ ⁠…” said the old man, rising from the bench and shaking hands with the citizen. “From now on my Majesty exists no more.”

And they all three walked out forever from the Park of Kings. But as they were passing through the gate, the old man suddenly stopped, and when they turned back to him, his companions saw that a tear was falling down his white beard, like a diamond rolling down a sheet of silver.

“Do not think⁠ ⁠…” said the old man, trembling with emotion. “Do not think that I shall be⁠ ⁠… entirely useless to you.⁠ ⁠… I can⁠ ⁠… I can make beautiful boxes out of colored paper.⁠ ⁠…”

And overjoyed by his words, the little girl threw her arms around his neck.

The lamp throws a bright circle of even light on the table at which I am sitting. Everything beyond this circle is dark, empty, lifeless; everything is strange to me, forgotten by me. The whole world is concentrated in this small space, every ink stain of which, every cut and roughness is perfectly familiar to me. I want nothing else. The sheet of paper before me is blindingly white and its edges are sharply outlined against the green cloth. The seconds of the evening run by with gentle, hasteless monotony, and in that circle of light everything is simple, bright, congenial, close, familiar, and dreamy. I want nothing, nothing else!

But somebody knocks at my door. One, two, three.⁠ ⁠… In rapid and insistent succession come three dull, disquieting knocks. The dreamy fascination of the lighted circle immediately disappears, as a picture moves away from the screen. I am again in my room, in my home in the city.⁠ ⁠… Life has rushed in upon me, just as the noises of the street rush in through an open window.

Who is there on the other side of the door? In a moment he will enter my room, I shall see his face, hear the sound of his voice, take his hand. I shall touch him with my vision and my hearing, with my body and thought. Oh, how simple is all this, yet how mysterious, incomprehensible, almost terrifying!

For there is not a single phenomenon, however trifling, that would not leave in me its indelible trace. The quiet stirring of a mouse under my floor, and an execution, the birth of a child, and the rustle of a leaf in autumn, a storm on the ocean, and the ticking of a watch, the embrace of a loved woman, and an ordinary advertisement⁠—everything, large and small, consciously or unconsciously perceived by me, touches my brain and traces on it unintelligible lines and curves. Every instant of my life leaves an indelible, though unconscious, impress on my character⁠—on my love or hatred of life, my mind, my health, my memory, my imagination, my future life, and, perhaps, even on the life of my children and my grandchildren. But I know neither the sequence of events, nor the time of their coming, nor their elemental force, nor their hidden meaning.⁠ ⁠…

I do not know what will happen to me tomorrow.⁠ ⁠… Only the shallow, self-satisfied, dull pharisees, or the chosen clairvoyants, with extraordinarily sensitized spirits, know it⁠—or deceive themselves and others into a belief that they know it. I do not know what will happen to me in an hour or in a minute. I live like a player, and fate turns constantly my wheel of surprises.

Why is it that gambling excites people? Because if we stake a certain sum on the nine of spades, we cannot tell beforehand where it will fall: if to the right, we lose; if to the left, we win; because before our very eyes the future immediately becomes the past, while our hopes and plans change into disappointment or joy; because a game of cards is also life, only more contracted and intensified, like life in a jar of oxygen; because in a game of cards we feel with our souls that before us walks a dread divinity that holds sway over probabilities and possibilities.

But the phenomena of plain, ordinary life do not affect us deeply; we live in their midst blindly and indifferently. And yet, every day, every hour, whether we eat, or hasten to a tryst, or sign a business document, or sit in a theatre, or play cards, or bring a new friend to our home, or buy or sell, or sleep or stay awake⁠—in reality we are constantly drawing