Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

you!” He hammered a nail into the wall above his head, fixed a cord from a sugar-loaf to it, drew it around his throat, and crawled off the bed. It wasn’t no great trick; didn’t take much brains! One day at twilight I was standing in the store, putting some things to rights⁠—when suddenly someone thunders again and again against a shutter in the house. My heart just went down into my shoes. I jump out on the threshold⁠—it’s Polkanikha.

“What do you want?”

“Nicanor Matveich has passed away!”

She barked it out, turned on her heel, and went for home. But I, in the first excitement, didn’t take anything into account⁠—it was just like I had been scalded with steam from fright.⁠ ⁠… I threw a shawl over my shoulders, and started after her. She runs, with her skirt caught up in front, stumbling, stooping⁠—and I keep on running too.⁠ ⁠… It was just a disgrace before the whole town! I run, and can’t understand a thing. I had only one thought⁠—I’m ruined forever! Just think of what he’d gone and done⁠—may God not bear it against him! Just think what little conscience some people have! I run up to the house⁠—and there are as many people there as at a fire. The front entrance is ajar; whoever wants to pushes his way in⁠—everybody is curious, naturally. In my lightheadedness I tried to get in there too. But, glory be, something seemed to hit me over the head; I came to my senses and backed out. Maybe that was what saved me⁠—else I would have known what crow tastes like. If anyone⁠—why, even this Polkanikha, say⁠—had remembered me!⁠ ⁠… “Here, now, your honour, is the one we think is to blame, who is the reason of it all; just you question her,”⁠—and all would have been over with me. Try and wriggle out of it then. A person may not have a blessed thing to do with it, but they grab you and put you away.⁠ ⁠… It wouldn’t be the first time a thing like that has happened.

Well, soon as they buried him, my heart eased up a little. I’m getting ready for the wedding, hurrying to wind up my business, to sell what I could without loss⁠—when again there’s grief and woe. I was knocked off my feet as it was, what with one worry and another, and was all roasted from the heat⁠—the heat that year was simply unbearable, with dust, with a hot wind, especially in our neighbourhood, in Glukhaya Ulitza, standing half way up on a hill⁠—when suddenly there was another bit of news: Nikolai Ivannich had taken offense. He sends over this same matchmaker, now, that had brought us together⁠—a terrible slut, she was, and kept both her eyes peeled; never fear, it was she herself that put him, Nikolai Ivannich, up to it. Nikolai Ivannich lets me know through her as how he’s putting off the wedding until the first of September⁠—he’s got a lot of affairs to attend to, now⁠—and lets me know about my son, about Vanniya: to figure out what was best to be done with him; that he was to be placed anywhere at all⁠—“Because, now,” he says, “I won’t take him into my house, for no amount. Even though he be your own son,” he says, “he’s bound to clear ruin us, and he’ll be upsetting me.” (And really, just think of his position! Since he’s never known any turmoil, had never raised any rows, of course he was afraid of any excitement: whenever he’d get excited, everything in his head would get muddled⁠—he wouldn’t be able to say a word.) “Let her get rid of him,” he says. And where was I to place him, how was I to get rid of him? The young fellow had gotten out of hand entirely; with strangers he’d break his neck altogether. But there was no way of getting away from his riddance. As it was, I was all through with him ever since he’d come to know Phenka: she had just bewitched him, the bitch! He’d sleep all day and drink all night⁠—turning night into day.⁠ ⁠… I couldn’t even begin to tell the trouble I went through with him that summer! He got me so that I began to melt away like a candle; I couldn’t hold a spoon, my hands shook so. Soon as it got dark I’d sit down on the bench before the house and wait until he’d come in off the street⁠—I was afeared the boys in the city might do him up.⁠ ⁠…

Well, having gotten such a decision from Nikolai Ivannich, I call my son to me: “So-and-so, my little son,” I says, “I’ve borne with you long enough, but you’ve turned out a weakling and have gone astray; you have disgraced me all over this neighbourhood. You’ve got used to having everything soft and nice, now, until at last you’ve become a tramp, a drunkard. You haven’t got a gift like I have⁠—no matter how many times I fell, I always got up again; but you can’t save up anything for yourself. Here am I⁠—I’ve come to be respected, and I own real estate, and I drink and eat no worse nor other folk; I don’t deny my heart nothing⁠—and all along of being governed by common sense, always and above all things. But you, I see, want to stay a flutter-fly, like you’d always been. It’s time you was getting off my neck.⁠ ⁠…”

He sits there and never a word out of him⁠—just picks the oilcloth on the table. I had just called him out to dinner, for he’d been sleeping all along, and his mug was all puffed up.

“Well, why don’t you say something?” I asks. “Don’t you be tearing that oilcloth⁠—get one of your own first; just you answer me.”

Again he don’t say a word; he bends his head and his lips quiver.

“You’re going to marry?” he says.

“Well,” I says, “it ain’t known yet whether I am or