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

trees, the sweet love words, how exalted, old-fashioned, and silly it all sounds! And here, while I am in the act of writing these words, the captain, who has just finished his stirrup-cup, bawls out to me from his bed: “What is it that you are scribbling by the hour. Lieutenant⁠—verses, perhaps? You might honour us with such nobility!”

The captain, I think, hates verses and Nature more than anything in the world. Twisting his mouth sideways, he says sometimes: “Little verses? What earthly use are they?” And he declaims sarcastically:

“In front of me there is a portrait,
Inanimate but in a frame,
In front of it a candle burns⁠ ⁠…

“Rubbish, fiddlesticks, and all that sort of thing.”

All the same, he is not quite a stranger to art and poetry. After an extra drink or two, he sometimes plays the guitar and sings curious old love songs that one has not heard for the last thirty years.

I shall go to bed at once, though I know I shall have difficulty in getting to sleep. But are not reveries, even the most unrealisable ones, the undeniable and consoling privilege of every mortal?

September 21st.

If anyone had told me that the captain and I would dine with André Alexandrovitch himself, I should have laughed in his face. But, incidentally, I have just come back from the Palace and even now I have between my teeth the same cigar that I started smoking in that magnificent study. The captain is in his room, rubbing himself with the formic acid and grumbling something or other about “nobility and all that sort of thing.” However, he is quite bewildered and apparently admits himself a comic figure in the laurels of a toreador and fearless rescuer of one of the fair sex. Probably fate itself has chosen to present us in this place in comic roles: me in my adventure on the lake shore, him in today’s exploit.

But I must tell about everything in order. It was about eleven in the morning. I was sitting at the writing-table, busy with a letter to my people, while waiting for the captain, who was to be in for lunch. He came all right, but in a most unexpected state: covered with dust, red, overwhelmed with confusion, and furious.

I looked at him questioningly. He began to pull off his tunic, railing all the time. “This is⁠ ⁠… this kind of⁠ ⁠… of stupid thing, and⁠ ⁠… all that sort of thing! Imagine, I was coming from the digging. Passing through the yard, I see that old woman⁠—well, the mother or grandmother, whoever she is⁠—crawling out from the hedge in front of the Palace. Yes, crawling. She toddles along, quite quietly, when⁠—goodness knows where it came from⁠—a little calf jumps out, an ordinary little calf, not a year old⁠ ⁠… gallops, you know the way they do, tail up and all that sort of thing⁠ ⁠… simply a calf’s ecstasy! Yes, that’s what had got hold of him. He sees the old woman and starts for her. She begins shouting and shakes her stick at him, which makes him still worse. There he was, dancing round her, just thinking that she was playing with him. My poor old woman rolls on the ground, half dead with fright and unable even to shriek any longer. I see that one must help, and rush up to her at top speed, chase away the stupid calf and find the old woman lying on the ground, almost breathless and voiceless. I thought that she had perhaps caved in from sheer funk. Well, somehow or other, I lifted her up, shook the dust from her and asked her if she were hurt. All she did was to roll her eyes and groan. Finally she gasped out: ‘Take me home.’ I put an arm round her and managed to drag her up on to the verandah, where we found the chatelaine herself, the wife of our host. She was terrified and burst out: ‘What is the matter with you, Maman? What in the world has happened?’ Between us we got the old woman into an armchair and rubbed her over with some sort of scent. She was right enough and gradually found her breath. Then she started embroidering. I simply didn’t know where to turn. ‘I was going,’ she says, ‘along the yard, when suddenly a bull flies straight out at me⁠—an enormous mad bull with bloodshot eyes, his mouth all foaming. He came right at me, banged me in the chest with his horns and dashed me on the ground.⁠ ⁠… Beyond that I remember nothing.’

“Well then, it appeared that I had performed a sort of miracle, that I had sprung at this would-be bull and, on my honour, had practically tossed him over my shoulder. I listened and listened and at last I said: ‘You are mistaken, Madame, it wasn’t a bull, it was just a little calf.’ But I might have talked till I was hoarse. She wouldn’t even listen. ‘It’s all his modesty,’ she said, and that very moment in came their young lady, and she, too, was in a great state. The old woman started telling her the whole comedy over again. The deuce knows what an idiotic business it is. They called me a hero and a saviour, pressed my hands, and all that sort of thing. I listened to them, feeling amused and ashamed, really. Well, I think to myself, I am in for a pretty story and there is nothing to say! I had all the difficulty in the world to get rid of them. What an idiotic affair! I don’t believe one could invent anything sillier.”

We sat down to lunch and, after a few glasses of his mixture, the captain grew calmer. He was just starting for the digging when, suddenly, our boy rushed headlong into the room, his face distorted with awe, his eyes almost jumping out of their sockets.

“The master⁠ ⁠… the master himself is coming here.”

We too, God knows why, got flurried, rushed