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

“Well, Captain, let’s say goodbye for a little while,” said Schavinsky, getting up and stretching himself. “It’s late⁠—we’d better say early. Come and have breakfast with me at one o’clock, Captain. Put the wine down to Karyukov, Madame. If he loves sacred art, then he can pay for the honour of having supper with its priests. Mes compliments!”

The blonde put her bare arm round the captain’s neck and kissed him, and said simply: “Let us go too, darling. It really is late.”

She had a little gay room with a bright blue paper, a pale blue hanging lamp. On the toilet-table stood a round mirror in a frame of light blue satin. There were two oleographs on one wall, Girls Bathing and The Royal Bridegroom, on the other a hanging, with a wide brass bed alongside.

The woman undressed, and with a sense of pleasant relief passed her hands over her body, where her chemise had been folded under her corset. Then she turned the lamp down and sat on the bed, and began calmly to unlace her boots.

Ribnikov sat by the table with his elbows apart and his head resting in his hands. He could not tear his eyes from her big, handsome legs and plump calves, which her black, transparent stockings so closely fitted.

“Why don’t you undress, officer?” the woman asked. “Tell me, darling, why do they call you Japanese General?”

Ribnikov gave a laugh, with his eyes still fixed upon her legs.

“Oh, it’s just nonsense. Only a joke. Do you know the verses:

‘It hardly can be called a sin,
If something’s funny and you grin!⁠ ⁠…’ ”

“Will you stand me some champagne, darling.⁠ ⁠… Since you’re so stingy, oranges will do. Are you going soon or staying the night?”

“Staying the night. Come to me.”

She lay down with him, hastily threw her cigarette over on to the floor and wriggled beneath the blanket.

“Do you like to be next to the wall?” she asked. “Do if you want to. O-oh, how cold your legs are! You know I love army men. What’s your name?”

“Mine?” He coughed and answered in an uncertain tone: “I am Captain Ribnikov. Vassily Alexandrovich Ribnikov!”

“Ah, Vasya! I have a friend called Vasya, a little chap from the Lycée. Oh, what a darling he is!”

She began to sing, pretending to shiver under the bedclothes, laughing and half-closing her eyes:

“ ‘Vasya, Vasya, Vasinke,
It’s a tale you’re telling me.’

“You are like a Japanese, you know, by Jove. Do you know who? The Mikado. We take in the Niva and there’s a picture of him there. It’s late now⁠—else I’d get it to show you. You’re as like as two peas.”

“I’m very glad,” said Ribnikov, quietly kissing her smooth, round shoulder.

“Perhaps you’re really a Japanese? They say you’ve been at the war. Is it true? O-oh, darling, I’m afraid of being tickled⁠—Is it dreadful at the war?”

“Dreadful⁠ ⁠… no, not particularly.⁠ ⁠… Don’t let’s talk about it,” he said wearily. “What’s your name?”

“Clotilde.⁠ ⁠… No, I’ll tell you a secret. My name’s Nastya. They only called me Clotilde here because my name’s so ugly. Nastya, Nastasya⁠—sounds like a cook.”

“Nastya,” he repeated musingly, and cautiously kissed her breast. “No, it’s a nice name. Na⁠—stya,” he repeated slowly.

“What is there nice about it? Malvina, Wanda, Zhenia, they’re nice names⁠—especially Irma.⁠ ⁠… Oh, darling,” and she pressed close to him. “You are a dear⁠ ⁠… so dark. I love dark men. You’re married, surely?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, tell us another. Everyone here says he’s a bachelor. You’ve got six children for sure!”

It was dark in the room, for the windows were shuttered and the lamp hardly burned. Her face was quite close to his head, and showed fantastic and changing on the dim whiteness of the pillow. Already it was different from the simple, handsome, round grey-eyed, Russian face of before. It seemed to have grown thinner, and, strangely changing its expression every minute, seemed now tender, kind, mysterious. It reminded Ribnikov of someone infinitely familiar, long beloved, beautiful and fascinating.

“How beautiful you are!” he murmured. “I love you.⁠ ⁠… I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

He suddenly uttered an unintelligible word, completely foreign to the woman’s ear.

“What did you say?” she asked in surprise.

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Nothing.⁠ ⁠… Nothing at all.⁠ ⁠… My dear! Dear woman⁠ ⁠… you are a woman⁠ ⁠… I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

He kissed her arms, her neck, trembling with impatience, which it gave him wonderful delight to suppress. He was possessed by a tender and tempestuous passion for the well-fed, childless woman, for her big young body, so cared for and beautiful. His longing for woman had been till now suppressed by his austere, ascetic life, his constant weariness, by the intense exertion of his mind and will: now it devoured him suddenly with an intolerable, intoxicating flame.

“Your hands are cold,” she said, awkward and shy. In this man was something strange and alarming which she could in no way understand. “Cold hands and a warm heart.”

“Yes, yes, yes.⁠ ⁠… My heart,” he repeated it like a madman, “My heart is warm, my heart.⁠ ⁠…”

Long ago she had grown used to the outward rites and the shameful details of love; she performed them several times every day⁠—mechanically, indifferently, and often with silent disgust. Hundreds of men, from the aged and old, who put their teeth in a glass of water for the night, to youngsters whose voice was only beginning to break and was bass and soprano at once, civilians, army men, priests in mufti, baldheads and men overgrown with hair from head to foot like monkeys, excited and impotent, morphomaniacs who did not conceal their vice from her, beaux, cripples, rakes, who sometimes nauseated her, boys who cried for the bitterness of their first fall⁠—they all embraced her with shameful words, with long kisses, breathed into her face, moaned in the paroxysm of animal passion, which, she knew beforehand, would then and there be changed to unconcealed and insuperable disgust. Long ago all men’s faces had in her eyes lost every individual trait⁠—as though they had united into one lascivious, inevitable face, eternally