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

Provençale, I was robbed of my pocketbook. I arrive at C. (this very little town of my story) with the small change left in my purse and a lanky, but good reddish-yellow English portmanteau. I put up at a hotel⁠—naturally the Petersburg Hotel⁠—and begin to send telegram after telegram. Silence of the grave. Yes, yes, literally of the grave, because at the very moment when the thief was stealing my pocketbook⁠—what tricks fate plays!⁠—at that very moment my friend and companion died in a cab from paralysis of the heart. All his things, including his money, were sealed and for some idiotic reason or other the wrestling with officials lasted a month and a half. Did the widow, deeply lamenting, know about my money or did she not? I can’t answer that question, myself. However, she received all my telegrams, every one of them, but remained stubbornly silent⁠—silent from petty, jealous, silly, feminine revenge. All the same, these telegrams were of great use to me later on. After removing the seals, an advocate, a complete stranger to me, who was looking after the widow’s inheritance, came across them quite by accident, made the widow ashamed of herself, and, at his own risk, transferred five hundred roubles to me at the theatre. But I must add the fact that they were not mere telegrams but tragic lamentations of twenty or thirty words each. III

I had been at the Petersburg Hotel for ten days already. My tragic lamentations had quite exhausted my purse. The hotel proprietor⁠—a gloomy, sleepy, hairy Ukrainian, with the face of an assassin⁠—had long ago ceased to believe in my word. I showed him certain letters and papers by which he could have, etc., etc., but all he did was to turn his face scornfully away and snort. Finally, they served me with dinner as though I were Gogol’s Khlestakov: “The proprietor has said that this is for the last time.”

And then came the day when there was left in my pocket a single, orphan, greenish silver twenty kopek-piece. That morning the proprietor said insolently that he was not going to feed me or keep me any longer, but was going to report me to the police inspector. By his tone I could see that he would stop at nothing.

I left the hotel and wandered about the town. I remember entering a transport office and another place to look for work. Naturally it was refused me at the very first words. Sometimes I would, sit down on one of the green benches that lay all along the main street between the high pyramid-like poplars. My head swam; I felt sick from hunger. But not for a moment did the idea of suicide enter my mind. How many, many times in my tangled life have I been on the border of these thoughts, but then a year would pass, sometimes a month, or even simply ten minutes, and suddenly everything would be changed, everything would be going luckily again, gaily, nicely. And all through that day, as I wandered about the hot, dull town, all I kept saying to myself was: “Ye‑es, my dear Pavel Andreevitch, you’ve got into a nice mess.”

I wanted to eat. But through some sort of mysterious presentiment I clung to my twenty kopeks. Dusk was already falling when I saw on the hoardings a red poster. In any case I had nothing to do. So I mechanically approached it and read that they were giving that day in the town gardens Goutzkov’s tragedy, Uriel Akosta, in which so-and-so and so-and-so were to appear. Two names were printed in large black letters: An artist from the Petersburg theatres, Madame Androssova, and the well-known artist from Kharkoff, M. Lara-Larsky; the others names were in small print. Last of all, in the smallest letters, came: Petrov, Serguiev, Ivanov, Sidorov, Grigoriev, Nikolaev, and others. Stage-manager, M. Samoilenko. Managing director, M. Valerianov.

A sudden desperate inspiration seized me. I rushed across to the barber, Theodore from Moscow, and, with my last twenty kopeks, had my moustache and short pointed beard shaved off. Good Lord! What a morose, naked face glanced at me from the looking-glass! I could scarcely believe my own eyes. Instead of a man of thirty, not too good-looking, but at all events of decent appearance, there in the looking-glass in front of me, swathed up to his throat in a barber’s sheet, sat an old, burned-out, inveterate, provincial comic with traces of all sorts of vice in his face and apparently not quite sober.

“You are going to work in our theatre?” asked the barber’s assistant as he shook off the sheet.

“Yes,” I answered proudly. “Here you are.”

IV

On my way to the town gardens, I thought to myself: There’s no misfortune without some good in it. I shall be taken at once for an old and experienced sparrow. In these little summer theatres, every useless man is useful. I shall be modest at the beginning⁠ ⁠… about fifty roubles⁠ ⁠… say forty a month. The future will show.⁠ ⁠… I’ll ask for an advance of about twenty roubles⁠ ⁠… no, that’s too much⁠ ⁠… say, ten roubles. The first thing I’ll do with it will be to send a hair-raising telegram⁠ ⁠… five times five⁠—twenty-five and a nought⁠—two roubles fifty kopeks, and fifteen extra charge⁠—that’s two roubles and sixty-five kopeks. On the remainder I’ll get through somehow or other until Ilia arrives. If they want to test me⁠ ⁠… well, what about it? I shall recite something⁠—why not the monologue of Pimen in Boris Goudounov?

And I began aloud, in a deep, pompous, strangled tone:

“And yet ano⁠—other fa⁠—arewell word.”

A passerby jumped away from me quite frightened. I felt ashamed and cleared my throat. But I was already getting near the town gardens. A military band was playing; slim young ladies of the district, dressed in pink and sky blue, were walking about without their hats and behind them stalked, laughing aloud, their hands thrust in their jackets, their white caps