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

“At this stage, I was no longer sorry for her, but, on the other hand, I felt no irritation. A kind of stupid feeling mastered me and the cold, heavy, insatiable necessity of murder controlled my hands, my feet, my every movement. But my conscience was asleep, covered up, as it were, in a sort of dirty wrapper. I felt cold inside and there was a sickening, tickling sensation of faintness in my heart and stomach. But I could not stop.

“I remembered, too, how the sweet, clear winter morning had, somehow or other, strangely changed and darkened. The snow had become yellow, the sky grey, and in me myself there was a dull wooden indifference to everything, to the sky, to the sun, even to the trees with their clean blue shadows.

“I was returning to the shed for the third time, and once more with a loaded revolver. But Iazykant came out of the shed, holding by the hind legs something red, torn to pieces, the intestines falling out, but something that was still shrieking.

“Seeing me, he said, almost roughly: ‘That’s enough!⁠ ⁠… Don’t! go! I’ll do it myself.’

“He tried not to look into my eyes, but I caught clearly an expression of utter disgust round his mouth and I knew that this disgust was at me.

“He went round the corner and banged the cat’s head with all his might on a log. And it was over.”

The speaker paused; one could hear him clearing his throat and moving on the sofa. Then he continued in a tone that had become still more restrained, but with a touch of anguish and perplexity in his voice:

“Well, then⁠ ⁠… this sanguinary dream did not get out of my head the whole of that day. At night I could not sleep, and kept on thinking of the dirty white kitten. Again and again I saw myself going to the shed and hearing that suffering, angry grumbling and seeing those green spots full of terror and hate, and still shooting, shooting into them endlessly.⁠ ⁠… I must confess, ladies and gentlemen, that this is the most sinister and repulsive impression of my whole life.⁠ ⁠… I’m not at all sorry for that scurvy white cat.⁠ ⁠… No⁠ ⁠… I’ve shot elks and bears. Three years ago I shot a horse at the races. Besides, I’ve been at the war, deuce take it!⁠ ⁠… No, it’s not that. But to my last hour I shall remember how all of a sudden, from the depths of my soul, a sort of dark, evil, but, at the same time, invincible, unknown, and awful force took possession of it, blinding it, overflowing from it. Ah, that miasmic fog of blood, that woodening, stifling indifference, that quiet lust of murder!”

Again he was silent and then from a far corner someone’s low voice said: “Yes, it’s true⁠ ⁠… what a dreadful memory!”

But the other interrupted with emotion: “No, no, for God’s sake think of those unhappy ones who have gone to kill, kill, kill. It is my belief that for them the day has been always black as night. It is my belief that they have been sick with blood, but, for all that, they had to go on. They could still sleep, eat, drink⁠—even talk, even laugh⁠—but it was not they themselves who did these things, but the devil who possessed them, with his murky eyes and viscous skin.⁠ ⁠… I call them ‘unhappy’ because I imagine them, not as they are now, but years later, when they are old men. Never, never will they forget the disgust and terror which, in these days, have mutilated and defiled their souls forever. And I imagine the long sleepless nights of these old men⁠—their horrible dreams. All through the nights they will dream that they are going along dismal roads under a dark sky with disarmed, bound people standing, in an endless chain, on both sides of them, and that they strike these people, fire on them, smash their heads with the butt-ends of their rifles. And in these murderers there is neither anger nor sorrow nor repentance, only they cannot stop for the filthy delirium of blood has taken hold of their brains. And they will wake in terror, trembling at the sight of their reflections in the glass. They will cry out and blaspheme and they will envy those whose lives had been cut off by an avenging hand in the flower of their youth. But the devil who has drunk of their souls will never leave them. Even in their death-agony, their eyes will see the blood that they have shed.”

It was before dinner and Dr. Iliashenko had just finished bathing with a student named Voskresenski. The warm, southeast wind had whipped the sea into eddies. Close to the shore, the water was murky and had a sharp smell of fish and sea-plants. The hot, swinging waves did not cool and refresh one’s body, but on the contrary, fatigued and unnerved it still more.

“Come on out, my colleague,” the doctor exclaimed as he splashed a handful of water over his own large white stomach. “We shall get faint if we go on bathing like this.”

From the bathing-machine, they had to climb up the mountain along a narrow path which was laid in friable black slate, zigzag fashion, covered with small rough oak and pale green sea-cole heads. Voskresceski climbed up easily, his long muscular legs moving in spacious strides. But the fat doctor, who wore a wet towel instead of a hat, succumbed to the heat and to his asthma. He came to a dead stop at last with his hand on his heart, shaking his head and breathing laboriously.

“Phew! I can’t stick it any longer. I’d almost rather be back in the water. Let’s stop for a minute.”

They halted in a flat circle between two joints of the path, and both of them turned round to face the sea.

Flogged by the wind, now dazzlingly lit up by the