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

his white hairy hands. “Yes, Mr. Student, I know you don’t like to hear that, but unfortunately, that’s how it is. Take fish, to begin with. Where in the whole world will you find another Astrakan caviar? And the sterlets from Kama, the sturgeons, the salmon from the Dvina, the fish from Belozer? Be kind enough to tell me if you can find in France anything to match the Ladoga fish or the Gatchina trout. I’d just like you to find them! I beg you to do it with all my heart. Now take game: we have everything you can wish for and everything in abundance: wood-hens, heath-hens, duck, snipe, pheasants from the Caucasus, woodcocks. Then just think of our Tcherkass meat, Rostov sucking-pig, the Nijni cucumber, the Moscow milk-calf. In a word, we’ve got everything⁠ ⁠… Serguei, give me some more botvinia soup.”

Pavel Arkadievitch ate a great deal in an unpleasant and gluttonly way. He must have had hungry days in his youth, thought the student, looking at him sideways. Sometimes, in the middle of a sentence, Zavalishine would put too large a morsel into his mouth and then there would be a long torturing pause, during which he would chew with objectionable haste while he looked at his interlocutor with his eyes starting out of his head, grunting, moving his eyebrows and impatiently shaking his head and even his whole body. During such pauses, Voskresenski would lower his eyes so as to conceal his antipathy.

“Wine, Doctor?” Zavalishine offered it with careless politeness. “Let me recommend this little white label. It’s Orianda ’93. Your glass, Demosthenes.”

“I don’t drink, Pavel Arkadievitch. You’ll excuse me.”

“This is as‑ton‑ishing. A young man who doesn’t drink and doesn’t smoke. It’s a bad sign.” Zavalishine suddenly raised his voice severely. “A bad sign. I’m always suspicious of a young fellow who neither drinks nor smokes. He’s either a miser or a gambler or a loose-liver. Pardon, I’m not referring to you, Mr. Empedocles. Another glass, Doctor? This is Orianda⁠—really not half a bad sort of little wine. One asks oneself why one should get from the sausage-merchants different Moselle wines and other kinds of sourness, when they make such delicious wine right at home in our own Mother Russia. Eh, what do you think, Professor?” He addressed the student in his provoking way.

Voskresenski gave a forced smile.

“Everyone to his own taste.”

“ ‘De gustibus?’ I know. I’ve had a little learning, too, in my time. Besides, somewhere or other⁠—it doesn’t matter where or how⁠—the great Dostoevsky has expressed the same idea. Wine, of course, is nothing in itself, mere Kinderspiel, but the principle is important. The principle is important, I tell you,” he suddenly shouted. “If I am a true Russian, then everything round me must be Russian. And I want to spit on the Germans and the French. And on the Jews too. Isn’t it so, Doctor? Am I not speaking the truth?”

“Ye‑es; in fact⁠—the principle⁠—that is, of course, yes,” Iliashenko said vaguely in his bass voice and with a gesture of doubt.

“I’m proud of being a Russian,” Zavalishine went on with heat. “Oh, I see perfectly that my convictions seem merely funny to you, Mr. Student, and, so to speak, barbarous. But what about it? Take me as I am. I speak my thoughts and opinions straight out, because I’m a straight man, a real Russian, who is accustomed to speaking his mind. Yes, I say, straight out to everyone: we’ve had enough of standing on our hind legs before Europe. Let her be afraid of us, not we of her. Let them feel that the last decisive powerful word is for the great, glorious, healthy Russian people and not for those cockroaches’ remains! Glory be to God⁠ ⁠…” Zavalishine suddenly crossed himself expansively, looked up at the ceiling, and gave a sob. “Thank God that you can find now more and more of those people who are beginning to understand that the short-tailed German jacket is already cracking on the mighty Russian shoulders. These people are not ashamed of their language, of their faith, of their country, and confidently they stretch out their hands to the wise Government and say: ‘Lead us.’ ”

“Paul, you’re getting excited,” Anna Georgievna remarked lazily.

“I’m not getting in the least excited,” her husband snarled angrily. “I’m only expressing what every honest Russian subject ought to think and feel. Perhaps someone is not of my opinion? Well then, let him answer me. I am ready to listen with pleasure to a different opinion. There, for instance, it seems funny to Mr. Vozdvijenski⁠ ⁠…”

The student did not raise his downcast eyes, but became pale and his nostrils quivered and dilated.

“My name is Voskresenski,” he said in a low voice.

“I beg your pardon, that’s exactly what I meant to say: Voznesenski. I beg your pardon. Well, I just ask you this: instead of making wry faces, hadn’t you better break down my arguments, show me my error, prove that I’m not right? I say this one thing: we’re spitting into our own soup. They’re selling our holy, mighty, adored country to any sort of foreign riffraff. Who manage our naphtha? The Sheenies, the Armenians, the Americans. In whose hands are the coal, the mines, the steamers, the electricity? In the hands of Sheenies, Belgians, Germans. Who have got the sugar factories? The Sheenies, the Germans, the Poles. And above all, everywhere, the Sheeny, the Sheeny, the Sheeny.⁠ ⁠… Who are our doctors? Sheenies. Who are our chemists, bankers, barristers? To Hell with the whole lot of you! The whole of our Russian literature dances to the Sheenies’ tune and never gets out of it. Why are you making such terrible eyes at me, Anitchka? You don’t know what that means? I’ll explain later. Yes, there’s point in the joke that every Sheeny is a born Russian littérateur. Oh, my goodness, the Sheenies, the Israelites, the Zionists, the Innocents oppressed, the Holy Tribe. I’ll say just this.”⁠—Zavalishine struck the edge of the table loudly and fiercely with his outstretched finger⁠—“I’ll