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

slowly. Gradually the steep hills showed themselves and then became lost to view, palaces, vineyards, squat Tartar villages, white-walled villas, drowned in wavy green, and, in the background, the pale blue mountains, covered with black patches of forest, and over them the fine airy contours of the peaks.

The passengers were trooping to the taffrail that faced the shore, calling out the names of the places and the names of the owners. In the middle of the deck, near the hatchway, two musicians⁠—a violinist and a harpist⁠—were playing a waltz, and the stale, insipid melody sounded unusually beautiful and stimulating in the sea air,

Voskresenski searched impatiently for the villa that looked like a gynaeceum. And when it appeared again behind the dense woods of the Prince’s Park and became quite visible above its huge white fortress-like wall, he breathed faster and pressed his hands against his heart which had grown cold.

He thought that he could distinguish on the lower terrace a white spot, and he wished to think that she was sitting there now, this strange woman, who had suddenly become so mysterious, so incomprehensible, so attractive to him, and that she was looking out at the boat, sorrowful as he was, and with her own eyes full of tears. He imagined himself standing there on the balcony close beside her, not his self of today, but that of yesterday, of a week ago⁠—that former self which would never return to him. And he was sorry, unbearably, achingly sorry for that phase of life which had gone from him forever and would never return, would never repeat itself. With an unusual distinctness, his eyes veiled in a rainbow-like mist of tears, Anna Georgievna’s face rose in front of him, no longer victorious, or self-assured, but with a gentle, suppliant expression, self-accusing; and she seemed to him now small, hurt, weak, and close to him, as though grafted on to his heart forever.

And with these delicate, sad, compassionate sensations there was blended imperceptibly, like the aroma of a fine wine, the memory of her warm naked, arms, her voice trembling with sensual passion, her beautiful eyes glancing down to his lips.

Hiding itself behind the trees and villas, then showing itself again for a moment, the gynaeceum receded further and further and then suddenly disappeared. Pressing his cheek against the taffrail, Voskresenski looked for a long time in that direction. All this, indeed, had passed like a shadow. He recalled the bitter verse of Solomon, and he cried. But these tears, the tears of youth, clear and light, and this sorrow, were blessed.

Below deck, in the saloon, the lunch bell sounded. A chattering, noisy student, whose acquaintance Voskresenski had made in the port, came up behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and shouted out gaily:

“I’ve been looking for you, my friend; you have provisions, haven’t you? Let’s have a glass of vodka.”

The Jewess

“We’ve passed it, pa‑assed it,” a child’s feeble voice rang pitifully. “Right!” shouted an angry bass behind. “To the right, right, r‑r‑right,” gaily and swiftly sounded a chorus in front. Someone ground his teeth, someone whistled piercingly.⁠ ⁠… A band of dogs broke into a thin bark, at once angry and joyful. “O‑o‑o! Ha‑ha‑ha!” the whole crowd laughed and groaned alternately.

The sledge was tossed up and plunged into a hollow of the road. Kashintzev opened his eyes.

“What’s this?” he asked, with a start.

But the road remained deserted and voiceless. The frosty night was silent above the endless dead white fields. The full moon was in the middle of the sky and a fully outlined dark blue shadow sliding along the sledge, broken by the open snowdrifts, seemed squat and monstrous. The dry, elastic snow squeaked, like india-rubber, beneath the runners.

“Ah, but that’s the snow squeaking,” Kashintzev thought. “How odd!” he said aloud.

At the sound of his voice the driver turned round. His dark face, the beard and moustache whitened under the frost, looked like the mask of some rough wild animal plastered over with cotton wool.

“What? Two more versts, nothing much,” said the driver.

“This is snow,” Kashintzev was thinking, once more yielding to drowsiness. “It’s only snow. How strange!”

“Strange, strange,” lisped one of the little sledge-bells restlessly and distinctly. “Strange, stra‑ange, stra‑ange.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, oh, oh, just look!” a woman shouted in front of the sledge. The crowd that was coming in a mass to meet him all started talking at once, crying and singing. Once more, as though roused to fury, the dogs barked.

Somewhere in the distance a locomotive droned.⁠ ⁠… And immediately, in spite of his drowsiness, Kashintzev recalled with extraordinary vividness the station buffet, with its pitiful, dusty display⁠—clusters of electric burners under a dirty ceiling, the soiled walls broken by enormous windows, artificial palms on the tables, stiffly-folded napkins, electroplate vases, bouquets of dry, feathery grass, pyramids of bottles, pink and green liqueur glasses.

All that was last night. His medical colleagues were seeing him off. Kashintzev had just been appointed to a new post⁠—that of junior doctor in a far-off infantry regiment. They were a party of five, and they dragged the heavy station chairs round to the doctors’ usual little table in the corner. They drank beer and talked with a forced heartiness and assumed animation, as if they were acting a seeing-off scene on the stage. The handsome and self-assured Ruhl, his eyes flashing in an exaggerated way, glancing round for applause and talking so that strangers could hear him, said in his familiar, affected voice:

“That’s it, old man. Our whole life from birth to death consists only of meeting and seeing one another off. You can write this down as a souvenir in your notebook: ‘Evening aphorisms and maxims of Dr. von Ruhl.’ ”

He had scarcely finished speaking when the fat railway official, with the face of an angry bulldog, showed himself at the door, shaking his bell and shouting in a singsong voice, with abrupt stops and chokes:

“Fi‑irst bell. Kiev, Jmerinka, Odess.⁠ ⁠… The tra‑ain is on the second platform.”

And now, squatting uncomfortably on