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

the low scat of the tugging sledge, Kashintzev laughed aloud from pleasure⁠—so very bright and clear were these recollections. But immediately the tiring, relentless impression of the endlessness of this dreary road returned to him. From the moment when, in the morning, he had alighted at the small railway station to get into this post sledge only six or seven hours had elapsed, but he seemed to have been driving like this for whole weeks, or months; he seemed to have had time to change, to grow older, duller and more indifferent to everything since the day before. Somewhere on the way he had met a beggar, drunk and in rags, with a broken nose and a shoulder naked to the frost; somewhere he had seen a long thin horse with an arched neck and a chocolate-coloured, thick velvety coat plunging and refusing to be harnessed; someone, it seemed, had said pleasantly a long, long time ago: “The road is good today, your honour; you’ll be there before you have time to look round.” Kashintzev at that moment had been contemplating the snow-plain which was reddened by the evening sunset. But now all this was muddled and had receded into a kind of troubled, unreal distance, so that it was impossible to remember where, when, and in what order it had all happened. From time to time a light sleep would close his eyes, and then to his befogged senses there would become audible strange shrieks, grindings, barks, shouts, laughs, and mumblings. But he would open his eyes and the fantastic sounds would transform themselves into the simple squeaks of the sledge-runners and the tinkling of the sledge-bells, while to right and left the sleeping white fields extended, now as always, and in front of him protruded the black bent back of the driver, and still the horse’s haunches moved regularly as they swished to right and left their knotted tails.

“Where shall I take you, your honour; to the post office or to the shelter?” the driver asked.

Kashintzev raised his head. He was driving now along a straight street in a village. The beaten-down road in front gleamed in the moonlight like burnished blue steel. On both sides of the road dark, piteous little houses, overladen by their heavy snow hats, peeped out of the deep white drifts. The village seemed to have died out of existence; not a dog barked, there were no lights in the windows, no one could be seen on the road. There was something terrible and sad in this numbness of human habitations that, lost in the deep snow, appear to nestle fearfully against each other.

“Where’s that⁠—the shelter?” Kashintzev asked.

“Your honour doesn’t know? Movsha Khatzkel’s shelter. Gentlemen always stop there. You can get tea, eggs, a snack of some kind. One can spend the night there, too; there are five rooms.”

“Well, all right, let’s go to the shelter.”

Now for the first time at the thought of food and warm lodgings Kashintzev realised how very cold and hungry he had become. And the low, blind little houses, buried in the snow, were still coming to meet him and still receding, and it seemed that there would be no end to them.

“When shall we get there?” Kashintzev asked impatiently.

“Very soon. It’s a long village, a verst and a half. Now, young ones,” the driver shouted ferociously at the horses in his raucous voice, and, raising himself slightly, he whirled his knout over his head and tugged at the reins.

In the distance a red spot of light was discernible and began to grow, now hidden by some unseen obstacle, now flashing out again. At last the horses, like toys whose windings had run down, stopped of their own accord at the travellers’ house and at once weakly lowered their heads to the ground. The vaulted, semicircular entrance formed an enormous gaping corridor through the whole house, but further on, in the yard, brightly lit up by the moon, one could see carts with their shafts raised, straw strewn on the snow, and the silhouettes of horses under the flat sheds. On each side of the yard entrance two windows, covered with snow, shone with a warm, inviting light.

Someone opened the door, which squeaked piercingly on its hinges, and Kashintzev entered a room. White clouds of frosty air, which apparently had been waiting just for this, rushed behind him in a mad whirl. At first Kashintzev could distinguish nothing; his spectacles were immediately covered with vapour and he could see in front of him only two shiny, blurred rainbow circles.

The driver who had followed him shouted:

“Listen, Movsha, here’s a gentleman for you. Where are you?”

From somewhere or other there emerged a short, thickset, light-bearded Jew in a high cap and a knitted tobacco-coloured waistcoat. As he came he munched something and wiped his mouth hurriedly with his hand. “Good evening, your honour, good evening,” he said amicably, and at once, with an air of compassion, he shook his head and smacked his lips: “Tze, tze, tze! How frozen your honour is, good gracious! Just let me take your coat, I’ll hang it on a nail. Will your honour order tea? Perhaps something to eat? Oh, how frozen your honour is!”

“Thank you, yes,” Kashintzev ejaculated. His lips were so shrivelled from cold that he moved them with difficulty; his chin had become motionless as though it didn’t belong to him, and his feet seemed to him soft, weak, and sensitive as if in cotton wool.

When his spectacles had quite thawed, he looked round. It was a large room with crooked windows and an earthen floor, plastered with pale blue lime which, here and there, had fallen out in large chunks, leaving the wooden shingles bare. Along the walls narrow benches were stretched and wet slanting tables, greasy from age. Almost under the very ceiling a lamp was burning. The smaller back part of the room was partitioned off by a many-coloured chintz curtain, from which there emanated the odour of