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

“Who is this?” Kashintzev asked in a whisper. “There, this⁠ ⁠…” he was on the point of saying “Sheeny” from habit, but he checked himself and substituted “this woman?”

“Who? That?” Khatzkel asked negligently, with a nod in her direction. “That, your honour, is my wife.”

“How beautiful she is!”

Khatzkel gave a short laugh and shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

“Your honour is mocking me?” he asked reproachfully. “What is she? A poor, ordinary Jewess and nothing else. Hasn’t your honour seen really beautiful women in great cities? Etlia!” he turned to his wife and said something rapidly in Yiddish, at which she suddenly burst out laughing, her white regular teeth gleaming, and she moved one shoulder so high that she seemed to want to rub her cheek against it.

“Is your honour a bachelor or married?” Khatzkel asked with wheedling prudence.

“No, I’m a bachelor. Why do you ask?”

“No, it’s just like this.⁠ ⁠… So your honour is a bachelor? And how is it, your honour, that a solid, learned man like you wouldn’t marry?”

“Oh, that’s a long story.⁠ ⁠… For many reasons. Still, I don’t think it’s too late even now, I’m not so old, am I?”

Khatzkel suddenly moved up close to the doctor, glanced round the room with a frightened air, and said, lowering his voice mysteriously:

“And perhaps your honour will spend the night here? Don’t be afraid, please; the best gentlemen always stop here; yes, the best gentlemen and the officers.”

“No, I must hurry on. There’s no time.”

But Khatzkel, with a cunning, penetrating, and tempting air, half closed one eye after the other and continued to insist:

“It would be better, on my word, to stay, your honour. How can your honour go in such cold as this? May God strike me dead if I’m not speaking the truth.⁠ ⁠… Just listen to what I’m going to tell you, your honour.⁠ ⁠… There’s a retired governess here.⁠ ⁠…”

A swift, mad thought flashed through Kashintzev’s head. He took a stealthy glance at Etlia, who, indifferently, as though not understanding what the talk was about between her husband and his guest, was gazing out through the powdered white window; the next instant he felt ashamed.

“Leave me alone; get out,” curtly ordered Kashintzev.

It was not so much through Khatzkel’s words as through his expression that he understood his drift. But he could not get angry as probably he would have considered it his duty to get angry under other circumstances. The warmth of the room, after a long cold journey, had made his body soft and tender. His head was swimming quietly and gently from the vodka; his face was burning pleasantly. He was inclined to sit still without moving; he experienced a languid sensation of satiety, warmth, and a slight drunkenness. He refused to think of the fact that in a few minutes he must again enter the sledge and continue his dull, endless, frosty route.

And in this curious, happy, lightheaded condition it gave him an inexpressible pleasure, from time to time, as if by chance, as if deceiving himself, to rest his eyes on the beautiful face of the Jewess and think about her, not merely vaguely but in formulated words, as though he were talking with some invisible person.

“Can one describe this face to anyone?” he asked himself. “Can one transmit in ordinary, pale, everyday language those amazing features, those tender, bright colours? Now she is almost facing me. How pure, how astoundingly delicate is the line that goes from the temple to the ear and then downward to the chin, marking the contour of the cheek! The forehead is low, with fine, downy hair on each side. How charming, and feminine, and effective this is! The dark eyes are enormous, so black and enormous that they appear made up, and in them, close to the pupils, living, transparent, golden dots shine like spots of light in a yellow topaz. The eyes are surrounded by a dark, scarcely-defined shadow, and it is impossible to trace this dark shadow, which gives the glance such a lazy and passionate expression, into the tawny, deep colour of the cheeks. The lips are red and full, and, though they are closed just now, they have the appearance of being open, of offering themselves. On the slightly shaded upper lip there is a pretty mole just at the corner of the mouth. What a straight, noble nose and what fine, proud nostrils! My dear, beautiful one!” Kashintzev kept repeating to himself, and so overcome was he that he wanted to cry from the ecstasy and tenderness which had seized hold of him, compressing his chest and tickling his eyes.

Above the bright, tawny colour of the cheeks brown stripes of dried dirt were visible, but to Kashintzev it seemed that no kind of negligence could disfigure this triumphant, blossoming beauty. He also noticed, when she came out from behind the counter, that the hem of her short, pink chintz skirt was wet and dirty, flapping heavily at every step. On her feet were enormous worn-out boots, with flaps sticking out at each side. He noticed that sometimes, when talking to her husband, she quickly pulled the tip of her nose with two fingers, making, as she did so, a snorting noise, and then, just as quickly, passed her index finger under her nose. For all that, nothing vulgar, or funny, or pitiful could spoil her beauty.

“What does happiness consist of?” Kashintzev asked himself, and answered immediately: “The unique happiness is to possess a woman like this, to know that this divine beauty is yours. Hum⁠ ⁠… it’s a trivial, army word⁠—‘to possess’⁠—but what compared to this is all the rest of life⁠—a career, ambition, philosophy, celebrity, convictions, social questions? In a year or two, or three, perhaps, I shall marry. My wife will be from a noble family, a lean girl with light eyebrows and curls on her forehead, educated and hysterical, with narrow hips and a cold, bluish figure, pimpled all over like a plucked hen. She will play the piano, talk