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

Jewish people must degenerate because it is penetrated by no drop of fresh blood. There are only two courses left to it⁠—either to become fused with other nationalities, renewing its sap in them, or perish.’ Yes, then I could find no reply, but now I should bring him up to this woman behind the counter and say: ‘There it is, just look at the security for the immortality of the Jewish people! Khatzkel may be puny, pitiful, and sickly. I admit that the eternal struggle for life has stamped upon his face the cruel traces of cheating, cowardice, and distrust. For thousands of years he has been “scratching a living” somehow or other, has been stifling in different ghettos. But the Jewish woman guards ever the type and spirit of the race, carries carefully through streams of blood under the yoke of violence, the holy fire of the national genius, and will never allow it to be extinguished.’ As I look at her there I feel the black abyss of centuries opening itself behind her. There is a miracle, a divine mystery here. Oh, what am I in her eyes⁠—I, the barbarian of yesterday, the intellectual of today⁠—what am I in her eyes? What am I in comparison with this living enigma, perhaps the most inexplicable and the greatest in the history of humanity?”

Suddenly Kashintzev came to himself. There was a certain agitation in the lodging-house. Khatzkel was running from one window to another and, with his palms pressed against his temples, was trying to distinguish something in the darkness outside, Etlia, disgusted and angry, was pulling the collar of the drunken peasant, who still kept lifting and lowering his red, senseless face, swollen with sleep, with pouches under the lids, while he snorted savagely.

“Trokhim, listen⁠—well, Trokhi‑im. I say to you, get up!” the Jewess was urging impatiently, murdering the Ukrainian language.

“Hush! The police inspector,” Khatzkel muttered in a frightened whisper. He smacked his lips repeatedly, shook his head in despair, rushed impetuously to the door, and threw it open exactly at the moment when a tall police official, freeing himself from the collar of his thick sheepskin coat, was in the act of entering the room.

“But listen, Trokhim, get up,” Etlia said in a tragic whisper.

The peasant raised his bloodshot face and, twisting his mouth, began to yell.

“What’s this?” the inspector roared fiercely, with rolling eyes. Indignantly he threw his sheepskin coat into the hands of Khatzkel, who had run up to him. Then, puffing his chest out like a wheel, he strutted a few steps forward with the magnificent air of an opera colonel.

The peasant got up, staggering and flopping against the table with his hands, his body, and his feet. Something like conscious fear flashed into his bluish, swollen face.

“Your high⁠ ⁠… honour,” he muttered, shambling helplessly where he stood.

“Out,” suddenly thundered the inspector, in such a terrible voice that the nervous Kashintzev started and huddled himself up behind his table. “Out with you at once.”

The peasant swung forward and feebly stretched his hands out so as to clutch and kiss authority’s right hand, but Khatzkel was already dragging him away to the door, by the back of his collar.

“You,” shouted the inspector, fiercely flashing his eyes on Etlia, “deal in vodka? Without a licence? You receive horse-stealers? Be ca‑areful. I’ll have you run in.”

The woman raised her shoulders in an ugly way, bent her head sideways and, with a pitiful and submissive expression, closed her eyes as if she were expecting a blow from above. Kashintzev felt that the chain of his light, agreeable, and important thoughts had suddenly broken and could not be mended; he felt awkward, ashamed of these thoughts, ashamed in his own eyes.

“May God punish me, Colonel, your honour,” Etlia was swearing with passionate conviction. “May God strike me blind and not let me see tomorrow’s daylight and my own children! His honour, the colonel, knows himself what can I do if a drunken peasant will turn in here? My husband is a sick man and I am a poor weak woman.”

“All right.” The inspector stopped her severely. “That’s enough.”

At that moment he noticed Kashintzev, and then and there tossing his head back with the air of a conqueror, he puffed his chest out and flourished his immaculate light whiskers to right and left. But suddenly a smile showed itself on his face.

“Basil Basilitch! Old crocodile! This is a bit of luck,” he exclaimed, with theatrical joviality. “The deuce knows how long it is since we’ve seen each other. I beg your pardon.” The inspector stopped abruptly at the table. “I believe I have made a mistake.”

He brought his hand up smartly to the peak of his cap. Kashintzev, half rising, did the same rather awkwardly.

“Be magnanimous and forgive. I took you for my colleague the Poitchanov inspector. What an absurd mistake! Once more⁠—I beg your pardon. However, you know the uniforms are so alike that⁠ ⁠… In any case, allow me to introduce myself: the local inspector and, so to speak, the God of Thunder⁠—Irissov, Pavel Afinogenytch.”

Kashintzev rose once more and gave his name.

“As everything is so unusual, permit me to sit near you,” Irissov said and again he smartly touched his cap and clicked his heels. “Very pleased to meet you. You there, Khatzkel, bring me the leather case in my sledge; it’s underneath the seat. Forgive me, are you going far, doctor?”

“To Goussiatine. I’ve just been posted there.”

“Ah, in an infantry regiment? There are some devilish good fellows among the officers, though they drink like horses. It’s a scabby little town, but, as localities go, it’s residential in a way. So, we’ll meet each other? Delighted.⁠ ⁠… And you’ve just been⁠ ⁠… ha, ha⁠ ⁠… a witness of the paternal reprimand that I was giving.”

“Yes⁠—partly.” Kashintzev forced himself to smile.

“What’s to be done?⁠ ⁠… What’s to be done? That’s my character. I like to be a little severe.⁠ ⁠… You know I’m no lover of all sorts of faultfinding and complaints and other absurdities of the