Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

Near the bathhouse, in the grass, lay a huge white dog, whining piteously. Its head, black on the crown, was raised to the moon, which pursued its way in the cold sky; its hind legs were strangely thrown backward, while the front ones, firm and straight, pressed hard against the ground.

In the pale green and unreal light of the moon it seemed enormous, so huge a dog was surely never seen on earth. It was thick and fat. The black spot, which began at the head and stretched in uneven strands down the entire spine, seemed like a woman’s loosened hair. No tail was visible, presumably it was turned under. The fur on the body was so short that in the distance the dog seemed wholly naked, and its hide shone dimly in the moonlight, so that altogether it resembled the body of a nude woman, who lay in the grass and bayed at the moon.

The man with the black beard took aim. The curly-haired lad crossed himself and mumbled something.

The discharge of a rifle sounded in the night air. The dog gave a groan, jumped up on its hind legs, became a naked woman, who, her body covered with blood, started to run, all the while groaning, weeping and raising cries of distress.

The black-bearded one and the curly-haired one threw themselves in the grass, and began to moan in wild terror.

Volodya Lovlev, a pale meagre lad of twelve, had returned home from school and was waiting for his dinner. He was standing in the drawing-room at the piano, and was turning over the pages of the latest number of the Niva which had come only that morning.

A leaflet of thin grey paper fell out; it was an announcement issued by an illustrated journal. It enumerated the future contributors⁠—the list contained about fifty well-known literary names; it praised at some length the journal as a whole and in detail its many-sidedness, and it presented several specimen illustrations.

Volodya began to turn the pages of the leaflet in an absent way and to look at the miniature pictures. His large eyes, looked wearily out of his pale face.

One page suddenly caught his attention, and his wide eyes opened slightly wider. Running from top to bottom were six drawings of hands throwing shadows in dark silhouette upon a white wall⁠—the shadows representing the head of a girl with an amusing three-cornered hat, the head of a donkey, of a bull, the sitting figure of a squirrel, and other similar things.

Volodya smiled and looked very intently at them. He was quite familiar with this amusement. He could hold the fingers of one hand so as to cast a silhouette of a hare’s head on the wall. But this was quite another matter, something that Volodya had not seen before; its interest for him was that here were quite complex figures cast by using both hands.

Volodya suddenly wished to reproduce these shadows. Of course there was no use trying now, in the uncertain light of a late autumn afternoon.

He had better try it later in his own room. In any case, it was of no use to anyone.

Just then he heard the approaching footsteps and voice of his mother. He flushed for some reason or other and quickly put the leaflet into his pocket, and left the piano to meet her. She looked at him with a caressing smile as she came toward him; her pale, handsome face greatly resembled his, and she had the same large eyes.

She asked him, as she always did: “Well, what’s the news today?”

“There’s nothing new,” said Volodya dejectedly.

But it occurred to him at once that he was being ungracious, and he felt ashamed. He smiled genially and began to recall what had happened at school; but this only made him feel sadder.

“Pruzhinin has again distinguished himself,” and he began to tell about the teacher who was disliked by his pupils for his rudeness. “Lentyev was reciting his lesson and made a mess of it, and so Pruzhinin said to him: ‘Well, that’s enough; sit down, blockhead!’ ”

“Nothing escapes you,” said his mother, smiling.

“He’s always rude.”

After a brief silence Volodya sighed, then complained: “They are always in a hurry.”

“Who?” asked his mother.

“I mean the masters. Every one is anxious to finish his course quickly and to make a good show at the examination. And if you ask a question you are immediately suspected of trying to take up the time until the bell rings, and to avoid having questions put to you.”

“Do you talk much after the lessons?”

“Well, yes⁠—but there’s the same hurry after the lessons to get home, or to study the lessons in the girls’ classrooms. And everything is done in a hurry⁠—you are no sooner done with the geometry than you must study your Greek.”

“That’s to keep you from yawning.”

“Yawning! I’m more like a squirrel going round on its cage-wheel. It’s exasperating.”

His mother smiled lightly.

After dinner Volodya went to his room to prepare his lessons. His mother saw that the room was comfortable, that nothing was lacking in it. No one ever disturbed Volodya here; even his mother refrained from coming in at this time. She would come in later, to help Volodya if he needed help.

Volodya was an industrious and even a clever pupil. But he found it difficult today to apply himself. No matter what lesson he tried he could not help remembering something unpleasant; he would recall the teacher of each particular subject, his sarcastic or rude remark, which propped in passings had entered in the impressionable boy’s mind.

Several of his recent lessons happened to turn out poorly; the teachers appeared dissatisfied, and they grumbled incessantly. Their mood communicated itself to Volodya, and his books and copybooks inspired him at this moment with a deep confusion and unrest.

He passed hastily from the first lesson to the second and to the third; this bother with trifles for the sake