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

“Father Nicholas, do get up! Come with me to the stables and see what a misfortune has befallen us.”

They went to the stables⁠—you could just barely see in the early dawn⁠—and the Saint looked in astounded: the three horses were lying on the ground all hacked to pieces, here the legs and there the heads, here the necks and there the bodies! Vassily was howling⁠—very dear were his horses to him.

The Saint spoke to him kindly:

“Never mind, Vassily, never mind! Don’t complain and don’t despair. This trouble can be remedied. Here⁠—take the pieces and put them together as they were when the horses were alive.”

Vassily obeyed; he put the heads to the necks and the necks and legs to the bodies and waited for what would come of it.

The Holy Saint just said a short prayer and lo! the horses sprang to their feet, hale and strong, as if nothing had happened, tossing their manes, prancing and whinnying for food. Vassily fell on his knees before the Saint.

They left before daybreak; the sun rose after they had started on their way and soon they could see it shining on the cross above the Nikitsky belfry. But the Saint noticed that Vassily, sitting on the box, kept bending right and left over his horses.

“What is the matter, Vassily?”

“Why, Holy Father, I can’t make it out⁠ ⁠… My horses seem to have changed their coats. They used to be all of one color, and now they are piebald, like calves! Is it possible that in that bad light, and hurrying as I did, I got the pieces mixed up? It doesn’t look right to me somehow⁠ ⁠…”

“Never mind, Vassily, don’t worry and don’t fuss. Let it be. And please hurry on, dear one, hurry⁠ ⁠… We mustn’t be late.”

And really, they were almost late. The liturgy was half way through in the Nikitsky Cathedral. Arius stepped out on the altar-steps, huge as a mountain, in gold brocaded vestments, covered with diamonds, crowned with a double-horned gold tiara, and started reading the Creed the wrong way:

“I believe neither in the Father, nor in the Son, nor in the Holy Ghost⁠ ⁠…” and so on, to the end. But just as he was going to conclude “Not Amen,” the door opened wide and St. Nicholas walked hurriedly in.

He had just jumped out of the sledge, and thrown off his travelling greatcoat. Bits of straw were still sticking in his hair, in his little gray beard and to his worn cassock⁠ ⁠… Rapidly the Saint approached the altar steps. No⁠—he did not strike Arius-the-Giant on the cheek⁠—that isn’t true; he did not even lift his hand; he only gazed wrathfully at him. The giant reeled, tottered, and would have fallen, had not his servants caught him under the arms. He never concluded his wicked prayer and could only mutter:

“Take me out⁠ ⁠… I want fresh air⁠ ⁠… it is stifling here⁠ ⁠… Oh! I feel⁠—I know⁠—there is something wrong in the pit of my stomach.”

He was taken out of the Church, into the little cathedral garden, and laid under a tree, where his end came. And so he died without penitence.

From that time on, Vassily always kept piebald horses. And everyone got to know that such horses were the most enduring and that their legs were as hard as iron.

The thirties of the twentieth century had rolled around; and the great perpetual revolution was still going on. The Russian middle class was nearing complete extinction, assisted on toward this goal by hunger and executions, and also as a result of mass stampedes of the bourgeois to the Soviet pastures. A real living non-counterfeit bourgeois had become a rarity and the disappearance of this precious species was causing serious disturbance in the minds of farseeing Soviet statesmen. So appropriate decrees were issued for decisive action.

At first it was determined that the death of any bourgeois, even from the most natural causes, should be regarded as base sabotage and overt counterrevolution, for which his closest relatives must answer as hostages, subject to immediate execution for aiding and abetting a felony. But the Central Executive Committee took a hand in time and stopped this order. Then any transfer from the bourgeois to the proletarian status was strictly prohibited. The bourgeois, it was proposed, should be regarded as the property of the nation, entrusted to the general care and guardianship, like public parks.

But the bourgeois obstinately continued their black sabotage, because in those days to expire was far easier than to smoke a cigarette.

Soon they were reckoned at ten, then five⁠—three⁠—two; and finally in all Soviet Russia there remained just one bourgeois. He was a childless widower, Stepan Nilitch Rybkin, a resident of Malaya Zagvozdka, near Gatchino, formerly proprietor of a grocery and poultry store.

Up to his little toppling, wooden, three-window, one-story-and-attic, but still privately owned dwelling there rolled on the 24th of December, 1935, an elegant Renault, from which stepped two Soviet Commissars with serious expressions on their clever red faces. Deliberately but politely they mounted the steps, took off their coats in the hall, and entered the tiny parlor. The master of the house met them, a man still youthful although in the middle period of life, with a bald spot of respectable dimensions and with traces of gray in his hair.

“Please sit down. What can I do for you?”

The commissars took seats and glanced around⁠—an icon, illuminated by the greenish flame of a small lamp, hung in the corner; white curtains draped the windows; a geranium stood on the windowsill; a cage for a canary, a crocheted tablecloth, a gramophone⁠ ⁠…

“Living in luxury, eh?” remarked the first commissar genially, stammering a little, with a pleasant smile.

“Well, after a fashion⁠—more or less⁠—only, I must confess, all this bores me. It’s such an isolated life. I’d like to make application for transfer to Soviet status⁠—some sort of communal store house or shop⁠—but if they won’t accept me, it won’t be long before I die off. That’s always cheap.”

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