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

“Oh, yes! Are you resting on your laurels? But have you paid any attention to the fact that the designs on the government banknote⁠—that is, to put it more correctly, on the promissory notes of the government⁠—are changed every year?”

And, hurriedly masticating a piece of bologna, and scalding himself with tea, he continued:

“And then, some Penza muzhik or other, a numskull who is not only illiterate but even worships the pagan gods Valiess and Dazhd-Bog⁠—such a muzhik is caught in a trap! Somewhere in town notices have been posted up to the effect that the bills will be honored until such and such a date only; the matter is spoken of even in churches,” the Roach again scalds himself with the tea, “from the ambo.⁠ ⁠… But then, a muzhik does not carry his savings to a government bank, but prefers to hide them in a barn, in the horse mangers, or to bury them under the old apple tree. The time comes for him to die. He or his sons exhume the treasure trove out of its hidden place and carry it off to cash it. But an official, in splendid linen, with buttons and shoulder-straps, tells them most calmly: ‘These bills cannot be accepted.’ What are we to see in that? Isn’t it an attempt upon the drawstring purse of the good old fifty-million population?”

Becoming infatuated with this lode, he came to us again four days later, but very much tired, done up, as though he were giving up his last strength to his call:

“Tell me!” he clamored, “why do they mint such abominable silver coins nowadays?! Those of the reigns of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and even those of Nicholas⁠—Nicholas the First⁠—survive sturdily to this day, and, when one strikes them on the marble slab at an inn, ring true! On the other hand, coins of the present day, even those truly genuine, are rubbed off within a year⁠—both head and tail. And the scoundrelly shopkeeper does not even try them, but simply flings them back at you, saying ‘Can’t tell what coin that is. All rubbed off. Let’s have newer coins!’ Same thing with gold. Just recall, my children, how, almost three centuries ago, they wanted to fool the people with just such a little stunt, and how the matter came to the knowledge of the highest authorities, and how the ringleaders in this affair had their mouths filled with molten silver and gold? Eh? Am I not telling the truth, perhaps? And tell me, please, why are the gold pieces of the present day called metaux d’or? If you can’t understand anything about it, neither can I, I confess! Oh, well, all you know is to neigh like stallions when they feel their oats. Funny, is it?” And he spat in disgust.

And, finishing his tea, which had grown cold by now, he would hurriedly tell us goodbye, extending to each one of us in turn his small, dry, rigid, warm hand, and would run off somewheres into space, like an unidentified splinter from some wandering planet.

However, I once managed, somehow, to visit his lodgings⁠—a rumor that he was seriously ill had reached me, and I found out where he lived through the government bureau of addresses. I had to travel to the Skolniki,20 almost at the edge of the world; and, of course, this was in the heart of winter⁠—about Christmas, I think⁠—in the midst of a raging blizzard. With the greatest difficulty I succeeded in finding his room.⁠ ⁠… However, this was neither a room, nor a mansard, nor even a garret, but something that resembled, rather, a dovecote or a birdhouse for starlings, through the cracks of which the wind tore in freely from the outside. A kitchen table⁠ ⁠… a wooden tabouret⁠ ⁠… some felt spread on the floor, and on it, under an old torn fur coat, lies this amazing Black Roach, who is shivering in a fever ague and is delirious at times. He refused the offices of a doctor, as well as the offer of the money which we had somehow managed to scrape together in our bohemian crowd. (It must be said that of all the people I have ever seen the Roach was the proudest and most disinterested one.) It was necessary to send him in a hired cab to a hospital, when he fell into an absolute coma. Of colossal strength must have been the organism of this Black Roach, whom neither the frosts of Moscow, nor the severest form of typhoid, could subdue.

Incidentally, I managed to notice a remarkable thing in this beggarly hole, which was called a separate room from that of the other inmates of the house: on the floor, on the table, and on the window sill there was a vast number of books piled up⁠—some of them exceeding rarities, others in antique bindings of calf- and pigskin, with gold inlays. Here were the works of the great Fathers of the Church and the teachers: of Basil the Great, Tertullian, Origen, John of the Golden Lips, the Blessed Augustine, and others.

Really, the Black Roach absolutely amazed me at every step.

We would lose track of him for a year, for two years, for three years at a time. Many of us had already died during this period, and one even underwent (through a misunderstanding, however) capital punishment, by hanging; but the Roach remained just as he was, and somehow did not even seem changed in appearance. And⁠—what is strangest of all!⁠—his character, which was not of this earth, his passion for exposures, and his civic indignation, which was somehow aimless, not only did not pass away with the years, but, it seemed, kept on constantly increasing. Now he would be carrying Dukhobori into Canada (into Vancouver); then growing asparagus in the mountainous regions on the ridge of Yaila, in Crimea; next he became a regisseur in a fashionable theater. (May the Lord slay me if I can understand