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

All these particulars, as well as the maiden name of his mother, and the names of all the people who had exerted their influence on his behalf, were known long since to everybody on the steamer, including in that number the captain and his two mates, and, it would seem, even the deckhands. As a representative of the ruling power, and a member of a noble family of all the Russias, he overdid his patriotism and was constantly babbling nonsense. From Lower Novgorod to Saratov he had already contrived to shoot and hang, over and over again, all the sheenies, Finns, Pollacks, damned Armenians, Little Russians and other outlanders.

During the stops he would come out on deck in his cap with its velvet band and two insignia, and, shoving his hands in his trouser-pockets, exposing his nobly-born, gray cloth-clad posterior, he would watch, as one having authority, the sailors, the porters, the drivers of three-horse stages in their round hats trimmed with peacock feathers. His wife, a slender, elegant demi vierge from St. Petersburg, with an exceedingly pale face and exceedingly vivid, malevolent lips, did not oppose her husband in anything and was taciturn; at times she would smile⁠—with a subtle, malignant smile⁠—at the follies of her husband; for the greater part of the day she sat in the blaze of the sun with a yellow-backed French novel in her hands, her little thoroughbred feet in red morocco slippers crossed and stretched out along the bench. Somehow, one involuntarily sensed in her a carrièriste, a future governor’s or some other high official’s lady; most probably, this would be the future Messalina of the entire district. There was always an odor of Crême Simon about her, and of some modish perfume⁠—sweet, pungent, and tart, that made one want to sneeze. Their name was Kostretzov.

Among the permanent passengers there was also a colonel of the artillery⁠—the most good-natured of men, a sloven and a glutton, with a grizzled stubble bristling on his cheeks and chin, and with his khaki-colored summer uniform jacket glistening over his abdomen from all possible sorts of soups and sauces. Every day, in the morning, he descended into the chef’s domain, and would there choose a stierlyadka or a sieuruzhka,22 which would be brought up to him on deck, still quivering in its wooden vessel, and, with his own hand, like an officiating high priest, breathing hard and smacking his lips, he would make marks with a knife upon the head of the fish, in circumvention of the cook’s slyness⁠—lest he be served with another fish, a dead one.

Every evening, after the singing of the young lady from Moscow and after the political disputes, the colonel would play at a variation of whist far into the night. His constant partners were: an inspector of excise who was traveling to Askhabad⁠—a man of absolutely indeterminate years, all wrinkled, with atrocious teeth, who was insane on the subject of amateur theatricals (in the intervals of the game, during deals, he would tell anecdotes of Hebrew life, with spirit and gayety, and not at all badly); the editor of some newspaper published near the Volga⁠—a bearded, beetle-browed man in golden spectacles; and a student by the name Drzhevetzky.

The student played with constant good luck. He grasped the plays with rapidity, had a splendid memory for all the scores and hands, and regarded the mistakes of his partners with unvarying benignity. Despite the great heat, he was always clad in a greenish frock-coat with very long skirts and an exaggeratedly high collar, and with every button buttoned. His shoulder-blades were so greatly developed that he seemed round-shouldered, even with his great height. His hair was light and curly; his eyes were blue; his face was long and clean-shaven. He bore a slight resemblance, to judge by antique portraits, to the twenty-five-year-old generals of the War of 1812, in defense of the fatherland. However, there was something peculiar about his appearance. At times, when he was off his guard, his eyes would assume such a tired, tortured expression, that one could freely, from his appearance, give his age even as fifty years. But the unobservant people on the steamer did not remark this, of course, just as his partners in play did not remark an unusual peculiarity of his hands: the student’s thumbs were so long that they were almost even with the tips of his index fingers, while all his finger nails were short, broad, flat and strong. These hands testified with unusual conclusiveness to an obdurate will, to a cold egoism that was a stranger to all vacillations, and to his being capable of crime.

Somehow, from Nizhnii Novgorod to Sizran, during two evenings running, there were little games of chance. The games were “twenty-one,” chemin de fer, and Polish banco. The student came out the winner to the tune of something like seventy roubles. But he had managed to do it so charmingly, and then had so obligingly proffered a loan of money to the petty lumber dealer he had won from, that everybody received an impression of his being a man of wealth, a man of good society and bringing-up.

II

In Samara it took a very long time for the steamer to unload and load again. The student went for a swim, and, upon his return, took a seat in the captain’s roundhouse⁠—a freedom permitted only to very likable passengers after having sailed together for a long time. With especial attention, he watched intently as three Jews boarded the steamer, apart from each other⁠—all three of them very well dressed, with rings on their hands and with sparkling pins in their cravats. He also managed to notice that the Jews pretended not to know one another, and also remarked a certain common trait in their appearance, which trait seemed to have been stamped upon them by the same profession, as well as certain almost imperceptible