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

of the place must be sustained. A quarter of an hour elapses. Our ladies perceive that we do not at all belong to that tribe of people who are buffeted for two or three months at a time in the midst of the stormy sea, without seeing a single woman during all that time. They beg for pin-money. Five francs not only pacify them, but even enrapture them, and they trustingly tell us of certain secret phases of their life. From boatswains and captains, especially those who are rather elderly, they take two or three francs; from sailors, a franc⁠—and sometimes even fifty centimes. Right above, over the bar, there are several labyrinthine corridors, with stall-like rooms to the right and left. A momentary love or its simulacrum⁠—and man and woman have gone their different directions. Is it much a sailor wants?

“But there’s one bad thing about it, monsieur,” says the lanky Henrietta gravely, “sometimes they drink too much whisky-and-soda, and then they start in to fight. That’s very unpleasant, dangerous, and troublesome for us. And it’s nothing else but whisky-and-soda that knocks them off their feet or drives them crazy. However, absinthe will also turn the trick.”

II

That day, no matter how we tried, we were not able to find the way back to our hotel, The Port. We were as confused as blind puppies near the grandiose, silent Veauban fortifications; and for ten times or so, after having gone around in a circle, we returned to the same spot. Finally we chanced to meet a knot of intoxicated sailors. We politely asked them for directions, and immediately all of them⁠—some ten or fifteen⁠—painstakingly and obligingly escorted us to our very house.

I also recall another night. We were sitting in a Spanish bar, situated on one of the innumerable streets of the port⁠—among which streets, by the way, I could never orientate myself. A party of Englishmen had planted themselves solidly alongside of us⁠—probably they belonged to the aristocracy of ships: skippers, machinists, or boatswains⁠—or something of that sort. They were all well-grown, austere, stalwart men, with sunburnt, weather beaten, rough-skinned faces. One of them, a clean-shaven chap, with a head as bare as a billiard ball, lit a pipe. I recognized my favorite Maryland tobacco by the smell, and, lifting my hat slightly and turning toward the billiard ball, I asked:

“Old Judge, sir?”

“Oh, yes, sir,”24 and, good-naturedly, having dried the mouthpiece by means of pressing his elbow hard against his side, he extended the pipe to me:

“Please, sir.”

Fortunately, I still had some Russian cigarettes (and they can be truly appreciated only in France, where everybody smokes the most execrable tobacco of the government monopoly), and I offered him my case. Five minutes later we were already squeezing one another’s hands, so that my bones cracked, and we were yelling all over the old city:

“Rule, Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!”

There was still another incident which, to this day, I recall with deep, joyous tenderness.

This happened when the night was on the wane⁠—about three or four o’clock, say. It was the peak of things, so to speak, in the little tavern. The waiters could barely manage to place on the little tables the most diversified “swell” drinks of all imaginable colors: glaucous, brown, light blue, and others. Barely visible through the dense tobacco smoke were the dark contours of the people, that walked just as though they were figures in a nightmare, that, just like drowned men under water, moved, swayed, and embraced one another.

And at this juncture an exceedingly queer fellow walked in through the wide-open doors. He was already old, about fifty or sixty, small of stature, and spare. His thick gray hair falls over his shoulders and back like a superb, beautiful mane. He has a lofty, broad brow, strong and splendid in structure; heavy, overhanging eyelids; puckered eyes; and dark pouches under the eyes. The color of the face is dark, earthy, unhealthy. He has a multitude of wrinkles, ashen gray mustaches and beard. In his hands he carries an odd musical instrument. It consists of an ordinary cigar box, upon which are still preserved the black, oval trademarks, “Colorado.” A round opening has been sawn in the lid. A small, narrow board, crudely glued on to the box, serves as its neck. There are homemade keys and six fine strings.

This man does not exchange greetings with anyone, and does not even seem to see anybody. He calmly squats down near the counter; then he lies down along its length, upon the bare floor, face upward. For a few seconds he tunes his amazing instrument, then loudly calls out, in the jargon of the south, the name of some popular national song, and, still lying down, commences to play.

I am very fond of the guitar⁠—that tender, chanting, expressive instrument, and I have frequent occasion to hear artists who have the mastery of virtuosos on this instrument⁠—up to celebrities, known to all Russia. But still, up to this incident, I could never imagine that a piece of wood with strings and ten human digits could create such full and harmonious singing music. The cigar box of this curious old man sang with silvern sounds, just like a distant, splendid choir, composed of children, women, or angels.

The noisy bar immediately became quiet. Pipes and cigars were put away somewhere or other. The sailors forgot about their beer mugs, and it seemed to me that this somber drinking place somehow grew brighter and cleaner. The women first, and then all the other visitors after them, got up from their places and surrounded the recumbent old man. From a neighboring dive came the sounds of a concertina harmonica. Someone tiptoed up to the door and closed it without a sound.

The old man concluded one song, and at once called out the name of another, and again commenced playing, directing his puckered eyes toward the ceiling. Thus, amidst the general, reverential silence⁠—yes, now