Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

“Well, then I’ll go to Kiev, or to the White City,” said Semyon, hesitatingly.

“That would be simply wasting your time and wearing your shoes out. Who’ll take care of your house?”

Semyon thought for a few moments.

“Well, then, kill my girl, Anfiska. She’s only two, anyway. Though she is a fine girl, and nice to look at; we’ll all be awfully sorry for her. But what’s to be done?”

“Hear him, ye Christians,” said Elijah in a loud voice. “I agree.”

And then such a bright streak of lightning tore the cloud, that Semyon’s eyelashes almost became lit up, and such a violent peal of thunder shook the sky, that the whole earth trembled.

“Holy, holy, holy Lord! Have pity on us!” whispered Semyon.

Awaking, and opening his eyes, Semyon saw only a cloud of dust, and the fluttering stalks swayed by the wind. He was on his knees in the middle of the field. Dust was flying in clouds down the road, and the moon shone dimly overhead.

Semyon jumped to his feet. Forgetting all about his coat and the tools, he began to walk rapidly in the direction of the hamlet. It began to rain when he turned from the high road into the field. The dark clouds were now hanging low over the gloomy gulches. The reddish moon was disappearing behind them. The hamlet was fast asleep; only the cattle moved restlessly in their barns, and roosters crowed ominously. Semyon began to run, and, approaching his old, dilapidated house, he heard women wailing. Near the threshold he came across his brother Nikon, standing with his coat on and his head bare. There he stood, so thin and prematurely wrinkled, looking about him stupidly.

“There’s trouble in your place,” said he, and his voice plainly showed that he was not yet fully awake.

Setoiyon rushed into the house. The women were tossing about in the dark, shrieking and wailing, looking for matches. Semyon snatched a box from behind an image and struck a light. The cradle, hung near the stove, was swaying from side to side, for the women knocked against it as they rushed about the room. And in the cradle lay a little girl, dead, her body turned black-blue, while on her head a nightcap, made of scraps of cloth, was burning slowly.

From that time on, Semyon lived quite happily.

When he had been a young man, everybody used to call Alexander Romanov Shasha; at that time he was living in the settlement of Limovo, in an iron-roofed house that stood facing the common, and his beatings were administered to him by his father, Roman.

Roman deemed himself the first man in all that district⁠—he used to shove his hand out to all the gentry and the squires whenever he would meet them. He had a store in the settlement, and a mill beyond it; but the way he got richer and richer was by buying up groves from the landowners and then cutting them down. Makar, his own brother, had nothing to eat; all in tatters, he might be hobbling over the common, and, doffing his hat meekly, would say: “Greetings, brother.” But Roman, well-fed, looking like a deacon, would answer him from his stoop: “Don’t you brother me, you dolt. You’ve made your bow, so just keep on going on your way.” What, then, must have been the feelings of the sole heir of such a man? He used to stroll through the village in a cap that had come from the city; in a sleeveless overcoat of the finest broadcloth, in boots with patent-leather tops. He was all the time cracking polly-seeds, and playing polkas on an expensive accordion. Whenever he met any wenches or young lads⁠—all his relatives, all consanguine, everyone of them⁠—he would be followed by that sort of gaze from which celebrities feel a chill run down their back. But he would meet such a gaze with a surly⁠—even a ferocious⁠—one; all his youth seemed to have passed in a preparation for that role in which he attained such perfection later on.

Roman, at the height of his prosperity, began to decline in strength, and to get muddled in his affairs. Grizzled, bearded, potbellied, clad in a sleeveless overcoat of casinette that resembled an under-cassock, it was only when he was in his cups that he plucked up heart; but when sober he was always despondent and deliberately churlish. He still retained his glory and his might. Out on the common, near the church, right opposite his windows, he had built a school; he was trustee over it, and could at any instant he liked make the teacher grovel at his feet. He was still able to give goods on credit to the landowners; to give bribes to the police inspector, without the least necessity; he could still regale one with smoked sprats, with a pickled lobster in a rusty can, with sherry and with wine from Tsimliyan, which is something like champagne⁠—and, even as he entertained, he would yell, if his guest were of the humbler sort: “Drink, you blockhead!” But it surely was high time to supplant him. But who could do it? That was just it⁠—there was no supplanting him. Shasha was withdrawing more and more into his role of a man upon whom had been inflicted an insult which could be wiped out only by blood, and his relations with Roman resolved themselves merely into Roman’s dragging him around by his “temples.” Shasha, to use Roman’s words, could make an angel lose his patience⁠—it was impossible not to be dragging him around. And drag him around Roman did. But the more he dragged him, the more unbearable did Shasha become.

Who but he should have taken pride in the house, the might, the ways of his father? His father would yell at him, in the presence of guests: “Go on, now, be a trifle more free and easy, you dolt!” But then, that was the way of those whom his