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

“Why are you looking at me?” she blushed suddenly, feeling my glance, with the sensitiveness peculiar to some women. “Well, yes, something like mine,” she continued, mechanically arranging her hair, and blushing still more.

“So you say, a great love from clubs?” I laughed.

“Don’t laugh. It’s no use laughing,” Olyessia said seriously, almost sternly. “I’m only telling you the truth.”

“Well, I won’t laugh any more, I promise. What is there more?”

“More.⁠ ⁠… Oh! Evil will come upon the queen of clubs, worse than death. She will suffer a great disgrace through you, one that she will never be able to forget; she will have an everlasting sorrow.⁠ ⁠… In her planet no harm comes to you.”

“Tell me, Olyessia. Couldn’t the cards deceive you? Why should I do so many unpleasant things to the queen of clubs? I am a quiet unassuming fellow, yet you’ve said so many awful things about me.”

“I don’t know that.⁠ ⁠… The cards showed that it’s not you will do it⁠—I mean, not on purpose⁠—but all this misfortune will come through you.⁠ ⁠… You’ll remember my words, when they come true.”

“The cards told you all this, Olyessia?”

She did not answer at once, and then as though evasive and reluctant:

“The cards as well.⁠ ⁠… But even without them I learn a great deal, just by the face alone. If, for instance, someone is going to die soon by an ugly death, I can read it immediately in his face. I need not speak to him, even.”

“What do you see in his face?”

“I don’t know myself. I suddenly feel afraid, as though he were a dead man standing before me. Just ask granny, she will tell you that it’s the truth I’m saying. The year before last, Trophim the miller hung himself in his mill. Only two days before I saw him and said to granny: ‘Just look, granny, Trophim will die an ugly death soon.’ And so it was. Again, last Christmas Yashka the horse thief came to us and asked granny to tell his fortune. Granny put out the cards for him and began. He asked, joking: ‘Tell me what sort of death will I have?’ and he laughed. The moment I glanced at him, I could not move. I saw Yashka sitting there, but his face was dead, green.⁠ ⁠… His eyes were shut, his lips black.⁠ ⁠… A week afterwards we heard that the peasants had caught Yashka just as he was trying to take some horses off.⁠ ⁠… They beat him all night long.⁠ ⁠… They are bad people here, merciless.⁠ ⁠… They drove nails into his heels, smashed his ribs with stakes, and he gave up the ghost about dawn.”

“Why didn’t you tell him that misfortune was waiting for him?”

“Why should I tell?” Olyessia replied. “Can a man escape what Fate has doomed? It is useless for a man to be anxious the last days of his life.⁠ ⁠… And I loathe myself for seeing these things. I am disgusted with my own self.⁠ ⁠… But what can I do? It is mine by Fate. When granny was younger she could see Death, too; so could my mother and granny’s mother⁠—we are not responsible. It is in our blood.⁠ ⁠…”

She left off her spinning, bent her head and quietly placed her hands upon her knees. In her arrested, immobile eyes and her wide pupils was reflected some dark terror, an involuntary submission to mysterious powers and supernatural knowledge which cast a shadow upon her soul.

Then the old woman spread a clean cloth with embroidered ends on the table, and placed a steaming pot upon it.

“Come to supper, Olyessia,” she called to her granddaughter, and after a moment’s hesitation added, turning to me: “Perhaps you will eat with us too, sir? Our food is very plain; we have no soup, only plain groats.⁠ ⁠…”

I cannot say there was any particular insistence in her invitation, and I was already minded to refuse had not Olyessia in her turn invited me with such simplicity and a smile so kind, that in spite of myself I agreed. She herself poured me out a plateful of groats, a porridge of buckwheat and fat, onion, potato and chicken, an amazingly tasty and nourishing dish. Neither grandmother nor granddaughter crossed themselves as they sat down to table. During supper I continually watched both women, because up till now I have retained a deep conviction that a person is nowhere revealed so clearly as when he eats. The old woman swallowed the porridge with hasty greed, chewing aloud and pushing large pieces of bread into her mouth, so that big lumps rose and moved beneath her flabby cheeks. In Olyessia’s manner of eating even there was a native grace.

An hour later, after supper, I took my leave of my hostesses of the chicken-legged hut.

“I will walk with you a little way, if you like,” Olyessia offered.

“What’s this walking out you’re after?” the old woman mumbled angrily. “You can’t stay in your place, you gadfly.⁠ ⁠…”

But Olyessia had already put a red cashmere shawl on. Suddenly she ran up to her grandmother, embraced her and gave her a loud kiss.

“Dear little precious granny.⁠ ⁠… It’s only a moment. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Very well, then, madcap.” The old woman feebly wrenched herself away. “Don’t misunderstand her, sir; she’s very stupid.”

Passing a narrow path we came out into the forest road, black with mud, all churned with hoof marks and rutted with wheel tracks, full of water, in which the fire of the evening star was reflected. We walked at the side of the road, covered everywhere with the brown leaves of last year, not yet dry after the snow. Here and there through the dead yellow big wakening bluebells⁠—the earliest flowers in Polyessie⁠—lifted their lilac heads.

“Listen, Olyessia,” I began; “I very much want to ask you something, but I am afraid you will be cross.⁠ ⁠… Tell me, is it true what they say about your grandmother?⁠ ⁠… How shall I express it?”

“She’s a witch?” Olyessia quietly helped me out.

“No.⁠ ⁠… Not a witch,” I