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

open. A fresh, pleasant odour of the fields floated in. It was completely dark out there now, the roseate night glow had become extinguished, barely shimmering over the soft darkness of the quiet, joyous, fecundated field. One could hear the half-drowsy skylarks finishing their very last songs.

“Sing, Lazarus⁠—sing, my own brother!” said the muzhik, extending a full cup to the beggar. “We’re two of a kind, you and me.⁠ ⁠… Only what are you alongside of me? A vagabone! Whereas I am a working man, that gives food and drink to all those that suffer.⁠ ⁠…”

He sat down suddenly, losing his balance, and again dug into the bag.

“And what might you have here?” he asked, examining the calico, which had turned the faintest pink in the barely perceptible light of the evening glow.

“Oh, that’s just so.⁠ ⁠… Some women gave it to me,” said the beggar quietly, feeling everything floating before him from tipsiness, and that it was time to be going, and that it was necessary to extricate the trousers from underneath the muzhik somehow.

“How can that be! You lie!” cried out the muzhik, banging the table with his fist. “It’s a shroud⁠—I can see! It’s a grave-shroud!” he cried out with tears in his voice, and was silent for a while, hearkening to the abating songs of the skylarks. Then he shoved the bag away from him, and, shaking his tousled head, began to cry: “I have risen in my pride against God!” said he bitterly, weeping.

And then, straining himself, he began to sing loudly, keeping good time:

“Oh my mother gave me birth and she guarded me,
Though I now a sinner be, unforgivable!
All the torments have I borne,
All the sorrows have I borne⁠—
Nowheres found I joy for me.
Oh, my mother spoke to me
And she cautioned me;
If she only knew, if she only saw,
She could never bear
Such calamity.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, my soul is a sinner and a creeping thing!” he cried out wildly, weeping, and suddenly started clapping his palms with an eldritch laughter: “Beggar-man, give me your money! I know you through and through; I feel you through and through⁠—give it to me! I know you have it! It can’t be otherwise⁠—give it to me for love of the Lord God Himself!”

And, swaying, he arose, and the beggar, who had also arisen, felt his legs giving away from fear, felt a dull ache start in his thighs. The tear-stained face of the muzhik, barely discernible in the twilight, was insane.

“Give it to me!” he repeated, in a voice suddenly grown hoarse. “Give it to me, for the Love of the Queen of Heaven! I can see, I can see⁠—you’re grabbing at your bosom, at your undershirt; that means you’ve got it⁠—all your kind has! Give it to me⁠—it ain’t of no use to you, anyway, whereas it will set me on my feet forever! Give it to me of your own will⁠—brother, don’t lead me into sin!”

“Can’t do it,” said the beggar, quietly and dispassionately.

“What?”

“Can’t do it. I’ve been saving for twenty years. Can’t bring myself to do it.”

“You ain’t goin’ to give it to me?” asked the muzhik hoarsely.

“No⁠ ⁠…” said the beggar, barely audible but unshaken.

The muzhik was silent for a long while. The beating of their hearts could be heard in the darkness. “Very well,” said the muzhik, with an insane submissiveness. “I will kill you; I’ll go and find me a stone and then kill you.”

And, swaying, he went toward the threshold.

The beggar, standing erect in the darkness, made a sweeping and slow sign of the cross. As for the muzhik, he, with his head lowered like a bull, was already walking about under the windows.

Then there came a crunching sound⁠—evidently he was pulling a stone out of the foundation.

And a minute later the door slammed again⁠—and the beggar drew himself up still more.

“For the last time I’m a-telling you⁠ ⁠…” the muzhik mumbled out with his cracked lips, walking up to him with a big white stone in his hands. “Brother.⁠ ⁠…”

The beggar was silent. His face could not be seen. Swinging back with his left arm and catching the beggar by his neck, the muzhik struck hard his shrinking face with the chill stone. The beggar tore away, backward, and, as he fell, catching the table with his bast-shoe, he struck the back of his head against a stool, and then against the floor. And falling upon him, the muzhik, squeezing the breath out of his chest, frenziedly began to batter in his throat with the stone.

Ten minutes later he was already far out in the dark, even field. There were many stars out; the air was fresh; the earth gave forth a metallic odour. Completely sobered up, he was walking so rapidly and lightly that he seemed capable of covering a hundred versts more. The amulet, torn off the beggar’s crucifix, he was holding tightly clenched in his hand. Later, he flung it from him into a dark, freshly ploughed field. His eyes were staring fixedly like an owl’s; his teeth were tightly clenched, like a lobster’s claws. Although he had looked for his cap for a long while, he had been unable to find it in the darkness; the chillness beat upon his bared head. His head seemed to him to be of stone.

Brethren

Behold brethren, slaying one another!
I would discourse of grief.

Sutha Nippatha

The road out of Colombo, lying along the ocean, runs through dense coconut groves. To the right, within their sun-dappled shady depths, under the high canopy of feathery broom-like treetops, are scattered the Senegalese cabins, half-hidden by the pale green laminæ of bananas, resembling gigantic ears of corn, so small and low are they in comparison with the tropical forest surrounding them. To the left, through the dark-ringed trunks, tall and slender, fantastically bent in all directions, one sees stretches of deep, silky sands, a gleam of a golden, blazing mirror of smooth water, and, anchored upon it, as though blending with the tree trunks, are the coarse