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

accepted by the countless hearts of his forefathers. In the rainy season of the year he had gone with his father to the sacred tabernacles; and there, among the women and the beggars, he had listened to the priests reading in an ancient tongue forgotten of all, and understanding nothing, only chiming in in the common joyous acclamation whenever the name of the Exalted One was uttered. More than once it had happened that his father had prayed in his presence upon the threshold of the idol temple; he would bow down before the recumbent statue of wood, muttering its commandments, lifting his joined palms to his forehead, and then would lay upon the altar for offerings the smallest and most worn of his hard-earned coins. But he muttered his prayers with indifference⁠—for he was merely afraid of the pictures upon the walls of the idol-temple, the depictions of the torment of sinners; he bowed down before other gods as well⁠—before horrible Hindu statues; in them, too, did he believe, just as he believed in the power of demons, serpents, stars, darkness.⁠ ⁠…

Having thrust the betel into his mouth, the rickshaw-man, fitfully volatile in his emotions, turned amiably smiling eyes upon the Englishman, seized the shafts, and, starting off with a thrust of his left foot, began running again. The sun was blinding; it gleamed on the gold and the lenses of the spectacles whenever the Englishman raised his head. The sun was scorching his hands and knees; the earth was breathing heavily⁠—one could even see that the air was aquiver above it, as above a brazier⁠—but he sat immovably, without touching the hood of the little carriage. Two roads led into the city⁠—or, as the residents called it, into the Fort: one, on the right, passed by the Malay pagoda, over the dam between the lagoons; the other, to the left, led toward the ocean. The Englishman wanted to go by the latter. But the rickshaw-man turned around as he ran, showing his bloodied lips, and pretended that he did not understand what was wanted from him. And the Englishman again yielded⁠—he was absentmindedly looking about him. The green lagoon, sparkling, warm, filled with turtles and rotting vegetation, bordered in the distance by a coconut grove, lay on the right. Upon the dam people were walking, riding, running to the clanging of bells. Rickshaw-men in fezes, white jackets, and short white pantaloons were now occasionally met with. The Europeans sitting in the little carriages were pale after the exhausting night; they held their white shoes high, putting one knee over the other. A two-wheeled cart, with a gray humped bullock harnessed to it, rolled by.⁠ ⁠… Beneath its top, in the light, warm shadow, was sitting a Parsee⁠—a yellow-faced old man who looked like an eunuch, in a gown and a conical velvet skull cap, the latter worked with gold. A giant Afghan, in wide trousers to his knees, in soft boots with upturned toes, in a white casaque and an enormous pink turban, was immovably standing, bent over the lagoon, gazing at the turtles, at the warm water. Long covered arba carts stretched on endlessly, dragged along by oxen. Under their narrow arched tops of straw were piled up bales of goods, and, at times, there would be a whole cluster of the brown bodies of young labourers. Shrivelled old men, parched by the heat, their feet reddened from the red dust, looking like the mummies of old women, paced beside the wheels. There were stonecutters pacing along, and stalwart black Tomilas.⁠ ⁠… “The Pagoda,” said the Englishman, referring to a certain teahouse, when they had come beneath those patriarchal trees that grow at the entrance into the Fort, beneath the unencompassable canopies of their verdure, shot with the sun that penetrated through it.

They stopped near the entrance of an old Dutch building, with arcades on its ground floor. The Englishman glanced at his watch and went off to drink tea and to smoke a cigar. As for the rickshaw-man, he made half a turn about the broad, shady street, over the reddishly-lilac pavement, strewn over with the yellow and scarlet blossom of the ketmias, and dropping the shafts at the roots of a tree, without checking his impetus, sank down. He raised up his knees and put his elbows upon them, avidly breathing in the steaming, sweetly odorous warmth of noonday, and aimlessly letting his eyes follow the Senegalese and Europeans passing by. Taking a rag from some recess of his apron, he wiped with it his lips, made bloody by the betel, wiped his face, the convexities on his thin chest, and, folding it into a bandage, tied it around his head⁠—this did not at all look well, giving him the appearance of a sick man; but then, many rickshaw-men do it. He sat, and, perhaps, he may have been pondering.⁠ ⁠… “Our bodies, O Master, are different⁠—but then, we all have but one heart,” Ananda had said to the Exalted One, and, therefore, one can imagine what must be the thoughts or emotions of a youth who had grown up in the paradisaical forests near Colombo and who had already tasted the most potent of poisons⁠—love for woman; who had already plunged into life⁠—life, fleetly flying after joys or fleeing from sorrows. Mara had already wounded him⁠—but then, Mara also healeth wounds. Mara snatches out of the hands of man that which man had seized upon⁠—but then, Mara also inflames a man to seize anew that which had been taken away, or to seize something else that is like that which had been taken away.⁠ ⁠…

Having had his tea, the Englishman wandered through the street, entering shops, gazing at the showcases displaying precious stones, elephants and Buddhas made of ebony wood, all sorts of bright coloured stuffs, the golden skins of panthers, spotted with black⁠—while the rickshaw-man, meditating of something, or, perhaps, merely sentient, was exchanging bright glances with the other rickshaw-men and followed the Englishman, dragging his little carriage