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

out to me her darling lips, moist and opened by her quick breathing.⁠ ⁠…

Late at night, when we had said goodbye and were already a good distance away from each other, I suddenly heard Olyessia’s voice behind me: “Vanichka! Wait a moment.⁠ ⁠… I want to tell you something.”

I turned and went to meet her. Olyessia quickly ran up to me. Already the thin notched silver sickle of the young moon stood in the sky, and by its light I saw that Olyessia’s eyes were full of big brimming tears.

“What is it, Olyessia?” I asked anxiously.

She seized my hands and began to kiss them in turn.

“Darling⁠ ⁠… how sweet you are! How good you are!” she said with a trembling voice. “I was just walking and thinking how much you love me.⁠ ⁠… You see I want awfully to do something that you would like very, very much.”

“Olyessia⁠ ⁠… my precious girl, be calm⁠—”

“Tell me,” she continued, “would you be very glad if I went to church some time? Tell me the truth, the real truth.”

I was thinking. A superstitious thought suddenly crossed my mind that some misfortune would come of it.

“Why don’t you answer? Tell me quickly; would you be glad, or is it all the same to you?”

“How can I say, Olyessia?” I began doubtfully. “Well, yes.⁠ ⁠… I would be glad. I’ve said many times that a man may disbelieve, doubt, even laugh finally. But a woman⁠ ⁠… a woman must be religious without any sophistication. I always feel something touching, feminine, beautiful in the simple tender confidence with which a woman surrenders herself to the protection of God.”

I was silent; neither did Olyessia make any answer, but nestled her head in my bosom.

“Why did you ask me this?” I was curious.

She started suddenly.

“Nothing.⁠ ⁠… I just asked.⁠ ⁠… Don’t take any notice. Now, goodbye, darling. Come tomorrow.”

She disappeared. I stood still for a long while, looking into the darkness, listening eagerly to the quick steps going away from me. A sudden dread foreboding seized me. I had an irresistible desire to run after Olyessia, to take hold of her and ask, implore, demand, if need be, that she should not go to church. But I checked the sudden impulse, and I remember that as I went my way I even said aloud:

“It seems to me, my dear Vanichka, that the superstition’s touched you as well.”

My God, why did I not listen then to the dim voice of the heart, which⁠—I now believe it implicitly⁠—never errs in its momentary mysterious presentiments?

XII

The day after this meeting was Whitsuntide, which that year fell on the day of the great martyr Timothy, when, according to the folk legends, the omens of a bad harvest befall. Ecclesiastically the village of Perebrod was considered auxiliary; that is to say, that though there was a church there it had no priest of its own. On rare occasions, in fast time and on the great festivals, it was served by the priest of the village of Volchye.

That day my official duties took me to the neighbouring town, and I set off thither on horseback about eight o’clock, in the chill of the morning. A good time before I had bought a small cob for doing my rounds, a beast six or seven years old, which came from the rough local breed, but had been carefully looked after and made a pet of by the former owner, the district surveyor. The horse’s name was Taranchik. I became greatly attached to the dear beast, with its strong, thin, chiselled legs, with its shaggy mane, from beneath which peeped fiery eyes, with firm, close-pressed lips. Its colour was rare and curious, a grey mouse-colour all over the body save for a piebald rump.

I had to pass right through the village. The big green that ran from the church to the inn was completely covered by long rows of carts in which the peasants of the neighbouring villages had come with their wives and children for the holiday⁠—from Volocha, Zoulnya, and Pechalovka. People were roaming about among the carts. Notwithstanding the early hour and the strict regulations one could already see drunken people among them. (On holidays and at night Shroul, the former innkeeper, sold vodka on the quiet.) The morning was windless and close. The air was sultry and the day promised to be insufferably hot. There was not a single cloud to be seen in the glowing sky, which looked exactly as though it were covered with a silver dust.

When I had done all my business in the little town I had a light hasty meal of pike, stuffed and cooked in the Jewish fashion, washed down with some very inferior muddy beer, and set out for home. As I passed by the smithy I recollected that Taranchik’s off fore-shoe had been loose for some time, and I stopped to have him shod. That took me another hour and a half, so that by the time I was nearing Perebrod it was already between four and five o’clock in the afternoon.

The whole square was packed with drunken, shouting people. The yard and porch of the inn were literally choked by jostling, pushing customers; the Perebrod men were mixed up with strangers, sitting on the grass and in the shade of the carts. Everywhere were heads thrown back and lifted bottles. There was not a single man sober; and the general intoxication had reached the point at which the peasant begins noisily boasting and exaggerating his own drunkenness, and all his movements acquire a feeble, ponderous freedom, when, for instance, in order to nod “yes” he bows his whole body down, bends his knees, and, suddenly losing his balance completely, draws back helplessly. The children were pushing and screaming in the same place beneath the horses’ legs, while the horses munched their hay unconcerned. Elsewhere, a woman who could hardly stand on her feet herself dragged her reluctant husband, foully drunk, home by the sleeve.⁠ ⁠… In the shade of a fence about