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

the ship’s men with cognac and liqueurs; he fetched a box of thick Egyptian cigarettes and put it on the table, open, for common use. The captain, a man still young, with clever and steady eyes, who endeavoured to be a European in all things, began a conversation about the colonial problems of Europe, about the Japanese, about the future of the Far East. Listening attentively, the Englishman objected or agreed. He spoke well, and not at all with simplicity, but as though he were reading aloud from a well-written article. And at times he would suddenly grow quiet, still more attentively trying to catch the swish of the waves beyond the open door. The thunderstorm had been left behind. Long since the chain of Colombo’s lights, that for a long while had been playing like diamonds, had sunk into black velvet. Now the steamer was in infinite darkness, in the void of ocean and of night. The dining cabin was situated on deck, under the captain’s bridge, and the darkness was etched in an intense black within the open doors and windows: it seemed to be standing and gazing in into the brightly lit dining room. A humid breeze blew out of this darkness⁠—the humid, free breath of a something free since the start of time⁠—and its freshness, reaching those seated at table, made them feel the odour of the tobacco smoke, of the hot coffee, and of the liqueurs. But at times the electric light would suddenly fail⁠—the doors and the windows then became gleaming pale blue quadrangles; the blue abyss of abysses, noiseless and unutterably expansive, spread out around the steamer; the running swell of the watery spaces gleamed; the horizons were flooded with a blackness as of coal⁠—and thence, like the grievous murmur of the Creator Himself, still plunged in primordial chaos, came to their ears the roll of thunder⁠—muffled, sombre and triumphant, shaking all things to their foundation. And at such times the Englishman seemed to be frozen on the spot for a moment.

“This is really frightful!” said he in his lifeless but steady voice after a flash especially blinding. And, getting up from his place, he walked up to the door that gaped into the darkness. “Very frightful,” said he, as though he were talking to himself. “And the most frightful thing of all is that we do not think, do not feel, and cannot, have forgotten how to feel the full frightfulness of this.”

“What, precisely?” asked the captain.

“Why, just this for example,” answered the Englishman, “that under us and around us is that bottomless depth, that shifting trough of the sea of which the Bible speaks with such awesomeness.⁠ ⁠… Oh,” said he sternly, looking intently into the darkness, “both far and near, everywhere, the furrows of foam flare up, flaming with green, and the darkness surrounding this foam is lilac-black, the colour of a raven’s wing.⁠ ⁠… Is it a very eerie thing to be a captain?” he asked gravely.

“Why no, not at all,” answered the captain with assumed nonchalance. “It’s a tiresome business, and responsible, but, in reality not very complicated.⁠ ⁠… It is all a matter of habit.⁠ ⁠…”

“Better say⁠—of our callousness,” said the Englishman. “To be standing there, up on your bridge, at whose sides these two great eyes⁠—the green and the red⁠—look out, blurred, through their thick glass, and to be sailing somewhere into the darkness of night and water, extending for thousands of miles around⁠—it is madness! But, however, it is no better,” he added, again glancing out of the door, “it is no better, on the other hand, to be lying below in a cabin, beyond whose exceedingly thin wall, near your very head, beats and rolls this bottomless deep.⁠ ⁠… Yes, yes⁠—our reason is just as feeble as the reason of a mole; or, rather, still more feeble, for in the case of a mole, of an animal, of a savage, instinct, at least, has been preserved; whereas with us, with Europeans, it has degenerated, is degenerating!”

“However, moles do not navigate over the entire terrestrial globe,” answered the captain smiling. “Moles do not enjoy the benefits of steam, of electricity, of wireless telegraphy. Do you wish to hear me speak with Aden right now? And yet it is a ten days’ sail from here.”

“And that, too, is frightful,” said the Englishman, and cast a stern glance through his spectacles at one of the engineers who had started laughing. “Yes, that too is very frightful. For we, in reality, do not fear anything. We do not fear even death properly: neither life, nor sacred mysteries, nor the depths that surround us, nor death⁠—neither our death nor that of others! I am a colonel of the British Army, a participant of the Boer War; I, commanding cannons to be fired, used to kill men in hundreds; and here I am, not only neither suffering nor going out of my mind because I am a murderer, but never even thinking of these hundreds.”

“What about the beasts, and the savages⁠—do they think of such things?” asked the captain.

“The savages believe that things have to be so, whereas we don’t,” said the Englishman, and became silent; he started pacing the dining room, trying to step as firmly as he could in his dancing shoes.

The flashes of the distant thunder storm, gleaming roseately over the stars, were by now decreasing. The wind blowing through the windows and doors was stronger and cooler, the impenetrable darkness beyond the door surged more loudly. A large seashell that served as an ashtray was sliding upon the table. Under one’s feet, growing unpleasantly weaker, one felt something gathering force below, lifting one up, then falling over on one side, spreading out⁠—and the floor fell deeper and deeper from under one’s feet. The ship’s men, having finished their coffee and smoked their fill, sat in silence for several minutes more, casting glances at their queer passenger; then, wishing him good night, they began picking up their caps. The captain alone stayed