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

you who persuaded her to go trailing off to church?” Suddenly the old woman looked at me with her face distorted with hatred. “Wasn’t it you, you cursed gentleman! Don’t lie⁠—don’t put me off with your cunning tricks, you shameless hound! What did you go enticing her to church for?”

“I didn’t entice her, granny.⁠ ⁠… I give you my word. She wanted to, herself.”

“Ah, my grief, my misfortune!” Manuilikha clasped her hands. “She came running back from there⁠—with no face left at all, and all her skirt in rags⁠ ⁠… without a shawl to her head.⁠ ⁠… She tells me how it happened⁠ ⁠… then she laughs, or cries.⁠ ⁠… Just possessed simply.⁠ ⁠… She lay on the bed⁠ ⁠… weeping all the while, and then I saw that she’d fallen into a sleep, I thought.⁠ ⁠… And I was happy like an old fool. ‘She’ll sleep it all away now, for good,’ I thought. I saw her hand hanging down, and I thought I’d better put it right, or it would swell.⁠ ⁠… I felt for the darling’s hand and it was burning, blazing.⁠ ⁠… That meant the fever had begun.⁠ ⁠… For an hour she never stopped speaking, fast, and so pitifully.⁠ ⁠… She only stopped this very minute, a moment ago.⁠ ⁠… What have you done? What have you done to her?”

Suddenly her brown face writhed into a monstrous, disgusting grimace of weeping. Her lips tightened and drooped at the corners: all the muscles of her face stiffened and trembled, her eyelids lifted and wrinkled her forehead into deep folds, and from her eyes came a quick rain of big tears, big as peas. She held her head in her hands, and with her elbows on the table began to rock her whole body to and fro and to whine in a low, drawn-out voice.

“My little daught‑er! My darling grand-daught‑er! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit‑te‑r!”

“Don’t roar, you old fool!” I coarsely broke in on Manuilikha. “You’ll wake her!”

The old woman kept silence, but with the same terrible contortion of her face she went on swinging to and fro, while the big tears splashed on to the table.⁠ ⁠… About ten minutes passed in this way. I sat by Manuilikha’s side and anxiously listened to a fly knocking against the windowpane with a broken yet monotonous buzzing.⁠ ⁠…

“Granny!” suddenly a faint, barely audible voice came from Olyessia: “Granny, who’s here?”

Manuilikha hastily hobbled to the bed, and straightway began to whine once more.

“Oh, my granddaughter, my own! Oh, it is so hard for me, so bit‑t‑e‑r!”

“Ah, stop, granny, stop!” Olyessia said with complaining entreaty and suffering in her voice. “Who’s sitting here?”

Cautiously, I approached the bed on tiptoe, with the awkward, guilty conscience of my own gross health which one always feels by a sick bed.

“It’s me, Olyessia,” I said, lowering my voice. “I’ve just come from the village on horseback.⁠ ⁠… I was in the town all the morning.⁠ ⁠… You’re ill, Olyessia?”

Without moving her face from the pillow, she stretched out her bare hand, as though she were feeling for something in the air. I understood the movement and took her hot hand into mine. Two huge blue marks, one on the wrist, the other above the elbow, stood out sharp on her tender white skin.

“My darling,” Olyessia began to speak slowly, with difficulty separating one word from another. “I want⁠ ⁠… to look at you⁠ ⁠… but I cannot.⁠ ⁠… They’ve maimed me.⁠ ⁠… All over, my whole body.⁠ ⁠… You remember.⁠ ⁠… You loved my face, so much.⁠ ⁠… You loved it, darling, didn’t you?⁠ ⁠… It made me so glad, always.⁠ ⁠… And now it will disgust you⁠ ⁠… even to look at me.⁠ ⁠… That is why⁠ ⁠… I do not want⁠—”

“Forgive me, Olyessia!” I whispered, bending down to her ear.

Her burning hand pressed mine hard and held it long.

“But what are you saying? Why should I forgive you, my darling? Aren’t you ashamed to think of it even? How could it be your fault? It’s all my own⁠—stupid me.⁠ ⁠… Why did I go?⁠ ⁠… No, my precious, don’t blame yourself.⁠ ⁠…”

“Olyessia, will you let me.⁠ ⁠… Promise me first, that you will⁠—”

“I’ll promise, darling⁠ ⁠… anything you want⁠—”

“Let me send for a doctor.⁠ ⁠… I implore you.⁠ ⁠… Well, you needn’t do anything he tells you, if you like.⁠ ⁠… But say ‘yes’⁠—only for my sake, Olyessia.”

“Oh⁠ ⁠… you’ve caught me in a terrible trap! No, you’d better let me free of my promise. Even if I were really ill, dying⁠—I wouldn’t let the doctor come near me. And am I ill now? It’s only fright that brought it on; it will go off when the evening comes. If it doesn’t, granny will give an infusion of lilies or make some raspberry-tea. What’s the good of the doctor? You⁠—you’re my best doctor. You’ve only just come⁠—and I feel better already.⁠ ⁠… Ah, there’s only one thing wrong, I want to look at you, even if it were only with one eye, but I’m afraid.⁠ ⁠…”

With a gentle effort I lifted Olyessia’s head from the pillow. Her face blazed with feverish redness; her dark eyes shone unnaturally bright; her dry lips trembled nervously. Long, red scratches ploughed her forehead, cheeks, and neck. There were dark bruises on her forehead and under her eyes.

“Don’t look at me.⁠ ⁠… I implore you.⁠ ⁠… I’m ugly now,” Olyessia besought me in a whisper, trying to cover my eyes with her hand.

My heart overflowed with pity. I nestled my lips on Olyessia’s hand, which lay motionless on the blanket, and began to cover it with long, quiet kisses. In the time before I used to kiss her hands too, but she always would draw them away from me in hasty, bashful fright. But now she made no resistance to my caress and with her other hand she gently smoothed my hair.

“You know it all?” she asked in a whisper.

I bent my head in silence. It is true I had not understood everything from Nikita Nazarich’s story. Only I did not want Olyessia to be agitated by having to recall the events of the morning. Suddenly a wave of irrepressible fury overwhelmed me at the