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

“Which one?” asked the captain, who had already yawned surreptitiously and had glanced at his watch.

“Why, this: A raven darted after an elephant who was running down a wooded mountain toward the sea; wrecking all things in his path, breaking down the overgrowths, the elephant plunged into the waves⁠—and the raven, tortured by ‘desire,’ fell after him, and, having waited until the elephant had swallowed enough water to kill himself and had floated up on the waves, descended on the carcass with its great ears; the carcass floated on, putrefying, while the raven greedily pecked away at it; but when he came to his senses, he saw that he had been borne far, far from land⁠—to a distance from which there is no return even upon the wings of a gull⁠—and he began cawing in a piteous voice, that voice for which Death waits so warily.⁠ ⁠… It is a terrible legend!”

“Yes, it is very significant,” said the captain, indifferently.

The Englishman lapsed into silence and again began pacing from door to door. From the surging darkness faintly floated in the sounds of the second bell, abrupt and, as is always the case on the ocean, plaintive. The captain, after having sat for five minutes more out of politeness, got up, shook the Englishman’s hand, and went off to his big, restful cabin. The Englishman, reflecting upon something, continued pacing. The steward, having endured for half an hour more in the pantry, entered and with an angry face began switching off the electricity, leaving only one bulb lit. The Englishman, when the steward had disappeared, walked up to the wall and turned off this bulb as well. Darkness descended at once, the surging of the waves at once appeared louder, and the starry sky, the masts, the sail-yards at once appeared in the open windows. The steamer creaked and clambered from one watery mountain to another. It swung wider and wider, rising and falling⁠—and in its rigging Canopus, the Crow, the Southern Cross swayed widely to and fro, now flying toward the abyss above, now toward the abyss below, and roseate auroras were still flashing above them.

A certain Ivlev was once travelling, in the beginning of June, to a distant region of his provence.

The tarantass, with its dusty top all awry, had been given him by his brother-in-law, at whose estate he was passing the summer. The troika10 of small but well-broken horses, with thick matted manes, he had hired in the village, from a wealthy muzhik. They were driven by a son of that muzhik, a lad of eighteen⁠—a plodding fellow, a good husbandman. He was all the time cogitating about something with displeasure, seemed to be offended at something, could not take a joke. And, having become convinced that there was no possibility of getting into talk with him, Ivlev yielded to that peaceful and aimless observation, which chimes in so well with the beat of hoofs and the jangling of little bells.

The drive was very pleasant at first: the day was warm, grayish: the road a much travelled one; the meadowlands were full of flowers and skylarks; from the grainfields, from the dove-coloured fields of rye, spreading onward as far as the eye could see, a pleasant little breeze was blowing, bearing flower pollen over slanting masses of the grain and rye, at times making this pollen dust swirl like smoke⁠—and the distance even seemed misty from it. The lad, in a new cap and a clumsy jacket made of lustrine, was sitting upright; the fact that the horses were completely entrusted to him, and that he was wearing his best clothes, made him especially serious. As for the horses, they coughed and ran along without hurrying; the off-horse at times made the whiffletree scrape against the wheel, at others strained in his harness, and one horseshoe was constantly flashing under him with its white steel.

“Will we stop at the count’s?” asked the lad, without turning around, when a village came into view ahead of them, enclosing the horizon with its hedges and garden.

“What for?” said Ivlev.

The lad was silent for a time, and having knocked off with a whip a large gadfly that had stuck to a horse, answered sombrely:

“Why, to drink tea.⁠ ⁠…”

“It isn’t tea you’ve got on your mind,” said Ivlev, “you’re always trying to save the horses.”

“It isn’t travelling that worries a horse⁠—it’s food,” answered the lad with conviction.

Ivlev looked about him: the weather had turned bleaker, discoloured clouds had gathered from all sides, and drops of rain were already falling⁠—these unassuming days always wind up with a downpour.⁠ ⁠… An old man in spectacles, who was ploughing near the village, said that only the young countess was at home, but they drove up nevertheless. The young fellow pulled a long coat over his shoulders, and satisfied with the fact that the horses were resting, was calmly getting soaked under the rain upon the driver’s seat of the tarantass, which had been drawn up in the middle of the dirty yard, near a stone trough that had sunk into the ground, which ground was all trampled over by the hoofs of cattle. He was inspecting his boots, was adjusting with his whip-stock the breech-band of the shaft-horse; while Ivlev sat in the drawing room, which was darkening from the rain. He was chatting with the countess and awaiting tea. There was already a smell of shavings burning; the thick green smoke of the samovar, which a barefooted wench on the steps was stuffing with bundles of brightly burning sticks, pouring kerosene over them, floated past the window. The countess was in a capacious pink dressing gown, which showed her powdered bosom; she smoked, inhaling deeply; she patted her hair frequently, baring her firm and rounded arms to the shoulders; inhaling the smoke and laughing, she kept on leading the talk around to love, and, among other things told him about her near neighbour, the landowner Khvoshchinsky,