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

were you happy while you were with me? Did you feel that it was good?”

“Olyessia! Can you still ask?”

“Wait.⁠ ⁠… Did you regret having met me? Were you thinking of another woman while you were with me?”

“Never for one single second! Not only when I was with you, but when I was alone, I never had a thought for anyone but you.”

“Were you jealous of me? Were you ever angry with me? Were you ever wretched when you were with me?”

“Never, Olyessia, never!”

She put both her hands upon my shoulders, and looked into my eyes with love indescribable.

“Then I tell you, my darling, that you will never think evilly or sadly of me when you remember me,” she said with conviction, as though she were reading the future in my eyes. “When we part you will be miserable, terribly miserable.⁠ ⁠… You will cry, you will not find a place to rest anywhere. And then everything will pass and fade away, and you will think of me without sorrow, easily and happily.”

She let her head fall back on the pillows again and whispered in a feeble voice:

“Now go, my darling.⁠ ⁠… Go home, my precious.⁠ ⁠… I am a little bit tired. No, wait⁠ ⁠… kiss me.⁠ ⁠… Don’t be frightened of granny⁠ ⁠… she won’t mind. You don’t mind, do you, granny?”

“Say goodbye. Part, as you should,” the old woman muttered in discontent.⁠ ⁠… “Why should you want to hide from me? I’ve known it a long while.”

“Kiss me here and here⁠ ⁠… and here,” Olyessia said, touching her eyes, cheeks and mouth with her fingers.

“Olyessia, you’re saying goodbye to me as though we shall never see each other again!” I cried in terror.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, my darling. I don’t know anything. Now, go and God be with you. No, wait⁠ ⁠… just one little moment more.⁠ ⁠… Bend down to me.⁠ ⁠… You know what I regret?” she began to whisper, touching my cheeks with her lips. “That you haven’t given me a child.⁠ ⁠… Oh, how happy I should be!”

I went out into the passage, escorted by Manuilikha. Half the heaven was covered by a black cloud with sharp, curly edges, but the sun was still shining, bending to the east. There was something ominous in this mixing of light and oncoming darkness. The old woman looked up, shading her eyes with her hand as it were an umbrella, and shook her head meaningly.

“There’ll be a thunderstorm over Perebrod, today,” she said with conviction. “And hail as well, most likely.”

XIV

I had almost reached Perebrod when a sudden whirlwind rose, driving columns of dust before it on the road. The first heavy, scattered drops of rain began to fall.

Manuilikha was not mistaken. The storm which had been gathering all through the insufferable heat of the day burst with extraordinary force over Perebrod. The lightning flashed almost without intermission, and the window panes of my room trembled and rang with the roll of the thunder. At about eight o’clock in the evening the storm abated for some minutes, but only to begin again with new exasperation. Suddenly something poured down on to the roof with a deafening crash, and on to the walls of the old house. I rushed to the window. Huge hailstones, as big as a walnut, were falling furiously on to the earth and bouncing high in the air again. I glanced at the mulberry bush which grew against the house. It stood quite bare; every leaf had been beaten off by the blows of the awful hail. Beneath the window appeared Yarmola’s figure, hardly visible in the darkness. He had covered his head in his sheepskin and run out of the kitchen to close the shutters. But he was too late. A huge piece of ice suddenly struck one of the windows with such force that it was smashed, and the tinkling splinters of glass were scattered over the floor of the room.

A fatigue came over me, and I lay down on the bed in my clothes. I thought I would never be able to sleep at all that night, but would toss from side to side in impotent anguish until the morning. So I decided it would be better not to undress; later I might be able to tire myself if only a little by walking up and down the room, over and over again. But a strange thing happened to me. It seemed to me that I had shut my eyes only a second; but when I opened them, long, bright sunbeams were already stretching through the chinks of the shutters, and innumerable motes of golden dust were turning round and round within them.

Yarmola was standing over my bed. On his face was written stern anxiety and impatient expectation. Probably he had been waiting long for me to wake.

“Sir,” he said in a dull voice, in which one could distinguish his uneasiness. “You’d better go away from here, sir.”

I put my feet out of bed and looked at Yarmola with amazement. “Better go away? Where to? Why? You’re mad, surely.”

“No, I’m not mad,” Yarmola snarled. “You didn’t hear what happened through yesterday’s hail? Half the corn of the village is like as though it had been trodden underfoot⁠—cripple Maxim’s, the Goat’s, old Addlepate’s, the brothers Prokopchuk’s, Gordi Olefir’s.⁠ ⁠… She put the mischief on us, the devilish witch.⁠ ⁠… May she rot in hell!”

In an instant I remember what had happened yesterday, the threat Olyessia had made by the church, and her apprehensions.

“And all the village is in a riot now,” Yarmola continued. “They got drunk first thing in the morning, and now they’re fighting.⁠ ⁠… They’ve got something bad to say of you, too, sir.⁠ ⁠… You know what our people are like?⁠ ⁠… If they do something to the witches, that won’t matter, it’ll serve ’em to rights; but you, sir⁠—I’ll just say this one word of warning, you get out of here as quick as you can.”

So Olyessia’s fears had come true. I must let her know at once of the