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

looked admiringly at him, but not one of them running like a quail across the yard would have dared to give him a playful punch in the side or even an inviting smile⁠—there was too much haughtiness in him and icy contempt for the fair sex. And the delights of a family hearth seemed to have little attraction for him. “When a woman establishes herself in a cottage,” he used to say intolerantly, “the air becomes bad at once.” However, he did once make a move in that direction, and then he surprised us more than ever before. We were seated at tea one evening when Yasha came into the dining-room. He was perfectly sober, but his face wore a look of agitation, and pointing mysteriously with his thumb over his shoulder towards the door, he asked in a whisper, “Can I bring them in?”

“Who is it?” asked father. “Let them come in.”

All eyes were turned in expectation towards the door, from behind which there crept a strange being. It was a woman of over fifty years of age, ragged, drunken, degraded and foolish-looking.

“Give us your blessing, sir, we’re going to be married,” said Yasha, dropping on his knees. “Get down on your knees, fool,” cried he, addressing the woman and pulling her roughly by the sleeve.

My father with difficulty overcame his astonishment. He talked to Yasha long and earnestly, and told him he must be going out of his mind to think of marrying such a creature. Yasha listened in silence, not getting up from his knees; the silly woman knelt too all the time.

“So you don’t allow us to marry, sir?” asked Yasha at last.

“Not only do I not allow you, but I’m quite sure you won’t do such a thing,” answered my father.

“That means that I won’t,” said Yasha resolutely. “Get up, you fool,” said he, turning to the woman. “You hear what the master says. Go away at once.”

And with these words he hauled the unexpected guest away by the collar, and they both went quickly out of the room.

This was the only attempt Yasha made towards the state of matrimony. Each of us explained the affair to ourselves in our own way, but we never understood it fully, for whenever we asked Yasha further about it, he only waved his hands in vexation.

Still more mysterious and unexpected was his death. It happened so suddenly and enigmatically and had apparently so little connection with any previous circumstance in Yasha’s life that if I were forced to recount what happened I feel I couldn’t do it at all well. Yet all the same, I am confident that what I say really took place, and that none of the clear impression of it is at all exaggerated.

One day, in the railway station three versts from the village, a certain well-dressed young man, a passenger from one of the trains, hanged himself in a lavatory. Yasha at once asked my father if he might go and see the body.

Four hours later he returned and went straight into the dining-room⁠—we had visitors at the time⁠—and stood by the door. It was only two days after one of his drinking bouts and repentance in the shed, and he was quite sober.

“What is it?” asked my mother.

Yasha suddenly burst into a guffaw. “He⁠—he⁠—he,” said he. “His tongue was all hanging out.⁠ ⁠… The gentleman.⁠ ⁠…”

My father ordered him into the kitchen. Our guests talked a little about Yasha’s idiosyncrasies and then soon forgot about the little incident. Next day, about eight o’clock in the evening, Yasha went up to my little sister in the nursery and kissed her.

“Goodbye, missy.”

“Goodbye, Yasha,” answered the little one, not looking up from her doll.

Half an hour later Yevka, the housemaid, ran into my father’s study, pale and trembling.

“Oh, sir⁠ ⁠… there⁠ ⁠… in the attic⁠ ⁠… he’s hanged himself⁠ ⁠… Yasha.⁠ ⁠…”

And she fell down in a swoon.

On a nail in the attic hung the lifeless body of Yasha.

When the coroner questioned the cook, she said that Yasha’s manner had been very strange on the day of his death.

“He stood before the looking-glass,” said she, “and pressed his hands so tightly round his neck that his face went quite red and his tongue stuck out and his eyes bulged.⁠ ⁠… He must have been seeing what he would look like.”

The coroner brought in a verdict of “suicide while in a state of unsound mind.”

Yasha was buried in a special grave dug for the purpose in the ravine on the other side of the wood. Next day Bouton could not be found anywhere. The faithful dog had run off to the grave and lay there howling, mourning the death of his austere friend. Afterwards he disappeared and we never saw him again.

And now that I myself am nearly what may be called an old man, I go over my varied recollections now and then, and when I come to the thought of Yasha, every time I say to myself: “What a strange soul⁠—faithful, pure, contradictory, absurd⁠—and great. Was it not a truly Slav soul that dwelt in the body of Yasha?”

The Song and the Dance

We lived at that time in the Government of Riazan, some 120 versts from the nearest railway station and even 25 versts from the large trading village of Tuma. “Tuma is iron and its people are of stone,” as the local inhabitants say of themselves. We lived on an old untenanted estate, where in 1812 an immense house of wood had been constructed to accommodate the French prisoners. The house had columns, and a park with lime trees had been made around it to remind the prisoners of Versailles.

Imagine our comical situation. There were twenty-three rooms at our disposal, but only one of them had a stove and was warmed, and even in that room it was so cold that water froze in it in the early morning and the door was frosted at the fastenings. The post came sometimes once a week, sometimes once in