Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

long saw you in my sleep. Come to me, my baby, my lil’ precious!” She drew him to her, breast against breast.

Likhonin almost did not resist; he was all atremble, as from a chill, and meaninglessly repeating in a galloping whisper with chattering teeth:

“No, now, Liuba, don’t⁠ ⁠… Really, don’t do that, Liuba⁠ ⁠… Ah, let’s drop this, Liuba⁠ ⁠… Don’t torture me. I won’t vouch for myself⁠ ⁠… Let me alone, now, Liuba, for God’s sake!⁠ ⁠…”

“My-y little silly!” she exclaimed in a laughing, joyous voice. “Come to me, my joy!”⁠—and, overcoming the last, altogether insignificant opposition, she pressed his mouth to hers and kissed him hard and warmly⁠—kissed him sincerely, perhaps for the first and last time in her life.

“Oh, you scoundrel! What am I doing?” declaimed some honest, prudent, and false body in Likhonin.

“Well, now? Are you eased up a bit?” asked Liubka kindly, kissing Likhonin’s lips for the last time. “Oh, you, my little student!⁠ ⁠…”

XII

With pain at soul, with malice and repulsion toward himself and Liubka, and, it would seem, toward all the world, Likhonin without undressing flung himself upon the wooden, lopsided, sagging divan and even gnashed his teeth from the smarting shame. Sleep would not come to him, while his thoughts revolved around this fool action⁠—as he himself called the carrying off of Liubka⁠—in which an atrocious vaudeville had been so disgustingly intertwined with a deep drama. “It’s all one,” he stubbornly repeated to himself. “Once I have given my promise, I’ll see the business through to the end. And, of course, that which has occurred just now will never, never be repeated! My God, who hasn’t fallen, giving in to a momentary laxity of the nerves? Some philosopher or other has expressed a deep, remarkable truth, when he affirmed that the value of the human soul may be known by the depth of its fall and the height of its flight. But still, the devil take the whole of this idiotical day and that equivocal reasoner⁠—the reporter Platonov, and his own⁠—Likhonin’s⁠—absurd outburst of chivalry! Just as though, in reality, this had not taken place in real life, but in the novel What’s to Be Done? by that most boresome writer, Chernishevski. And how, devil take it, with what eyes will I look upon her tomorrow?”

His head was on fire; his eyelids were smarting, his lips dry. He was nervously smoking one cigarette after another, and frequently got up from the divan to take the decanter of water off the table, and avidly, straight from its mouth, drink several big draughts. Then, by some accidental effort of the will, he succeeded in tearing his thoughts away from the past night, and at once a heavy sleep, without any visions and images, enveloped him as though in black cotton-wool.

He awoke long past noon, at two or three o’clock; at first could not come to himself for a long while; smacked his lips and looked around the room with glazed, heavy eyes. All that had happened during the night seemed to have flown out of his memory. But when he saw Liubka, who was quietly and motionlessly sitting on the bed, with head lowered and hands crossed on her knees, he began to groan and grunt from vexation and confusion. Now he recalled everything. And at that minute he experienced in his own person how heavy it is to see in the morning, with one’s own eyes, the results of folly committed the night before.

“Are you awake, sweetie?” asked Liubka kindly.

She got up from the bed, walked up to the divan, sat down at Likhonin’s feet, and cautiously patted his blanket-covered leg.

“Why, I woke up long ago and was sitting all the while; I was afraid to wake you up. You were sleeping so very soundly!”

She stretched toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Likhonin made a wry face and gently pushed her away from him.

“Wait, Liubochka! Wait; that’s not necessary. Do you understand⁠—absolutely, never necessary. That which took place yesterday⁠—well, that’s an accident. My weakness, let’s say. Even more, a momentary baseness, perhaps. But, by God, believe me, I didn’t at all want to make a mistress out of you. I want to see you my friend, my sister, my comrade⁠ ⁠… Well, that’s nothing, then; everything will adjust itself, grow customary. Only one mustn’t fall in spirit. And in the meanwhile, my dear, go to the window and look out of it a bit; I just want to put myself in order.”

Liubka slightly pouted her lips and walked off to the window, turning her back on Likhonin. All these words about friendship, brotherhood and comradeship she could not understand with her brain of a hen and her simple peasant soul. That a student⁠—after all, not just anybody, but an educated man, who could learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge⁠—had taken her for maintenance flattered her imagination far more⁠ ⁠… And here, now, it turned out that he had just fulfilled his caprice, had gotten what he wanted, and was now trying to back out. They are all like that, the men!

Likhonin hastily got up, splashed a few handfuls of water in his face, and dried himself with an old napkin. Then he raised the blinds and threw open both window shutters. The golden sunlight, the azure sky, the rumble of the city, the foliage of the thick linden trees and the chestnuts, the bells of the horse trams, the dry smell of the hot, dusty street⁠—all this at once burst into the tiny garret room. Likhonin walked up to Liubka and amicably patted her on the shoulder.

“Never mind, my joy⁠ ⁠… What’s done can’t be undone, but it’s a lesson for the future. You haven’t yet asked tea for yourself, Liubochka?”

“No, I was waiting for you all the while. Besides, I didn’t know who to ask. And you’re all right, too. Why, I heard you, after you went off with your friend, come back and stand a while near the door.