Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

was almost a complete ignoramus in the work. For that reason he had not attained even the very least party initiation; although at times there were given him instructions of a sort, not at all of a safe nature, the meaning of which was not made clear to him. And not in vain was his steadfast faithfulness relied upon; he carried out everything rapidly, exactly, with a courageous faith in the universal importance of the work; with a carefree smile and with a broad contempt of possible destruction. He concealed outlawed comrades, guarded forbidden literature and printing types, transmitted passports and money. He had a great deal of physical strength, black-loam amiability and elemental simple-heartedness. Not infrequently he would receive from home, somewheres in the depth of the Simbirskaya or Ufimskaya province, sums of money sufficiently large for a student; but in two days he scattered and dispersed it everywhere, with the carelessness of a French grandee of the seventeenth century, while he himself remained during winter in only his everyday coat, with boots restored by his own devices.

Beside all these naive, touching, laughable, lofty and shiftless qualities of the old Russian student, passing⁠—and God knows if for the better?⁠—into the realm of historical memories, he possessed still another amazing ability⁠—to invent money and arrange for credit in little restaurants and cook-shops. All the employees of pawnshops and loan offices, secret and manifest usurers, and old-clo’-men were on terms of the closest friendship with him.

But if for certain reasons he could not resort to them, then even here Soloviev remained at the height of his resourcefulness. At the head of a knot of impoverished friends, and weighed down with his usual business responsibility, he would at times be illumined by an inner inspiration; make at a distance, across the street, a mysterious sign to a Tartar passing with his bundle behind his shoulders, and for a few seconds would disappear with him into the nearest gates. He would quickly return without his everyday coat, only in his blouse with the skirts outside, belted with a thin cord; or, in winter, without his overcoat, in the thinnest of small suits; or instead of the new, just purchased uniform cap⁠—in a tiny jockey cap, holding by a miracle on the crown of his head.

Everybody loved him: comrades, servants, women, children. And all were familiar with him. He enjoyed especial goodwill from his bosom cronies, the Tartars, who, apparently, deemed him a little innocent. They would sometimes, in the summer, bring as a present the strong, intoxicating koumyss in big quartern bottles, while at Bairam they would invite him to eat a suckling colt with them. No matter how improbable it may seem, still, Soloviev at critical moments gave away for safekeeping certain books and brochures to the Tartars. He would say at this with the most simple and significant air: “That which I am giving you is a Great Book. It telleth, that Allah akbar,25 and that Muhammad is his prophet; that there is much evil and poverty on earth, and that men must be merciful and just to each other.”

He also had two other abilities: he read aloud very well; and played at chess amazingly, like a master, like a downright genius, defeating first-class players in jest. His attack was always impetuous and rigorous; his defense wise and cautious, preferably in an oblique direction; his concessions to his opponent full of refined, farsighted calculation and murderous craftiness. With this, he made moves as though under the influence of some inner instinct, or inspiration; not pondering for more than four or five seconds and resolutely despising the respected traditions.

He was not willingly played with; his manner of play was held barbarous, but still they played, sometimes for large sums of money; which, invariably winning, Soloviev readily laid down upon the altar of his comrades’ needs. But he steadfastly declined from participation in competitions, which could have created for him the position of a star in the world of chess: “There is in my nature neither love for this nonsense, nor respect,” he would say. “I simply possess some sort of a mechanical ability of the mind, some sort of a psychic deformity. Well, now, just as there are lefties. And for that reason I’ve no professional self-respect, nor pride at victory, nor spleen at losing.”

Such was the generously built student Soloviev. And Nijeradze filled the post of his closest comrade; which did not hinder them both, however, from jeering at each other, disputing, and swearing, from morning till night. God knows, wherewithal and how the Georgian Prince existed. He said of himself, that he possessed the ability of a camel, of nourishing himself for the future, for several weeks ahead; and then eating nothing for a month. From home, from his blessed Georgia, he received very little; and then, for the most part, in victuals. At Christmas, at Easter, or on his birthday (in August) he was sent⁠—and inevitably through arriving fellow-countrymen⁠—whole cargoes of hampers with mutton, grapes, goat-flesh, sausages, dried hawthorn berries, rakhat loukoum, eggplants, and very tasty cookies; as well as leathern bottles of excellent homemade wine, strong and aromatic, but giving off just the least bit of sheepskin. Then the Prince would summon together to one of his comrades (he never had quarters of his own) all his near friends and fellow-countrymen; and arranged such a magnificent festival⁠—toi in Caucasian⁠—that at it were extirpated to the last shreds the gifts of fertile Georgia. Georgian songs were sung, the first place, of course, being given to “Mravol-djamiem” and “Every guest is sent down to us from Heaven by God, no matter of what country he be”; the Lezginka was danced without tiring, with table knives brandished wildly in the air; and the tulumbash (or, perhaps, he is called tomada?) spoke his improvisations; for the greater part Nijeradze himself spoke.

He was a