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

are in my overcoat.⁠ ⁠… Oey! Quickly!”

They ran to the anteroom for his overcoat. But neither was there any key there. Evidently the inventor had left it at home. Someone was sent to fetch it. A gentleman present offered his carriage.

And the sharp blows registered themselves every second with mathematical precision; the pedagogue shouted; the counting machine went indifferently on.

3,180, 3,181, 3,182.⁠ ⁠…

One of the garrison lieutenants drew his sword and began to hack at the apparatus, but after the fifth blow there remained only the hilt, and a jumping splinter hit the president of the Zemstvo. Most dreadful of all was the fact that it was impossible to guess to what point the flogging would go on. The chronometer was proving itself weighty. The man sent for the key still did not return, and the counter, having long since passed the figure previously indicated by the inventor, went on placidly.

3,999, 4,000, 4,001.

The pedagogue jumped no longer. He just lay with gaping mouth and protruding eyes, and only twitched convulsively.

At last, the governor of the fortress, boiling with indignation, roared out to the accompaniment of the barking of his dog:

“Madness! Debauch! Unheard of! Order up the fire-brigade!”

This idea was the wisest. The governor of the town was an enthusiast for the fire-brigade, and had smartened the firemen to a rare pitch. In less than five minutes, and at that moment when the indicator showed stroke No. 4,550, the brave young fellows of the fire-brigade broke on the scene with choppers and hooks.

The magnificent mechanical self-flogger was destroyed for ever and ever. With the machine perished also the idea. As regards the inventor, it should be said that, after a considerable time of feeling sore in a corporal way and of nervous weakness, he returned to his occupation. But the fatal occasion completely changed his character. He became for the rest of his life a calm, sweet, melancholy man, and though he taught Latin and Greek he was a favourite with the schoolboys.

He has never returned to his invention.

The Last Word

Yes, gentlemen, I killed him!

In vain do you try to obtain for me a medical certificate of temporary aberration. I shall not take advantage of it.

I killed him soberly, conscientiously, coldly, without the least regret, fear or hesitation. Were it in your power to resurrect him, I would repeat my crime.

He followed me always and everywhere. He took a thousand human shapes, and did not shrink⁠—shameless creature⁠—to dress in women’s clothes upon occasion. He took the guise of my relative, my dear friend, colleague, good acquaintance. He could dress to look any age except that of a child (as a child he only failed and looked ridiculous). He has filled up my life with himself, and poisoned it.

What has been most dreadful was that I have always foreseen in advance all his words, gestures and actions.

When I met him he would drawl, crushing my hand in his:

“Aha! Whom⁠—do⁠—I⁠—see? Dear me! You must be getting on in years now. How’s your health?”

Then he would answer as for himself, though I had not asked him anything:

“Thank you. So so. Nothing to boast of. Have you read in today’s paper⁠ ⁠… ?”

If he by any chance noticed that I had a flushed cheek, flushed by the vexation of having met him, he would be sure to croak:

“Eh, neighbour, how red you’re getting.”

He would come to me just at those moments when I was up to the neck in work, would sit down and say:

“Ah! I’m afraid I’ve interrupted you.”

For two hours he would bore me to death, prattling of himself and his children. He would see I was tearing my hair and biting my lips till the blood came, and would simply delight in my torments.

Having poisoned my working mood for a whole month in advance, he would stand, yawn a little, and then murmur:

“Lord knows why I stay here talking. I’ve got lots to do.”

When I met him in a railway carriage he always began:

“Permit me to ask, are you going far?” And then:

“On business or⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Where do you work?”

“Married?”

Oh, well do I know all his ways. Closing my eyes I see him. He strikes me on the shoulder, on the back, on the knees. He gesticulates so closely to my eyes and nose that I wince, as if about to be struck. Catching hold of the lappet of my coat, he draws himself up to me and breathes in my face. When he visits me he allows his foot to tremble on the floor Under the table, so that the shade of the lamp tinkles. At an “at home” he thrums on the back of my chair with his fingers, and in pauses of the conversation drawls, “y‑e‑s, y‑es.” At cards he calls out, knocks on the table and quacks as he loses: “What’s that? What? What?”

Start him in an argument, and he always begins by:

“Eh, neighbour, it’s humbug you’re talking.”

“Why humbug?” you ask timidly.

“Because it is nonsense.”

What evil have I done to this man? I don’t know. He set himself to spoil my existence, and he spoiled it. Thanks to him, I now feel a great aversion from the sea, the moon, the air, poetry, painting, music.

“Tolstoy”⁠—he bawled orally, and in print⁠—“made his estate over to his wife, and he himself.⁠ ⁠… Compared with Turgenief, he.⁠ ⁠… He sewed his own jackboots⁠ ⁠… great writer of the Russian earth.⁠ ⁠… Hurrah!⁠ ⁠…

“Pushkin? He created the language, didn’t he? Do you remember ‘Calm was the Ukraine night, clear was the sky’? You remember what they did to the woman in the third act. Hsh! There are no ladies present, do you remember?

“ ‘In our little boat we go,
Under the little boat the water.’

“Dostoevsky⁠ ⁠… have you read how he went one night to Turgenief to confess⁠ ⁠… Gogol, do you know the sort of disease he had?”

Should I go to a picture gallery, and stand before some quiet evening landscape, he would be sure to be on my heels, pushing me forward, and saying to a girl on his arm:

“Very