Yama, Aleksandr Kuprin [grave mercy TXT] 📗

from a specialist, while the rest she learned through a self-instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings supplemental to it. She did not contrive to make more than a rouble’s worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the very first half-rouble that she made she bought Likhonin a mouthpiece for smoking.

Several years later Likhonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in the university and as a lawyer. This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka, possessed some instinctive domesticity, some imperceptible ability of creating a bright and easy quietude around her. It was precisely she who, in a very short time, made Likhonin’s quarters into a charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Likhonin, who, as well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to wage a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt somehow at ease, as though enjoying domesticity; and rested at soul after heavy tribulations, need, and starvation. Likhonin recalled with grateful sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on those evenings around the samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued and dreamt. It must be said, however, that his evil, malignant, cruel thoughts about Liuba were soon forgot after the separation. However, such is frequently the case.

In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-styled cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must flow out of individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with just that which seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable, and tried to overcome together with her those scientific obstacles, which, without any loss, might have been left aside.

Thus, for example, Likhonin did not want, under any conditions, to become reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer, barbarous, savage, or, more correctly, childish, primitive method of counting. She counted exclusively in ones, twos, threes and fives. Thus, for example, twelve to her was two times two threes; nineteen⁠—three fives and two twos; and, it must be said, that through her system she with the rapidity of a counting board operated almost up to a hundred. To go further she dared not; and besides she had no practical need of this. In vain did Likhonin try to transfer her to a digital system. Nothing came of this, save that he flew into a rage, yelled at Liubka; while she would look at him in silence, with astonished, widely open and guilty eyes, the lashes of which stuck into long black arrows from tears. Also, through a capricious turn of her mind, she began to master addition and multiplication with comparative ease, but subtraction and division were for her an impenetrable wall. But then, she could, with amazing speed and wit, solve all possible jocose oral brain-racking riddles, and even remembered very many of them herself from the thousand year old usage of the village. Toward geography she was perfectly dull. True, she could orientate herself as to the four cardinal points on the street, in the garden, and in the room; hundreds of times better than Likhonin⁠—the ancient peasant instinct in her asserted itself⁠—but she stubbornly denied the sphericity of the earth and did not recognize the horizon; and when she was told that the terrestrial globe moves in space, she only snorted from laughter. Geographical maps to her were always an incomprehensible daubing in several colours; but separate figures she memorized exactly and quickly. “Where’s Italy?” Likhonin would ask her. “Here it is, a boot,” Liubka would say and triumphantly jabbed the Apennine Peninsula. “Sweden and Norway?” “This dog, which is jumping off a roof.” “The Baltic Sea?” “A widow standing on her knees.” “The Black Sea?” “A shoe.” “Spain?” “A fatty in a cap”⁠ ⁠… etc. With history matters went no better; Likhonin did not take into consideration the fact that she, with her childlike soul thirsting for fiction, would have easily become familiarized with historic events through various funny and heroically touching anecdotes; but he, accustomed to pulling through examinations and tutoring high-school boys of the fourth or fifth grade, starved her on names and dates. Besides that, he was very impatient, unrestrained, irascible; grew fatigued soon, and a secret⁠—usually concealed but constantly growing⁠—hatred for the girl who had so suddenly and incongruously warped all his life, more and more frequently and unjustly broke forth during the time of these lessons.

A far greater success as a pedagogue enjoyed Nijeradze. His guitar and mandolin always hung in the dining room, secured to the nails with ribbons. The guitar, with its soft, warm sounds, drew Liubka more than the irritating, metallic bleating of the mandolin. When Nijeradze would come to them as a guest (three or four times a week, in the evening), she herself would take the guitar down from the wall, painstakingly wipe it off with a handkerchief, and hand it over to him. He, having fussed for some time with the tuning, would clear his throat, put one leg over the other, negligently throw himself against the back of the chair, and begin in a throaty little tenor, a trifle hoarse, but pleasant and true:

“The trea-cha-rous sa-ound av a-kissin’
Re-sa-hounds through the quiet night air;
Tuh all fla-ming hearts it is pleasin’,
And given tuh each lovin’ pair.

For a single mo-homent of mee-tin’⁠ ⁠…
My poor heart is achin’ an’ beatin’.⁠ ⁠…”

And at this he would pretend to swoon away from his own singing, shut his eyes, toss his head in the passionate passages or during the pauses, tearing his right hand away from the strings; would suddenly turn to stone, and for a second would pierce Liubka’s eyes with his languorous, humid, sheepish eyes. He knew an endless multitude of ballads, catches, and old-fashioned, jocose little pieces. The universally familiar Armenian couplets about Karapet, pleased