Short Fiction, Ivan Bunin [reading women .TXT] 📗

Throwing a casual glance at some paper submitted to him, he, in the midst of the conversation, firmly and abruptly dashes off his signature upon it. Upon seeing a visitor enter, he changes the expression on his face, disposes of the matter in hand in two or three phrases, and again renews the interrupted conversation. When receiving some dispatch, his manner of opening it is especially negligent; for a moment, as he runs through it, he frowns: “What idiots!” he will say vehemently, in vexation; and throwing the dispatch to one side, immediately forgets about it⁠—or pretends that he does so.⁠ ⁠… All are idiots to him. He has already succeeded in astonishing his guest with his self-assurance, his decisive and sceptical mind, his enormous worldly experience and his wide acquaintance with people of the most diverse classes and stations. No matter who among the celebrities of Moscow is named⁠—merchants, administrators, physicians, journalists⁠—he knows them all, and knows well, besides, the price of each and all. And what information does he not possess concerning backstage mysteries, exceptional careers, and shady histories!

His guest had heard a great deal about him while still at Port Said from a certain friend of this man; which friend had said, with a cynical gaiety, that Zotov had gone through fire, water, and brazen pipes. “Ye-es,” this friend had said, shaking his head with a derisive and enigmatic smile, “he’s a fine lad!” On the spot the guest came to know still more, and chiefly through the fragmentary phrases of Zotov himself. Strangely and unexpectedly do talents manifest themselves in Russia, and they work miracles when lucky lots fall to their share! For he had drawn an unusually lucky lot when he had come as an urchin to Moscow. He had an uncle there; a well-fed, clever muzhik, who had already attained to a competence and a consciousness of his own worth; who knew how, adroitly, without lowering himself, to do a good turn for any decent gentleman. This uncle worked in the Sandunovskiya baths, and many of those whom he enveloped in clouds of hot and fragrant soapy foam called him by name and liked to chat with him. And one of these was Nechaev, a liberal, educated Croesus, a large-built, stout merchant in gold spectacles. Was it a hard thing, having thrown a fine, slippery sheet over the pink, steamed body, to put in a word about his urchin nephew? And this urchin did not get to twisting waxen thread, nor to blowing up the fire under sad-irons, but got into a sombre, clean and quiet warehouse on the Iliyinka. All the rest was a matter of his personal liveliness and aptitude. Everyone knows how these lucky fellows and born geniuses begin: during the day the urchin runs errands; of evenings, by his own volition, without any guidance, he pours by the dim light of a candle-end, learning to read and write; in the morning, before the clerks get in, he, without understanding, but stubbornly, overcomes the newspaper, and, let the clerks but open their mouths, he is right there on the spot, all alert and obedient, catching every word, every glance.⁠ ⁠… When he was about twelve this urchin, who had aroused his employer’s special interest, was taken into the latter’s home; while in his eighteenth year he was already in Germany, studying the paper industry, working as hard as any German⁠—the foreigners, it would seem, did not want to believe that he was a Russian. “They often don’t believe it even now, the blockheads!” said Zotov, roughly and abruptly, as is his wont, throwing away one cigarette and immediately lighting another.⁠ ⁠… “But, after all, does he resemble a European so very greatly?” the guest wonders as he looks at his host.

He is thirty-seven years of age, but seems older. Yes⁠—in appearance he is altogether an Englishman; even his hands are English, the red hair upon them so thick that they seem to be covered with tow. “But then,” the guest reflects, “would an Englishman talk so amazingly much and so animatedly?” Hands really English would not be trembling at his age, and, moreover, if possessing such strength as Zotov’s, an Englishman’s face would not be so pale, so uneasy without any visible cause. Zotov is wearing black spectacles for the second day now, because one of his eyebrows is injured⁠—he slipped, so he says, on a banana peel in a bar; which means that he was rather far gone! And yet here, on this island, he is a personage because of his position. His hold on his guest’s curiosity and attention does not flag for a minute. This man, audacious to the verge of insolence, infects one with his audacity, his energy⁠—at times even enraptures. But, listening to him, wondering at him, one looks upon him and thinks: “But he is drunk⁠—he is drunk!” He is always tipsy⁠—from nervousness, from the heat, from whiskey; Englishmen drink a great deal, but, of course, not a single one of them in all this white city drinks as much as Zotov, nor swallows iced soda water as avidly, nor smokes such a quantity of cigars and cigarettes, nor speaks so much and so confusedly.⁠ ⁠…

After his training abroad he worked at home and enjoyed the unbounded trust of the man who had brought him up. But he no longer wanted to know any mean in his independence, as well as in his expenditures. Sent into Central Asia, he suddenly, on some trifling pretext, quarrelled with Nechaev, severing all connections with him⁠—and, from a man steadily and surely climbing upward, was transformed into something very like an adventurer. He had traversed all of Siberia; had been in Amur, in China, consumed with impatience to found some enterprise all his own⁠—let it be something new, let it be something he was not familiar with, let it even be of a predatory nature⁠—but an enterprise such as would quickly lead to riches. Having returned to Russia he had insinuated himself into