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

chambermaid for the doctor. After some time appeared the police inspector, a tall thin young man with white hair, white eyelashes, and a white moustache. He was in uniform. His wide trousers were so full that they fell half way down over his polished jackboots. Immediately he pressed his way through the public, and roared with the voice of authority, sticking out his bright eyes:

“Get back! Clear off! I can’t understand what it is you find so curious here. Nothing at all. You, sir!⁠ ⁠… I ask you once more. And he looks like an intellectual, in a bowler hat.⁠ ⁠… What’s that? I’ll show you ‘police tyranny.’ Mikhailtchuk, just take note of that man! Hi, where are you crawling to, boy? I’ll⁠—”

The door was broken open. Into the room burst Anna Friedrichovna, the police inspector, the lieutenant, the four children; for witnesses, one policeman and two caretakers; and after them, the doctor. The student lay on the floor, with his face buried in the strip of grey carpet by the bed. His left arm was bent beneath his chest, his right flung out. The pistol lay on one side. Under his head was a pool of dark blood, and a little round hole in his left temple. The candle was still burning, and the clock on the commode ticked hurriedly.

A short procès-verbal was composed in wooden official terms, and the suicide’s letter attached to it.⁠ ⁠… The two caretakers and the policeman carried the corpse downstairs. Arseny lighted the way, lifting the lamp above his head. Anna Friedrichovna, the police inspector and the lieutenant looked on through the window in the corridor upstairs. The bearers’ movements got out of step at the turning; they jammed between the wall and the banisters, and the one who was supporting the head from behind let go his hands. The head knocked sharply against the stairs⁠—one, two, three.⁠ ⁠…

“Serves him right, serves him right,” angrily cried the landlady from the window. “Serves him right, the scoundrel! I’ll give you a good tip for that!”

“You’re very bloodthirsty, Madame Siegmayer,” the police inspector remarked playfully, twisting his moustache, and looking sideways at the end of it.

“Why, he’ll get me into the papers, now. I’m a poor working woman; and now, all along of him, people will keep away from my hotel.”

“Naturally,” the inspector kindly agreed. “I can’t understand these student fellows. They don’t want to study. They brandish a red flag, and then shoot themselves. They don’t want to understand what their parents must feel. They’re bought by Jewish money, damn them! But there are decent men at the same game, sons of noblemen, priests, merchants.⁠ ⁠… A nice lot! However, I give you my compliments.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no, no, no! Not for anything in the world!” The landlady pulled herself together. “We’ll have supper in a moment. A nice little bit of herring. Otherwise, I won’t let you go, for anything.”

“To tell the truth⁠—” The inspector spoke in perplexity. “Very well. As a matter of fact, I was going to drop in to Nagourno’s opposite for something. Our work,” he said, politely making way for the landlady through the door, “is hard. Sometimes we don’t get a bite all day long.”

All three had a good deal of vodka at supper. Anna Friedrichovna, red all over, with shining eyes and lips like blood, slipped off one of her shoes beneath the table and pressed the inspector’s foot. The lieutenant frowned, became jealous, and all the while tried to begin a story of “In the regiment⁠—” The inspector did not listen, but interrupted with terrific tales of “In the police⁠—” Each tried to be as contemptuous of and inattentive to the other as he could. They were both like a couple of young dogs that have just met in the yard.

“You’re everlastingly talking of ‘In the regiment,’ ” said the inspector, looking not at the lieutenant, but the landlady. “Would you mind my asking what was the reason why you left the service?”

“Well,⁠ ⁠…” the lieutenant replied, offended. “Would you like me to ask you how you came to be in the police; how you came to such a life?”

Here Anna Friedrichovna brought the “Monopan” musical box out of the corner and made Tchijhevich turn the handle. After some invitation the inspector danced a polka with her⁠—she jumped about like a little girl, and the curls on her forehead jumped with her. Then the inspector turned the handle while the lieutenant danced, pressing the landlady’s arm to his left side, with his head flung back. Alychka also danced with downcast eyes, and her tender dissipated smile on her lips. The inspector was saying his last goodbye, when Romka appeared.

“There, I’ve been seeing the student off, and while I was away you’ve been⁠—I’m treated like a do-o-og.”

And what was once a student now lay in the cold cellar of an anatomical theatre, in a zinc box, standing on ice⁠—lit by a yellow gas flame, yellow and repulsive. On his bare right leg above the knee in gross ink figures was written “14.” That was his number in the anatomical theatre.

Captain Ribnikov I

On the very day when the awful disaster to the Russian fleet at Tsushima was nearing its end, and the first vague and alarming reports of that bloody triumph of the Japanese were being circulated over Europe, Staff-Captain Ribnikov, who lived in an obscure alley in the Pieski quarter, received the following telegram from Irkutsk: Send lists immediately watch patient pay debts.

Staff-Captain Ribnikov immediately informed his landlady that he was called away from Petersburg on business for a day or two, and told her not to worry about his absence. Then he dressed himself, left the house, and never returned to it again.

Only five days had passed when the landlady was summoned to the police station to give evidence about her missing lodger. She was a tall woman of forty-five, the honest widow of an ecclesiastical official, and in a simple and straightforward manner she told