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

that bright, jolly, almost spring day. Kasimir Stanislavovitch squeezed the lemon into a glass of tea and greedily drank the sour, muddy liquid; then he again went behind the screen. The “Versailles” was quiet. It was pleasant and peaceful; his eye wandered leisurely over the hotel notice on the wall: “A stay of three hours is reckoned as a full day.” A mouse scuttled in the chest of drawers, rolling about a piece of sugar left there by some visitor.⁠ ⁠… Thus half asleep Kasimir Stanislavovitch lay for a long time behind the screen, until the sun had gone from the room and another freshness was wafted in from the window, the freshness of evening.

Then he carefully got himself in order: he undid his bag, changed his underclothing, took out a cheap, but clean handkerchief, brushed his shiny frock-coat, top-hat, and overcoat, took out of its torn pocket a crumpled Kiev newspaper of January 15, and threw it away into the corner.⁠ ⁠… Having dressed and combed his whiskers with a dyeing comb, he counted his money⁠—there remained in his purse four roubles, seventy copecks⁠—and went out. Exactly at six o’clock he was outside a low, ancient, little church in the Molchanovka. Behind the church fence a spreading tree was just breaking into green; children were playing there⁠—the black stocking of one thin little girl, jumping over a rope, was continually coming down⁠—and he sat there on a bench among perambulators with sleeping babies and nurses in Russian costumes. Sparrows prattled over all the tree; the air was soft, all but summer⁠—even the dust smelt of summer⁠—the sky above the sunset behind the houses melted into a gentle gold, and one felt that once more there was somewhere in the world joy, youth, happiness. In the church the chandeliers were already burning, and there stood the pulpit and in front of the pulpit was spread a little carpet. Kasimir Stanislavovitch cautiously took off his top-hat, trying not to untidy his hair, and entered the church nervously; he went into a corner, but a corner from which he could see the couple to be married. He looked at the painted vault, raised his eyes to the cupola, and his every movement and every gasp echoed loudly through the silence. The church shone with gold; the candles sputtered expectantly. And now the priests and choir began to enter, crossing themselves with the carelessness which comes of habit, then old women, children, smart wedding guests, and worried stewards. A noise was heard in the porch, the crunching wheels of the carriage, and everyone turned their heads towards the entrance, and the hymn burst out “Come, my dove!” Kasimir Stanislavovitch became deadly pale, as his heart beat, and unconsciously he took a step forward. And close by him there passed⁠—her veil touching him, and a breath of lily-of-the-valley⁠—she who did not know even of his existence in the world; she passed, bending her charming head, all flowers and transparent gauze, all snow-white and innocent, happy and timid, like a princess going to her first communion.⁠ ⁠… Kasimir Stanislavovitch hardly saw the bridegroom who came to meet her, a rather small, broad-shouldered man with yellow, close-cropped hair. During the whole ceremony only one thing was before his eyes: the bent head, in the flowers and the veil, and the little hand trembling as it held a burning candle tied with a white ribbon in a bow.⁠ ⁠…

About ten o’clock he was back again in the hotel. All his overcoat smelt of the spring air. After coming out of the church, he had seen, near the porch, the car lined with white satin, and its window reflecting the sunset, and behind the window there flashed on him for the last time the face of her who was being carried away from him forever. After that he had wandered about in little streets, and had come out on the Novensky Boulevard.⁠ ⁠… Now slowly and with trembling hands he took off his overcoat, put on the table a paper bag containing two green cucumbers which for some reason he had bought at a hawker’s stall. They too smelt of spring even through the paper, and springlike through the upper pane of the window the April moon shone silvery high up in the not yet darkened sky. Kasimir Stanislavovitch lit a candle, sadly illuminating his empty, casual home, and sat down on the sofa, feeling on his face the freshness of evening.⁠ ⁠… Thus he sat for a long time. He did not ring the bell, gave no orders, locked himself in⁠—all this seemed suspicious to the porter who had seen him enter his room with his shuffling feet and taking the key out of the door in order to lock himself in from the inside. Several times the porter stole up on tiptoe to the door and looked through the keyhole: Kasimir Stanislavovitch was sitting on the sofa, trembling and wiping his face with a handkerchief, and weeping so bitterly, so copiously that the brown dye came off, and was smeared over his face.

At night he tore the cord off the blind, and, seeing nothing through his tears, began to fasten it to the hook of the clothes-peg. But the guttering candle flickered, and terrible dark waves swam and flickered over the locked room: he was old, weak⁠—and he himself was well aware of it.⁠ ⁠… No, it was not in his power to die by his own hand!

In the morning he started for the railway station about three hours before the train left. At the station he quietly walked about among the passengers, with his eyes on the ground and tear-stained; and he would stop unexpectedly now before one and now before another, and in a low voice, evenly but without expression, he would say rather quickly:

“For God’s sake⁠ ⁠… I am in a desperate position.⁠ ⁠… My fare to Briansk.⁠ ⁠… If only a few copecks.⁠ ⁠…”

And some passengers, trying not to look at his top-hat, at the worn velvet collar of his overcoat, at the