Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

by Gad!” he thought, complacently, as if Sanine in a way belonged to him, also. Then he opened the gate, and went across the moonlit courtyard to his quarters.

On reaching home, Sanine undressed and got into bed, where he tried to read Thus Spake Zarathustra which he had found among Lida’s books. But the first few pages were enough to irritate him. Such inflated imagery left him unmoved. He spat, flung the volume aside, and soon fell fast asleep.

IV

Colonel Nicolai Yegorovitch Svarogitsch who lived in the little town awaited the arrival of his son, a student at the Moscow Polytechnic.

The latter was under the surveillance of the police and had been expelled from Moscow as a suspected person. It was thought that he was in league with revolutionists. Yourii Svarogitsch had already written to his parents informing them of his arrest, his six months’ imprisonment, and his expulsion from the capital, so that they were prepared for his return. Though Nicolai Yegorovitch looked upon the whole thing as a piece of boyish folly, he was really much grieved, for he was very fond of his son, whom he received with open arms, avoiding any allusion to this painful subject. For two whole days Yourii had travelled third-class, and owing to the bad air, the stench, and the cries of children, he got no sleep at all. He was utterly exhausted, and had no sooner greeted his father and his sister Ludmilla (who was always called Lialia) than he lay down on her bed, and fell asleep.

He did not wake until evening, when the sun was near the horizon, and its slanting rays, falling through the panes, threw rosy squares upon the wall. In the next room there was a clatter of spoons and glasses; he could hear Lialia’s merry laugh, and also a man’s voice both pleasant and refined which he did not know. At first it seemed to him as if he were still in the railway-carriage and heard the noise of the train, the rattle of the windowpanes and the voices of travellers in the next compartment. But he quickly remembered where he was, and sat bolt upright on the bed. “Yes, here I am,” he yawned, as, frowning, he thrust his fingers through his thick, stubborn black hair.

It then occurred to him that he need never have come home. He had been allowed to choose where he would stay. Why, then, did he return to his parents? That he could not explain. He believed, or wished to believe, that he had fixed upon the most likely place that had occurred to him. But this was not the case at all. Yourii had never had to work for a living; his father kept him supplied with funds, and the prospect of being alone and without means among strangers seemed terrible to him. He was ashamed of such a feeling, and loth to admit it to himself. Now, however, he thought that he had made a mistake. His parents could never understand the whole story, nor form any opinion regarding it; that was quite plain. Then again, the material question would arise, the many useless years that he had cost his father⁠—it all made a mutually cordial, straightforward understanding impossible. Moreover, in this little town, which he had not seen for two years, he would find it dreadfully dull. He looked upon all the inhabitants of petty provincial towns as narrow-minded folk, incapable of being interested in, or even of understanding those philosophical and political questions which for him were the only really important things of life.

Yourii got up, and, opening the window, leaned out. Along the wall of the house there was a little flower-garden bright with flowers, red, yellow, blue, lilac and white. It was like a kaleidoscope. Behind it lay the large dusky garden that, as all gardens in this town, stretched down to the river, which glimmered like dull glass between the stems of the trees. It was a calm, clear evening. Yourii felt a vague sense of depression. He had lived too long in large towns built of stone, and though he liked to fancy that he was fond of nature, she really gave him nothing, neither solace, nor peace, nor joy, and only roused in him a vague, dreamy, morbid longing.

“Aha! You’re up at last! it was about time,” said Lialia, as she entered the room.

Oppressed as he was by the sense of his uncertain position and by the melancholy of the dying day, Yourii felt almost vexed by his sister’s gaiety and by her merry voice.

“What are you so pleased about?” he asked abruptly.

“Well, I never!” cried Lialia, wide-eyed, while she laughed again, just as if her brother’s question had reminded her of something particularly amusing.

“Imagine your asking me why I am so pleased? You see, I am never bored. I have no time for that sort of thing.”

Then, in a graver tone, and evidently proud of her last remark, she added:

“We live in such interesting times that it would really be a sin to feel bored. I have got the workmen to teach, and then the library takes up a lot of my time. While you were away, we started a popular library, and it is going very well indeed.”

At any other time this would have interested Yourii, but now something made him indifferent. Lialia looked very serious, waiting, as a child might wait, for her brother’s praise. At last he managed to murmur.

“Oh! really!”

“With all that to do, can you expect me to be bored?” said Lialia contentedly.

“Well, anyhow, everything bores me,” replied Yourii involuntarily. She pretended to be hurt.

“That’s very nice of you, I am sure. You’ve hardly been two hours in the house, and asleep most of the time, yet you are bored already!”

“It is not my fault, but my misfortune,” replied Yourii, in a slightly arrogant tone. He thought it showed superior intelligence to be bored rather than amused.

“Your misfortune,