Short Fiction by Aleksandr Kuprin (nonfiction book recommendations .txt) 📕

gaze and, opening with difficulty his mutilated lips, said in a scarcely audible voice:

“No one⁠ ⁠… was there.⁠ ⁠… I was alone.⁠ ⁠…”

He closed his eye and his chest began to rise and fall.

“Kill him!” came a tremulous, nervous, half-childish voice, shrieking somewhere in the back ranks. The crowd moved forward, howled dully, and closed in on the spot where the horse-thief was lying.

Without rising, Kozel dragged himself over to where Kuzma was standing and threw his arms about his feet.

“My benefactor!” he was saying senselessly and entreatingly. “See, I kiss your feet.⁠ ⁠… God knows that I was home all the time. I went for some bast.⁠ ⁠… God knows and the Holy Virgin. My benefactors! Here I kiss your feet!⁠ ⁠… I am only a poor cripple.⁠ ⁠…”

And he was really dragging himself around on his knees, holding on to Kuzma’s boot and kissing it in such frenzy as though his whole safety lay in this. Kuzma slowly turned around and looked at the crowd.

“Let him go to the devil!” said an old man standing there.

“To the devil with him!” caught up several voices. “Maybe it wasn’t he. It was a Kreshevo horse anyway! What’s the use? Let Kozel go.⁠ ⁠… We’ll ask the elder afterward.”

Kozel was still dragging himself on his knees from one peasant to another. The terror of the imminent and cruel death had now changed to delirious joy. He pretended that he did not understand what was going on. Tears were running down his horribly twisted face. He caught the hands and the boots of the peasants and kissed them greedily. Vasil stood to one side, pale and motionless, with his eyes burning. He could not turn his face away from Buzyga’s terrible face, seeking yet fearing his glance.

“Go away!” Kuzma Sotnik suddenly said and kicked the old man in the back with his boot. “You go away too, Vasil! Buzyga!” he shouted almost immediately, turning to the dying horse-thief, “do you hear? I am asking you for the last time: ‘Who was with you?’ ”

The crowd moved in again. The same force that threw Kozel and the boy forward was now bearing them back, and the people whom they met turned away, made room for them impatiently, as if they were disturbing their strained attention. Through the soft and dense barrier of human bodies, Vasil heard the loud bass of Kuzma who was still questioning Buzyga. Suddenly the same thin, hysterical voice shouted almost above Vasil’s head: “Kill Buzyga!⁠ ⁠…”

All those who were standing behind pushed forward, shoving in those before them. Kozel and Vasil found themselves outside of the crowd.

“Lord be praised!” the old man muttered joyously, drying his tears with one of his stumps and making the sign of the cross with the other. “Vasil, Vasil! O Lord! We have escaped!⁠ ⁠… Vasil! O Lord!⁠ ⁠… We have escaped! Why do you stand there? Let’s run home!”

“You go; I won’t,” said Vasil gloomily.

It seemed that it was outside of his power to draw his burning eyes away from the black, motionless, and dreadfully silent crowd. His blue lips trembled and became distorted, as they whispered unintelligible words.

“Let’s go, Vasil!” Kozel entreated him, dragging his grandson by the hand.

At that moment the black mass suddenly quivered and swayed like a forest that was suddenly struck by the wind. A dull and short groan of fury rolled over it. In an instant it pressed together, then tore apart again, then pressed together once more. And deafening each other with their frenzied cries, the men mingled together in the horrible fray.

“Vasil, for God’s sake!” the old man muttered, “let’s go away.⁠ ⁠… They will kill us!”

It was with great difficulty that he succeeded in dragging the boy away from the mob, but on the corner, struck by the dead silence that suddenly set in, Vasil drew away and glanced back.

“O Lord have mercy on thy sinful slave, Levonty, and take him to Paradise,” Kozel suddenly began to whisper. “They have killed Buzyga,” he said with pretended sadness.

He knew that the people’s wrath was allayed with blood and that death had gone past him. He could not conceal his deep, animal joy. He alternately cried and laughed with noiseless, long laughter. He spoke feverishly, without pauses, without sense, and made idiotic faces at himself. Vasil looked at him from time to time in aversion, knitting his brows with an expression of deep hatred.

Anathema

“Father Deacon, stop burning that candle. You won’t get far at this rate,” said the archdeacon’s wife. “It’s time to get up.”

This little, thin, sallow-faced woman treated her husband very sternly. When she was still at school, the prevalent opinion there was that all men are rascals, cheats, and tyrants. But the deacon was not a tyrant at all. He was really afraid of his hysterical wife, who was subject to fits. They had no children, as the wife was barren. The archdeacon was of immense stature, weighing over three hundred pounds, with a chest that reminded one of the body of an automobile. He was possessed of a powerful voice and, at the same time, of that gentle condescension, which is so peculiar to exceedingly strong men when they are dealing with very weak persons.

It took the archdeacon a long time to get his voice into proper shape. He had to go through the whole of that painfully long and unpleasant process which is so familiar to all public singers. He, too, had to make local application with cocaine, and with caustic, and gargle his throat with a solution of boric acid. While still in bed, Father Olympy began to try out his voice:

“Via⁠ ⁠… hmm!⁠ ⁠… Via‑a‑a!⁠ ⁠… Halleluja, halleluja⁠ ⁠… maa‑ma⁠ ⁠…”

“Don’t seem to sound well, God bless me. Hm,⁠ ⁠…” thought he to himself.

Just like famous singers, he never trusted his own powers. It is a well-known fact that actors become pale and make the sign of the cross just before coming out. Father Olympy was the same way. And yet, there was not another man in the city, perhaps not in all