Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

“Yes, you will tell me!” my father rapped out, and there was a threat in his voice.

“I won’t tell you,” I whispered lower still.

“You will, you will!”

He repeated these words in a muffled voice as if they had burst from him with a painful effort. I felt his hand trembling, and even seemed to hear the rage boiling in his breast. My head sank lower and lower, and tears began to drip slowly out of my eyes upon the floor, but I still kept repeating almost inaudibly:

“No, I won’t tell; I’ll never, never tell.”

It was my father’s son speaking in me. He could never have succeeded in extorting an answer from me, no, not by the fiercest tortures. There welled up in my breast in response to his threats the almost unconscious feeling of injury that comes to an illused child, and a sort of burning love for those whose betrayal my father was demanding.

My father drew a deep breath. I shrank away still farther, and the bitter tears scalded my cheeks. I waited.

It would be hard for me to describe my sensations at that moment. I knew that his breast was seething with rage, and that at any moment my body might be struggling helplessly in his strong, delirious arms. What would he do to me? Would he hurl me from him? Would he crush me? But I did not seem to dread that now. I even loved the man in that moment of fear, but, at the same time, I felt instinctively that he was about to shatter this love with one mad effort, and that forever and ever after I should carry the same little flame of hatred in my heart which I had seen gleaming in his eyes.

I had lost all sense of fear. Instead, there had begun to throb in my heart a feeling exasperating, bold, challenging; I seemed to be waiting, and longing for the catastrophe to come at last.

It would be better so⁠—yes⁠—better⁠—better⁠—

Once more my father sighed heavily. I was no longer looking at him. I only heard his sighs, long, deep, and convulsive, and I know not to this day whether he himself overcame the frenzy that possessed him or whether it failed to find an outlet owing to an unexpected occurrence. I only know that at that critical moment Tiburtsi suddenly shouted under the open window in his harsh voice:

“Hi, there, my poor little friend!”

“Tiburtsi is here!” flashed through my mind, but his coming made no other impression on me. I was all beside myself with suspense, and did not even heed the trembling of my father’s hand upon my shoulder, or realise that Tiburtsi’s appearance or any other external circumstance could come between my father and myself, or could avert that which I believed to be inevitable, and which I was awaiting with such a flood of passionate anger.

Meanwhile Tiburtsi had quickly opened the door of the room, and now stood on the threshold embracing us both with his piercing, lynx-like glance. I can remember to this day the smallest details of the scene. For a moment a flash of cold, malevolent mockery gleamed in the greenish eyes and passed over the wide, uncouth face of this gutter orator, but it was only a flash. Then he shook his head, and there was more of sorrow than of his accustomed irony in his voice as he said:

“Oho, I see that my young friend is in an awkward situation.”

My father received him with a gloomy, threatening look, but Tiburtsi endured it calmly. He had grown serious now, and his mockery had ceased. There was a striking look of sadness in his eyes.

“My Lord Judge,” he said gently. “You are a just man; let the child go! The boy has been ‘in bad company,’ but God knows he has done no bad deeds, and if his little heart is drawn toward my unfortunate people, I swear to the Queen of Heaven that you may hang me if you wish, but I will not allow the boy to suffer for that. Here is your doll, my lad.”

He untied a little bundle, and took out the doll.

The hands that had been gripping my shoulder relaxed. My father looked surprised.

“What does this mean?” he asked at last.

“Let the boy go!” Tiburtsi repeated, stroking my bowed head lovingly with his broad palm. “You will get nothing out of him with your threats, and besides, I will gladly tell you everything you want to know. Come, Your Honour, let us go into another room.”

My father consented, with his eyes fixed in surprise on Tiburtsi’s face. They went out together, and I stayed rooted to the spot, overwhelmed with the emotions with which my heart was bursting. At that moment I was unconscious of what was going on around me, and if, in calling to mind the details of this scene, I remember that sparrows were twittering outside the window and that the rhythmic splash of the waterwheel came to me from the river, why that is only the mechanical action of my memory. Nothing external existed for me then; there existed only a little boy in whose breast two separate emotions were seething: anger and love; seething so fiercely that my heart was troubled as a glass of water is dimmed when two different liquids are poured into it at the same time. Such a little boy existed, and that boy was I; I was even sorry, in a way, for myself. There existed also two voices, that came to me from the next room in a confused but animated conversation.

I was still standing on the same spot when the study door opened, and both talkers came into the room. Once more I felt a hand on my head, and trembled.

It was my father’s, and he was tenderly stroking my hair.

Tiburtsi took my hands, and set me upon his knees right in my father’s presence.

“Come and see us,” he said. “Your father will let you come and