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

inspired music, the beauty of sunset, the aroma of a flower, and⁠—this first of all⁠—the soul-communion of two refined natures, in which, owing to serious illness, nervous receptivity reaches a point of exaltation and mutual understanding passes into a silent clairvoyance.

Do you remember our long, unhurried walks along the seashore, under the perpendicular rays of the sun, in those burning, lazy, midday hours, when everything seems to die in helpless lassitude, and the waves just rustle and whiz on to the hot, yellow sand and go back into the dazzling sea, leaving behind a moist, dented edging, which disappears just as quickly as the traces of one’s breath on glass? Do you remember how we used to hide from the doctor, who allowed no one to be out of doors after sunset, and steal out on the terrace in the warm moonlit nights? The moonlight would cut through the espalier of the dense vineyard and lie on the floor and the white wall, like a pattern of light, fantastic lace. In the darkness, we could not see, but only guess at each other, and the timid whispers in which we had to speak gave even to the simplest words a deep, intimate, agitating significance. Do you remember how, on the rainy days, when the sea was enveloped in a fog all day long and there was in the air a smell of wet sand, of fish and refreshed leaves, we used to tiptoe into my cosy room and read Shakespeare, just a little at a time, like real gourmets, tasting the savour of every page, revelling in every spark from this great mind which, for me, became deeper and deeper, still more penetrating, under your guidance. These books, in their soft covers of tender green morocco, are still with me now. On certain pages of them, here and there, are sharp nail-marks, and when I look at these remaining symbols, which remind me so vividly of your vehement, nervous enthusiasm for the beauties and abysses of this Shakespearean genius, I am overcome by a quiet, sombre emotion.

Do you remember? Ah, how endlessly I could repeat this question, but I am beginning to be tired already, and I have still so much to say to you.

Of course, you can imagine that here in the sanatorium, I am condemned to perpetual silence. The usual stereotyped sentences which our invalids exchange when they are compelled to meet at breakfast, at dinner, at tea, drive me frantic. They always talk about the same things: today one of them has had a bath two degrees lower than the day before, another has eaten a pound more of grapes, a third has climbed a steep slope leading to the sea without stopping and⁠—imagine⁠—without even being out of breath! They discuss their maladies at length, with egotistic enjoyment, sometimes in disgusting detail, Unfailingly, each wishes to persuade the rest that no one else can possibly have such extraordinary complications of cruel suffering. It is a tragedy when two competitors meet, even if it is only a question of a simple headache. Scornful shrugs come into play, ironical half-hidden smiles, haughty expressions and the most icy glances. “What’s this you are telling me about your headache? Ha! ha. This is really funny. I can imagine what you would have said if you had endured once the cruel pain that I suffer every day!”

Here illness is a cause of pride and rivalry, a fantastic warrant for an odd self-respect, a sort of decoration in a way. However, I have noticed this sort of thing among healthy people, but here among sick people⁠—it becomes dreadful, repulsive, incredible.

That’s why I’m always pleased when I find myself at last alone, in my cosy, impregnable little corner. But no, I’m not alone: with me there are always you and my love. There, I have said the word and it didn’t burn my lips at all, as it always does in novels.

But I don’t even know myself if one can call this quiet, pale, half-mystical feeling “love.”

I’m not going to conceal from you the fact that girls of our class have a much more definite and realistic comprehension of love than is suspected by their parents, who watch modern flirtations through their fingers. At school, one talks a great deal on this subject and curiosity gives it a kind of mysterious, exaggerated, even monstrous, significance. From novels and the stories of married friends we learn about mad kisses, burning embraces, about nights of delight, voluptuousness and goodness knows what. All this we assimilate instinctively, half consciously, and⁠—probably according to individual temperament, depravity, perspicacity⁠—more or less clearly.

In that sense, my love is not love, but a sentimental and amusing play of the imagination. Sickly, puny, and weak from my very childhood, I have always had a horror of everything in which, one way or another, physical force, rough health, and the joy of life displayed themselves. A horse ridden quickly, the sight of a workman with an enormous weight on his back, a big crowd, a loud shriek, an excessive appetite, a strong odour⁠—all this makes me wince or rouses in me disgusted antipathy. And these are exactly the feelings that I experience when my thoughts are confronted by the real sensual love of healthy people, with its heavy, inept, shameless details.

But if one is to call the exclusively soul union of two people when the feelings and thoughts of one of them through some mysterious current, transmit themselves to the other, when words yield place to silent glances, when a scarcely perceptible shiver of the eyelids, or the pale ghost of a smile in the eyes say sometimes so much more than a long confession of love between “ordinary folk” (I’m using your actual expression), when through the mere meeting of each other’s eyes at table, or in a drawing-room at the arrival of a newcomer or at a stupidity that has just been uttered, two people, without words know how to share an