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

the crowd that separated us, looking pink against the background of the dusky sunset. I remembered every atom of this illumined life, so full of strong, untrammelled happiness.

We couldn’t remain in the same spot. We were drawn eagerly to fresh places and fresh impressions. How charming they were, our long trips in those antediluvian, stuffy diligences covered with dirty sailcloth, in the company of gloomy Germans, with red, sinewy necks and faces that looked as if they had been roughly carved out of wood; and the lean, prim German women who stared at us with stupefied eyes, as they listened to our mad laughter. And those haphazard lunches “at some good old honest settler’s,” under the shade of the flower-laden acacia, hidden away in a clean yard, that was surrounded by a white wall and covered with sand from the seashore. Don’t you remember them? How ravenously we used to attack the stuffed mackerels and the rough sour wine of the country, indulging in thousands of funny, tender little bêtises, like that historic, impertinent kiss which made all the tourists turn their backs on us with indignation. And the warm July nights in the fishing villages? Do you remember that extraordinary moonlight which was so bright that it seemed fantastic and unreal; that calm, irradiated sea, with ripples of silvery moire and, on the lit-up background, the dark outlines of the fishermen as they drew in their nets, monotonously and rhythmically, all bending in the same direction?

But sometimes we would be seized by a longing for the noise of town and the hurly-burly of strangers. Lost in an unknown crowd, we would wander, pressing against each other, and realising more than ever our nearness each to each. Do you remember, my darling? As for me, I remember every minute detail and feel it until it hurts. All that is mine; it lives in me and will be with me always, to my death. I could never, even if I wanted to, get rid of it.⁠ ⁠… Do you understand?⁠—never. And yet it is not a reality. And I torture myself with the knowledge that I could never live it and feel it again because, God or Nature⁠—I really don’t know which⁠—after giving man an almost Godlike intelligence has, at the same time, invented for him two torturing traps: ignorance of the future and the impossibility of forgetting the past, with the equal impossibility of returning to it.

On receiving the little note that I sent you at once from the hotel, you hastened to me. You were hurrying and you were agitated. I knew it at a distance by your quick, nervous step, and also because, before knocking at my door, you stood quite a long time in the corridor. At that moment, I was equally nervous myself, realising that you were standing there behind the door, only two steps away from me, pale, pressing your hand tightly against your heart, and breathing deeply and even with difficulty. And for some reason or other, it seemed to me then impossible, unimaginable, that at once, in a few seconds, I should see you and hear your voice. I was in a mood such as one experiences when half asleep, when one sees things rather clearly, but, without waking up, one says to oneself: this is not real, it is only a dream.

You had changed during the years, you had become more manly; you seemed to have grown. Your black jacket suits you much better than your student’s tunic; your manners have become more collected; your eyes look at one with more assurance and more coldly; that fashionable, pointed little beard of yours is decidedly becoming. You thought that I too had improved in looks, and I quite believe that you said it sincerely, all the more because I read it in your first, quick, slightly surprised glance. Every woman, unless she is hopelessly stupid, will realise unerringly the impression that her appearance has produced.⁠ ⁠…

All the way down here in the train, I was trying to imagine our meeting. I admit that I never thought it would turn out so strange, so strained, so awkward for both of us. We exchanged unimportant, commonplace words about my journey, about Petersburg, about our health, but the eyes of each were searching the other’s, jealously looking for what had been added by time and the strange life that was completely unknown to the other.⁠ ⁠… Conversation failed us. We began with “vous” in an artificial, affected tone, but both of us soon felt that every minute made it more difficult and more stupid to keep it up. There seemed to be between us some foreign, oppressive, cold obstacle, and we did not know how to remove it.

The spring evening was quietly fading. It grew dark in the room. I wanted to ring for lights, but you protested against it. Perhaps the darkness helped us in our decision to touch upon the past. We began to talk about it with that kindly condescending mockery with which grownup people allude to the pranks of their childhood. But the odd part of it was that the more we tried to deceive each other and ourselves and appear gay and indifferent, the sadder grew our tone. At last, we became silent and sat for a long time⁠—I in the corner of the sofa, you in the armchair⁠—without moving, almost without breathing. Through the open window there came to us the indistinct drone of the large town, the noise of wheels, the hoarse shrieks of the tramway hooters, the jerky bicycle bells, and, as always on spring evenings, these sounds reached us softened into a melancholy that was almost tender. Through the window one could see a narrow strip of the sky⁠—pale as faded bronze⁠—and, against it, the dark silhouette of a roof with chimneys and a watchtower that shimmered faintly. In the darkness I could not distinguish your figure, but I could see the shining of your eyes,