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

all sides, shouting, waving their hands, stretching out close to one another their red, sweating faces, with gleaming eyes. They are dissatisfied about something. They thrust their fingers in the feet, the head, the flanks of Emerald, rumple his hair on the left flank where there is a brand, and roar out altogether, “A false trotter! A fake! A swindle! Money back!” Emerald listens to this without understanding the words and moves his ears anxiously. “What’s it all about?” he thinks with surprise, “when I’ve been running so well!” Then for a second the Englishman’s face leaps before his eyes. Usually so calm, slightly mocking and firm, it is now burning with anger. And all of a sudden the Englishman shouts something in a high guttural voice, swings his arm quickly, and the sound of a blow cuts drily through the general turmoil. VI

Emerald was taken home and three hours later he was given oats. In the evening, when he was watered at the well, he could see the large yellow moon rising behind the edge of a cloud and this inspired him with a dark dread.

Then began the dull days.

He was not taken out any more either for exercise or walks or to races. But every day strangers, crowds of people, came, and for their benefit Emerald was dragged out into the yard, where they examined him and felt him all over, their hands crawling into his mouth, scrubbing his coat with pumice-stone, all shouting at each other together.

Afterwards, he remembered, he was once taken out of the stable, late in the evening, and led for a long time through stony, empty streets, past houses and lit-up windows. Then came the station, a dark shaky horsebox, his feet trembling from fatigue after a long journey, the whistles of the engines, the rattle of the rails, the stifling smell of smoke, the dull light of the swinging lantern. At one station he was dumped out of the horsebox and led along an endless unknown road that ran between huge bare autumn fields, past villages until he reached an unfamiliar stable, where he was shut up alone away from the other horses.

At the beginning he would still recall the races and think about his Englishman and Vassili and Nazar and Onieguine, often dreaming about them, but gradually he began to forget them all. He was hidden away for some reason or other, and his beautiful young body was pining and grieving and growing weak from inaction. And new strangers were constantly arriving, crowding round Emerald, prodding him, pulling him about and angrily abusing each other.

Sometimes Emerald could catch glimpses, through the open door, of other horses walking and running about in freedom. Then he would shout to them in protest and complaint. But the door was instantly closed again, and time would crawl once more, dull and lonely, for Emerald.

The head of this stable was a large-headed, sleepy man with small black eyes and a thin black moustache on his fat face. He seemed to be quite indifferent to Emerald, but the horse felt an incomprehensible fear of him. And then once, early in the morning, while all the stablemen were still asleep, this man came noiselessly up to Emerald on tiptoe, poured oats into his manger, and left the stable. Emerald was a little surprised, but began obediently to eat. The oats were nice, just a little bitter, but pleasant to the taste for all that. “It’s odd,” thought Emerald, “I never tasted such oats before.”

Then, all of a sudden, he became conscious of a slight colic. Pain came, it stopped, then came back stronger than ever, and grew sharper every minute. At last it became intolerable. Emerald began to moan dully. Wheels of fire were dancing before his eyes; all his body was wet and flabby from this sudden weakness. His feet shivered, bent under him, and the colt fell heavily on the floor. He tried to get up again, but could only raise himself on his forelegs, and once more slipped on his side. A buzzing turmoil whirled through his head; the Englishman swam by with his horse-like grin from the long teeth; Onieguine ran by, neighing loudly, with his camel-like Adam’s apple projecting beneath his jaw. Some force or other was dragging Emerald mercilessly and ruthlessly deep down into a dark, cold hole. Already he was unable to move.

Suddenly convulsions passed over his feet and neck and arched his back. The horse’s skin began to tremble in small swift ripples and became covered with a froth that had a pungent smell.

The moving yellow light of the lantern played straight into his eyes for a second and then died away with his failing eyesight. His ear caught once more a coarse human shout, but already he was unable to feel himself pushed in the side by someone’s heel. Then everything disappeared⁠—forever.

Happiness A Fairytale

A great tzar ordered the poets and sages of his country to be brought before him. And he asked them this question:

“In what does happiness consist?”

“In this,” answered the first hastily: “to be able to see always the illumination of thy Godlike face and feel forever⁠ ⁠…”

“Have his eyes put out,” said the tzar indifferently. “Next.”

“Happiness is power. Thou, tzar, art happy,” exclaimed the next.

But the tzar answered with a bitter smile:

“All the same, I suffer in my body and have no power to cure it. Tear out his nostrils, the scoundrel. Next.”

“Happiness is wealth,” said the next, hesitatingly.

But the tzar answered:

“I am rich and yet it is I who ask the question. Will a wedge of gold the weight of thy head content thee?”

“O, tzar!”

“Thou shalt have it. Fasten on his neck a wedge of gold the weight of his head and cast this beggar into the sea.”

And the tzar shouted impatiently: “The fourth.”

Then a man in rags with feverish eyes crept on his stomach and stammered out:

“O, most wise one! I want very little. I am hungry.