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

Give me satiety and I shall be happy and will glorify thy name throughout the whole universe.”

“Feed him,” said the tzar in disgust. “And when he dies of overeating, let me know about it.”

And there came two others: One, a powerful athlete with a rosy body and a low forehead. He said with a sigh:

“Happiness lies in creation.”

The other was a thin, pale poet on whose cheeks were burning two bright spots, and he said:

“Happiness lies in health.”

But the tzar smiled bitterly and observed:

“If it were in my power to change your destinies, then thou, oh poet, wouldst beg for inspiration in a month, and thou, image of Hercules, wouldst be running to doctors for pills to reduce thy weight. Go both in peace. Who else is there?”

“A mere mortal,” exclaimed proudly the seventh, decorated with narcissus flowers: “Happiness lies in nonexistence.”

“Cut off his head,” the sovereign pronounced lazily.

“Tzar, tzar, be merciful!” lisped the condemned man, and he became paler than the petals of the narcissus. “I did not mean that.”

But the tzar waved his hand wearily, yawned, and said gently:

“Take him away. Cut off his head. The tzar’s word is hard as agate.”

Many others came. One of them said only two words:

“Women’s love.”

“Very well,” the tzar acquiesced. “Give him a hundred of the most beautiful women and girls of my country. But give him also a goblet of poison. And when the time has arrived let me know and I will come to look at his corpse.”

And another said:

“Happiness consists in having each of my wishes fulfilled immediately.”

“And what does thou want now?” the tzar asked cunningly.

“I?”

“Yes, thou.”

“Tzar⁠ ⁠… the question is too unexpected.”

“Bury him alive. Ah, and still another wise man? Well, well, come a little nearer, perhaps thou knowest in what happiness consists?”

The wise man⁠—for he was a real wise man⁠—answered:

“Happiness lies in the charm of human thought.”

The tzar’s eyebrows contracted and he shouted in wrath:

“Ah! Human thought! What is human thought?”

But the wise man⁠—for he was a real wise man⁠—only smiled compassionately and did not answer at all.

Then the tzar ordered him to be hurled into an underground prison where there was perpetual darkness and where no sound from outside could be heard. And when, a year later, they brought to him the prisoner who had become blind and deaf, and could scarcely stand on his feet, he answered quietly to the tzar’s question, “Well, art thou still happy now?” in these words:

“Yes, I am happy. While in prison I was a tzar, and a rich man, and in love, and with my fill of food, and hungry⁠—all this was given to me by my thought.”

“What, then, is thought?” exclaimed the tzar impatiently. “Remember that in another five minutes I will have thee hanged and will spit in thine accursed face. Will thy thought console thee then? And where will then be thy thoughts, which thou didst lavish on this earth?”

The wise man answered quietly, for he was a real wise man:

“Fool, thought is immortal.”

How I Became an Actor

This sad and funny story⁠—more sad than funny⁠—was told me by a friend of mine who had led the oddest sort of life. He had been what we Russians call “on the horse and under the horse,” but he had not, in the least, lost, under the lash of destiny, his kindness of heart and his alertness of mind. Only this particular experience produced a rather curious effect on him⁠—he gave up going to the theatre after it and, until the present moment, nothing will drag him into one.

I shall try to transmit my friend’s story, though I am afraid that I shall be unable to reproduce the simplicity, the soft and melancholy mockery, which he put into it.

I

Well, it’s like this. Can you picture for yourself a wretched little southern country town? In the middle of it there is a sort of monstrous shallow pit where the Ukrainians of the neighbourhood, up to their waists in mud, sell cucumbers and potatoes from their carts. This is the bazaar. On one side is the cathedral, and naturally the cathedral street, on the other the town square, on the third the market stone stalls, the yellow plaster of which has peeled off; pigeons are perching on the roof and cornices; finally, on the fourth side, stretches the main street, with a branch of some bank or other, a post office, a solicitor, and the barber Theodore from Moscow. In the outskirts of the town an infantry regiment was then billeted, and in the town itself a regiment of dragoons. In the town square stood the summer theatre. And that’s all.

Still one must add that the town itself, with its Duma and secondary school, to say nothing of the square, the theatre, the paving of the main street⁠—all this exists thanks to the liberality of a local millionaire and sugar manufacturer, Kharitonenko.

II

How I stumbled into the place is a long story, but I’ll tell it briefly. In this little town I was to meet a friend, a real, true friend (God rest his soul), but he had a wife who, as is usual with the wives of our true friends, could not bear me. He and I each had several thousands put by through hard work: he, you see, had worked for many years as a pedagogue and as an assurance inspector at the same time, while I had been lucky at cards for a whole year. Suddenly we stumbled on a very advantageous enterprise in southern skins and decided to try our luck at it. I started at once and he was to rejoin me two or three days later. As my carelessness was an old story, our little capital was kept by him, but in a separate bundle, for my friend was a man of German carefulness.

And then began the hail of misfortunes. At the station of Kharkoff, while I was eating some cold sturgeon, sauce