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

there jumped out on to the stage a certain Altshiller, a local Rothschild, a Jew, still young but already fat, with very airy manners⁠—a rosy-cheeked man, of the sensual type, covered with rings and chains and trinkets. He threw himself at us.

“Good gracious! I’ve been running about for the last half hour. I’m dead beat. Tell me, for Heaven’s sake, if you’ve seen Volkova and Bogoutcharskaia?”

As a matter of fact, immediately after the performance, we had seen these actresses drive off with some dragoon officers, and we amiably imparted the news to Altshiller, He caught his head between his hands and threw himself about the stage:

“But this is shameful! I’ve ordered the supper. No, this is really the limit! To give one’s word, to promise and⁠ ⁠… What do you call that, gentlemen, I ask you?”

We were silent.

He made a few more contortions on the stage, then stopped, hesitated, scratched his head nervously, smacked his lips thoughtfully, and said suddenly, in a decided manner:

“Gentlemen, may I ask you to have supper with me?”

We refused.

But he would take no refusal. He stuck to us like glue. He threw himself first at Nelioubov and then at me, shook our hands, looked appealingly into our eyes, and assured us with warmth that he was devoted to art. Nelioubov was the first to give way.

“Oh, the devil! Let’s go, what about it!”

Maecenas led us to the main platform and began bustling about. He chose the most conspicuous place, got us seated, and kept jumping up, running after the waiters, waving his arms and, after drinking a glass of kümmel, pretended to be a desperate debauchee. His bowler hat was all on one side, to give him an air of wickedness.

“Try a little cucumber! How does one put it in Russian? Isn’t it that without a little cucumber no festivity is possible? Try a little vodka. Do eat. Go ahead, I beg of you. And perhaps you’d like some Bœuf à la Stroganof? It’s excellent at this place. Here, waiter!”

From a large piece of hot roast beef I became drunk, as though from wine. My eyes were closing. The verandah with its lights, the blue tobacco smoke, and the fantastic gallop of talk, kept flowing past me, and I could hear as in a dream:

“Please eat a little more, gentlemen.⁠ ⁠… Don’t be on ceremony. Really I don’t know what to do with myself, I am so devoted to art.”

XIII

But the dénouement was near at hand. My fare of black bread and tea was undermining my health. I became irritable, and often, in order to keep myself in hand, I would run away from the rehearsal to some remote corner in the gardens. Besides, I had long ago exhausted my stock of underclothes.

Samoilenko continued to torment me. You know how it is sometimes at a boarding-school, when a master, for no reason at all, suddenly gets his knife into some poor little wretch of a pupil. He will hate him for the pallor of his face, because his ears stick out, because he shrugs his shoulders unpleasantly, and this hate will last for years. This is exactly how Samoilenko behaved towards me. He had already managed to fine me fifteen roubles altogether, and during rehearsals he would speak to me as though he were the head of a prison addressing a convict. Sometimes, as I listened to his insolent remarks, I would lower my eyelids and would then see fiery circles in front of my eyes. As for Valerianov, he had stopped speaking to me at all, and when we met he would bolt like an ostrich. I had been with him a month and a half already and had received exactly one rouble.

One morning I woke up with a headache, with a metallic taste in my mouth, and in my soul a black, heavy, unreasoned anger. In this frame of mind I went to the rehearsal.

I don’t remember what we were acting, but I remember well that there was a thick rolled up copybook in my hand. I knew my part, as usual, perfectly. It contained the words: “I have deserved this.”

And when the play got to this passage I said:

“I have deserved this.”

But Samoilenko ran up to me and bawled out:

“Who speaks Russian like this? Whoever speaks like this? ‘I have deserved this!’ One says: ‘I have deserved for this.’ Mediocrity!”

Growing white I stretched the copybook out to him with these words:

“Kindly look at the text.”

But he shouted out in a guttural voice:

“To hell with your text! I myself am your text. If you don’t want to keep your job here, you may go to the devil.”

I quickly raised my eyes to his. Suddenly he understood everything, became as pale as I was, and moved back quickly two steps. But it was already too late. With the heavy rolled copybook I struck him heavily and loudly on the left cheek and on the right, then again on the left, and then on the right again, and again, and again. He made no resistance, did not even duck, did not even try to run away, but, at each blow, only switched his head to left and right, like a clown who plays at being surprised. Finally I flung the copybook in his face and left the stage for the gardens. Nobody stopped me.

And then the miracle happened. The first person that I saw in the gardens was a little messenger-boy from the local branch of the Volga-Kama bank. He was asking for Leontovitch and handed me a notification of five hundred roubles, that were waiting for me at the bank.

An hour later Nelioubov and I were already in the gardens ordering a gigantic lunch, and two hours later the whole troop was drinking my health in champagne and congratulating me. On my honour, it wasn’t I but Nelioubov who had spread the news that I had come in for sixty thousand roubles. I didn’t contradict it. A little later Valerianov