Short Fiction by Vsevolod Garshin (always you kirsty moseley TXT) 📕

peace; I implore you, leave me in peace, and out of the question; do not bother about me,” querulously cried the caterpillar. “I am doing this for the future life, only for the future life.”

“What sort of a future life?” inquired the bay.

“Can it be you do not know that after death I become a butterfly with multicoloured wings?”

The bay, lizard, and snail did not know this, but the insects had a kind of glimmering knowledge on the subject. And all kept silent for a short time, because no one knew how to say anything to the point respecting the future life.

“It is necessary to treat strong convictions with respect,” chirruped the grasshopper at length. “Does no one wish to say anything more? Perhaps you ladies?” and he turned to the flies. The elder of them answered:

“We cannot say that things have gone badly with us. We have just come from a room where the ‘gude wife’ was potting jam, and we settled under a lid and had our fill. We are satisfied. It is true our mamma got entangled in the jam, but what is to be done? She had already lived a considerable time in the world, and we are satisfied.”

“Gentlemen,” said the lizard, “I am of the opinion that you are all entirely correct! But, on the other hand.⁠ ⁠…”

But the lizard did not state what was on the other hand, because she felt something firmly press her tail into the ground.

This was the coachman, Anton, who, having awakened, had come for the bay. He had unwittingly placed his huge foot on the assemblage and squashed it. Only the flies escaped, and flew away to buzz of their deceased mother departed in the jam. The lizard escaped, but with a reduced tail. Anton took the bay by the forelock, and led him out of the garden to harness him up to the barrel, and go for water, and said to him, “Get on, you old stump!” to which the bay only replied by whispering something to himself. The lizard remained without a tail. True it is that after a while it grew again, but it always remained somewhat blunted and blackish in colour, and whenever she was asked how she had damaged her tail, she used to reply:

“They tore it off because I dared to express my convictions.”

And she was quite correct.

The Bears

In the Steppe the town of Bielsk nestles on the River Rokhla at a point where it makes several sharp curves linked up by branch streams, the whole forming a network which, if looked at on a clear summer day from the lofty right bank of the channel through which the river runs here, resembles a gigantic bow of blue ribbon. At this point the bank rises some three hundred and fifty feet sheer above the level of the river as if it had been cut by a huge knife. So steep is it that to clamber from the water’s edge to the top, where the limitless Steppe commences, is possible only by taking hold of the bushes of spindlewood, birch, and hazel thickly covering the face of the slope. From this summit a clear view of forty versts opens out on every side. On the right to the south and on the left to the north stretch the gradients of the right bank of the Rokhla, descending abruptly into valleys such as the one from above which we are gazing. Some of the ridges show up white with their chalk tops and naked sides destitute of soil. Others are covered for the most part with short and withered grass. In front to the east stretches the illimitable undulating Steppe, yellow with haystacks, over which some useless weed is growing thickly, or verdant with growing crops, here showing the dark purple-black of newly upturned fallow, there the silvery grey of feather-grass. Viewed from where we are standing, the Steppe appears level, and only the accustomed eye can trace on it the scarcely discernible lines of ridges, of invisible ravines and gullies. Here and there an old half-sunken tumulus meets the view, its sides scarified by the plough, and no longer possessed of its stone slab, now perhaps adorning the courtyard of the Kharkoff University, or perhaps taken away by some peasant, and now forming part of the wall of his cattle-yard.

Below, the winding river runs from north to south, alternately receding from its high bank into the Steppe or flowing immediately under its ledge, fringed at intervals with clusters of pine-trees and about the town by gardens and grazing-plots. At some distance from the bank to the side of the Steppe a strip of quicksand runs almost the entire length of the river, barely supporting the red and black shoots of small shrubs growing on it, and its thick carpet of fragrant lilac-coloured charbrets. Amongst these sands, two versts from the town, lies the cemetery, resembling from a distance a little oasis with the small wooden bell-tower of the cemetery chapel rising from its centre. The town itself presents no outstanding features, and is much like all district towns, apart from the astonishing cleanliness of its streets, due not so much to a solicitous municipal administration as to the sandy soil on which the town is built, which absorbs any moisture an incensed heaven may pour forth, and thereby places the town swine in great difficulties, compelling them to seek suitable accommodation for themselves at least two versts distance from the town in the dirty banks of the river.

In September of 1857 the town of Bielsk was in a state of unwonted excitement. The usual routine of life was disturbed. Everywhere, whether in the Club, streets, or on the benches outside the gateway entrances of courtyards, indoors and outdoors, animated conversation was being carried on. It might have been supposed that the Zemstvo elections, which were taking place at this time, were the cause of disturbance; but there had been previous