Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

“Not so bad,” replied Ivanoff, who had crouched at the bottom of the boat.

Very soon the rain ceased, though the clouds had not dispersed, but were massed behind the woods where flashes of lighting could be seen at intervals.

“We ought to be getting back,” said Ivanoff.

“All right. I’m ready.”

They rowed out into the current. Black, heavy clouds hung overhead, and the flashes of lightning became incessant; white scimitars that smote the sullen sky. Though now it did not rain, a feeling of thunder was in the air. Birds with wet and ruffled plumage skimmed the surface of the river, while the trees loomed darkly against the blue-grey heavens.

“Ho! ho!” cried Ivanoff.

When they had landed and were plodding through the wet sand, the gloom became more intense.

“We’re in for it, now.”

Nearer, ever nearer to earth the huge cloud approached, like some dreadful grey-bellied monster. There was a sudden gust of wind, and leaves and dust were whirled round and round. Then, a deafening crash, as if the heavens were cleft asunder, when the lightning blazed and the thunder broke.

“Oho⁠—ho⁠—ho!” shouted Sanine, trying to outvie the clamour of the storm. But his voice, even to himself, was inaudible.

When they reached the fields, it was quite dark. Their pathway was lit by vivid flashes, and the thunder never ceased.

“Oh! Ha! Ho!” shouted Sanine.

“What’s that?” cried Ivanoff.

At that moment a vivid flash revealed to him Sanine’s radiant face, the only answer to his question. Then, a second flash showed Sanine, with arms outstretched, gleefully apostrophizing the tempest.

The sun shone as brightly as in spring, yet in the calm, clear air the touch of autumn could be felt. Here and there the trees showed brown and yellow leaves in which the wistful voice of a bird occasionally broke the silence, while large insects buzzed lazily above their ruined kingdom of faded grasses and withered flowers where luxuriant weeds now waxed apace.

Yourii sauntered through the garden. Lost in his thoughts, he gazed at the sky, at the green and yellow leaves, and the shining water, as if he were looking on them all for the last time, and must fix them in his memory so as never to forget them. He felt vague sorrow at his heart, for it seemed as though with every moment something precious was passing away from him that could never be recalled; his youth that had brought him no joy; his place as an active sharer in the great and useful work upon which all his energies had once been concentrated. Yet why he should have thus lost ground he could not tell. He was firmly convinced that he possessed latent powers that should revolutionize the world, and a mind far broader in its outlook than that of anyone else; but he could not explain why he had this conviction, and he would have been ashamed to admit the fact even to his most intimate friend.

“Ah! well,” he thought, gazing at the red and yellow reflections of the foliage in the stream, “perhaps what I do is the wisest and the best. Death ends it all, however one may have lived or tried to live. Oh! there comes Lialia,” he murmured, as he saw his sister approaching. “Happy Lialia! She lives like a butterfly, from day to day, wanting nothing, and troubled by nothing. Oh! if I could live as she does.”

Yet this was only just a passing thought, for in reality he would on no account have wished to exchange his own spiritual tortures for the feather-brain existence of a Lialia.

“Yourii! Yourii!” she exclaimed in a shrill voice though she was not more than three paces distant from him. Laughing roguishly, she handed him a little rose-coloured missive.

Yourii suspected something.

“From whom?” he asked, sharply,

“From Sinotschka Karsavina,” said Lialia, shaking her finger at him, significantly.

Yourii blushed deeply. To receive through his sister a little pink, scented letter like this seemed utterly silly; in fact ridiculous. It positively annoyed him. Lialia, as she walked beside him, prattled in sentimental fashion about his attachment to Sina, just as sisters will, who are intensely interested in their brothers’ love-affairs. She said how fond she was of Sina, and how delighted she would be if they made a match of it, and got married.

At the luckless word “married,” Yourii’s face grew redder still, and in his eyes there was a malevolent look. He saw before him an entire romance of the usual provincial type; rose-pink billets-doux, sisters as confidantes, orthodox matrimony, with its inevitable commonplace sequel, home, wife, and babies⁠—the one thing on earth that he dreaded most.

“Oh! Enough of all that twaddle, please!” he said in so sharp a tone that Lialia was amazed.

“Don’t make such a fuss!” she exclaimed, pettishly. “If you are in love, what does it matter? I can’t think why you always pose as such an extraordinary hero.”

This last sentence had a touch of feminine spite in it, and the shaft struck home. Then, with a graceful movement of her dress which disclosed her dainty openwork stockings, she turned abruptly on her heel like some petulant princess, and went indoors.

Yourii watched her, with anger in his dark eyes, as he tore open the envelope.

Yourii Nicolaijevitch:

“If you have time, and the wish to do so, will you come to the monastery today? I shall be there with my aunt. She is preparing for the Communion, and will be in church the whole time. It will be dreadfully dull for me and I want to talk to you about lots of things. Do come. Perhaps I ought not to have written to you, but, anyhow, I shall expect you.”

In a moment all that had occupied his thoughts vanished, as with a thrill of pleasure almost physical he read and read the letter. This pure, charming girl in one short phrase had thus in naive, trusting fashion revealed to him the secret of her love. It