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

sweetly drawn⁠ ⁠… distance⁠ ⁠… atmosphere⁠ ⁠… the moon to the life.⁠ ⁠… Do you remember Nina⁠—the coloured supplement of the Neva9⁠—it was something like it.⁠ ⁠…”

I sit at the opera listening to Carmen. He is there, as everywhere. He is behind me, and has his feet on the lower bar of my fauteuil. He hums the tune of the duet in the last act, and through his feet communicates to my nerves every movement of his body. Then, in the entr’act, I hear him speaking in a voice pitched high enough for me to hear:

“Wonderful gramophone records the Zadodadofs have. Shalapin absolutely. You couldn’t tell the difference.”

Yes, it was he or someone like him who invented the barrel organ, the gramophone, the bioscope, the photophone, the biograph, the phonograph, the pathephone, the musical box, the pianino, the motor car, paper collars, oleographs, and newspapers.

There’s no getting away from him. I flee away at night to the wild seashore, and lie down in solitude upon a cliff, but he steals after me in the shadow, and suddenly the silencers broken by a self-satisfied voice which says:

“What a lovely night, Katenka, isn’t it? The clouds, eh, look at them! Just as in a picture. And if a painter painted them just like it, who would say it was true to Nature?”

He has killed the best minutes of my life⁠—minutes of love, the dear sweet nights of youth. How often, when I have wandered arm in arm with the most beauteous creation of Nature, along an avenue where, upon the ground, the silver moonlight was in pattern with the shadows of the trees, and he has suddenly and unexpectedly spoken up to me in a woman’s voice, has rested his head on my shoulder and cried out in a theatrical tone:

“Tell me, do you love to dream by moonlight?”

Or:

“Tell me, do you love Nature? As for me, I madly adore Nature.”

He was many shaped and many faced, my persecutor, but was always the same underneath. He took upon occasion the guise of professor, doctor, engineer, lady doctor, advocate, girl-student, author, wife of the excise inspector, official, passenger, customer, guest, stranger, spectator, reader, neighbour at a country house. In early youth I had the stupidity to think that these were all separate people. But they were all one and the same. Bitter experience has at last discovered to me his name. It is⁠—the Russian intelligent.

If he has at any time missed me personally, he has left everywhere his traces, his visiting cards. On the heights of Barchau and Machuka I have found his orange peelings, sardine tins, and chocolate wrappings. On the rocks of Aloopka, on the top of the belfry of St. John, on the granites of Imatra, on the walls of Bakhchisari, in the grotto of Lermontof, I have found the following signatures and remarks:⁠—

“Pusia and Kuziki 1908 year 27 February.”

“Ivanof.”

“A. M. Plokhokhostof (Bad-tail) from Saratof.”

“Ivanof.”

“Pechora girl.”

“Ivanof.”

“M.D.⁠ ⁠… P.A.P.⁠ ⁠… Talotchka and Achmet.”

“Ivanof.”

“Trophim Sinepupof. Samara Town.”

“Ivanof.”

“Adel Soloveitchik from Minsk.”

“Ivanof.”

“From this height I delighted in the view of the sea.⁠—C. Nicodemus Ivanovitch Bezuprechny.”

“Ivanof.”

I have read his verses and remarks in all visiting books, and in Puskhin’s house, at Lermontof’s Cliff, and in the ancient monasteries have read: “The Troakofs came here from Penza, drank kvass and ate sturgeon. We wish the same to you,” or “Visited the natal ashtray of the great Russian poet, Chichkin, teacher of caligraphy, Voronezh High School for Boys,” or⁠—

“Praise to thee, Ai Petri, mountain white,
In dress imperial of fir.
I climbed up yesterday unto thy height,
Retired Staff-Captain Nikoli Profer.”

I needed but to pick up my favourite Russian book, and I came upon him at once. “I have read this book.⁠—Pafnutenko.” “The author is a blockhead.” “Mr. Author hasn’t read Karl Marx.” I turn over the pages, and I find his notes in all the margins. Then, of course, no one like he turns down corners and makes dog-ears, tears out pages, or drops grease on them from tallow candles.

Gentlemen, judges, it is hard for me to go on. This man has abused, fouled, vulgarised all that was dear to me, delicate and touching. I struggled a long while with myself. Years went by. My nerves became more irritable I saw there was not room for both of us in the world. One of us had to go.

I foresaw for a long while that it would be just some little trifle that would drive me to the crime. So it was.

You know the particulars. In the compartment there was a crush; the passengers were sitting on one another’s heads. He, with his wife, his son, a schoolboy in the preparatory class, and a pile of luggage, were occupying four seats. Upon this occasion he was wearing the uniform of the Department of Popular Education. I went up to him and asked:

“Is there not a free seat here?”

He answered like a bulldog with a bone, not looking at me:

“No. This seat is taken by another gentleman. These are his things. He’ll be back in a minute.”

The train began to move.

I waited, standing, where I was. We went on about ten miles. The gentleman didn’t come. I was silent, and I looked into the face of the pedagogue, thinking that there might yet be in him some gleam of conscience.

But no. We went another fifteen miles. He got down a basket of provisions and began to eat. He went out with a kettle for hot water, and made himself tea. A little domestic scandal arose over the sugar for the tea.

“Peter, you’ve taken a lump of sugar on the sly!”

“Word of honour, by God, I haven’t! Look in my pockets, by God!”

“Don’t swear, and don’t lie. I counted them before we set out, on purpose.⁠ ⁠… There were eighteen and now there are seventeen.”

“By God!!”

“Don’t swear. It is shameful to lie. I will forgive you everything, only tell me straight out the truth. But a lie I can never forgive. Only cowards lie. One who