The Duel - Aleksandr Kuprin (best summer reads of all time TXT) 📗

might be discovered and arrested as a common vagrant. To go straight home was not to his liking at all. Nay, he dared not even think of his gloomy, low-pitched, cramped room with its single window and repulsive furniture. “By Jove! why shouldn’t I look up Nasanski, just to annoy her?” thought he all of a sudden, whereupon he experienced the delightful satisfaction of revenge.

“She reproached me for my friendship with Nasanski. Well, I shall just for that very reason pay him a visit.”

He raised eyes to heaven, and said to himself passionately, as he pressed his hands against his heart⁠—

“I swear⁠—I swear that today I have visited them for the last time. I will no longer endure this mortification.”

And immediately afterwards he added mentally, as was his ingrained habit⁠—

“His expressive black eyes glistened with resolution and contempt.”

But Romashov’s eyes, unfortunately, were neither “black” nor “expressive,” but of a very common colour, slightly varying between yellow and green.

Nasanski tenanted a room in a comrade’s⁠—Lieutenant Siégerscht’s⁠—house. This Siégerscht was most certainly the oldest lieutenant in the whole Russian Army. Notwithstanding his unimpeachable conduct as an officer and the fact of his having served in the war with Turkey, through some unaccountable disposition of fate, his military career seemed closed, and every hope of further advancement was apparently lost. He was a widower, with four little children and forty-eight roubles a month, on which sum, strangely enough, he managed to get along. It was his practice to hire large flats which he afterwards, in turn, let out to his brother officers. He took in boarders, fattened and sold fowls and turkeys, and no one understood better than he how to purchase wood and other necessaries cheap and at the right time. He bathed his children himself in a common trough, prescribed for them from his little medicine-chest when they were ill, and, with his sewing-machine, made them tiny shirts, under-vests, and drawers. Like many other officers, Siégerscht had, in his bachelor days, interested himself in woman’s work, and acquired a readiness with his needle that proved very useful in hard times. Malicious tongues went so far as to assert that he secretly and stealthily sold his handiwork.

Notwithstanding all his economy and closeness, his life was full of troubles. Epidemic diseases ravaged his fowl-house, his numerous rooms stood unlet for long periods; his boarders grumbled at their bad food and refused to pay. The consequence of this was that, three or four times a year, Siégerscht⁠—tall, thin, and unshaven, with cheerless countenance and a forehead dripping with cold sweat⁠—might be seen on his way to the town to borrow some small sum. And all recognized the low, regimental cap that resembled a pancake, always with its peak askew, as well as the antiquated cloak, modelled on those worn in the time of the Emperor Nicholas, which waved in the breeze like a couple of huge wings.

A light was burning in Siégerscht’s flat, and as Romashov approached the window, he saw him sitting by a round table under a hanging-lamp. The bald head, with its gentle, worn features, was bent low over a little piece of red cloth which was probably destined to form an integral part of a Little Russian roubashka.6 Romashov went up and tapped at the window. Siégerscht started up, laid aside his work, rose from the table, and went up to the window.

“It is I, Adam Ivanich⁠—open the window a moment.”

Siégerscht opened a little pane and looked out.

“Well, it’s you, Sublieutenant Romashov. What’s up?”

“Is Nasanski at home?”

“Of course he’s at home⁠—where else should he be? Ah! your friend Nasanski cheats me nicely, I can tell you. For two months I have kept him in food, but, as for his paying for it, as yet I’ve only had grand promises. When he moved here, I asked him most particularly that, to avoid unpleasantness and misunderstandings, he should⁠—”

“Yes, yes, we know all about that,” interrupted Romashov; “but tell me now how he is. Will he see me?”

“Yes, certainly, that he will; he does nothing but walk up and down his room.” Siégerscht stopped and listened for a second. “You yourself can hear him tramping about. You see, I said to him, ‘To prevent unpleasantness and misunderstandings, it will be best for⁠—’ ”

“Excuse me, Adam Ivanich; but we’ll talk of that another time. I’m in a bit of a hurry,” said Romashov, interrupting him for the second time, and meanwhile continuing his way round the corner. A light was burning in one of Nasanski’s windows; the other was wide open. Nasanski himself was walking, in his shirt sleeves and without a collar, backwards and forwards with rapid steps. Romashov crept nearer the wall and called him by name.

“Who’s there?” asked Nasanski in a careless tone, leaning out of the window. “Oh, it’s you, Georgie Alexievich. Come in through the window. It’s a long and dark way round through that door. Hold out your hand and I’ll help you.”

Nasanski’s dwelling was if possible more wretched that Romashov’s. Along the wall by the window stood a low, narrow, uncomfortable bed, the bulging, broken bottom of which was covered by a coarse cotton coverlet; on the other wall one saw a plain unpainted table with two common chairs without backs. High up in one corner of the room was a little cupboard fixed to the wall. A brown leather trunk, plastered all over with address labels and railway numbers, lay in state. There was not a single thing in the room except these articles and the lamp.

“Good evening, my friend,” said Nasanski, with a hearty handshake and a warm glance from his beautiful, deep blue eyes. “Please sit down on this bed. As you’ve already heard, I have handed in my sick-report.”

“Yes, I heard it just now from Nikoläiev.”

Again Romashov called to mind Stepan’s insulting remark, the painful memory of which was reflected in his face.

“Oh, you come from the Nikoläievs,” cried Nasanski and with visible interest. “Do you often visit them?”

The