Short Fiction - Vladimir Korolenko (easy books to read in english txt) 📗

job is harmless, and he merely decides simple questions. The result is that sleep kills people.⁠ ⁠… And across the fields and through the ravines of our beloved country on such moonlight nights as this trains tear along like this, and the watch is kept by the sleepy, swollen eyes of the man who is responsible for hundreds of lives.⁠ ⁠… A moment’s slumber.⁠ ⁠…”

The legs of the mathematician in their checkered trousers stirred: he got up from his seat in the shadow and sat down on a bench.⁠ ⁠… His fat, expressionless face, with its thick, clipped mustache, made you uneasy.

“Stop your croaking, for heaven’s sake,” he said angrily. “However you argue, the result is the same, devil take it.⁠ ⁠… I wanted to fall asleep.⁠ ⁠…”

Pavel Semenovich looked at him in surprise.

“What’s the matter?” he said. “Are you crazy? We’ll get there all right, if God wills. I merely want to point out how the terrible and the usual are combined.⁠ ⁠… Economy is the most ordinary idea of life.⁠ ⁠… But sometimes it involves death.⁠ ⁠… It is even measurable by the law of probability.⁠ ⁠…”

The mathematician, still more angry, took out his cigar case and said, as he began to smoke:

“No, you’re right: the devil knows: the rascal’ll fall asleep, and all at once.⁠ ⁠… These beasts of railroad men.⁠ ⁠… O, let’s talk of something else. The devil take these fears.⁠ ⁠… Are you still vegetating in Tikhodol?⁠ ⁠… You’ve stuck there a long time.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes,” answered Pavel Semenovich, a little embarrassed. “It’s such a wretched place. It’s just like living in a yoke.⁠ ⁠… A teacher, prosecutor, excise official.⁠ ⁠… When you once land there, you’re forgotten, and removed from the lists of the living.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes.⁠ ⁠… It is an awful place.⁠ ⁠… It’s deadening.⁠ ⁠… Why, there’s not even a club there. And the mud is unendurable.”

“There’s a club now, at least that’s what we call it.⁠ ⁠… And there are a few stretches of pavement.⁠ ⁠… Lighting, especially in the centre of the town.⁠ ⁠… But, I’ll confess, I live on the edge, and don’t make much use of these conveniences.”

“Where do you live?”

“With Budnikov, in the suburbs.”

“Budnikov? Semen Nikolayevich? Just think, I lived in that section myself: with Father Polidorov.⁠ ⁠… Of course, I met Budnikov! A fine man, well educated, but rather⁠—filled with ideas?”

“Yes, with a few notions.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, not that.⁠ ⁠… I said ideas. But notions. What? None special, I think.”

“No, nothing special, but just the same: he used to keep valuable papers in a mattress.⁠ ⁠…”

“Why, I never knew that. But when I met him he made a queer impression on me. He was so fresh and original.⁠ ⁠… A house owner, and all of a sudden he went to living in two rooms without servants.⁠ ⁠… No, I remember, he had a kind of porter.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, Gavrilo.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s right, that’s right. Gavrilo, a little fellow with white eyebrows? Yes? That’s right.⁠ ⁠… I remember I liked to look at his face: such a good-natured snout. I almost thought the master was part workman.⁠ ⁠… Who is he? Is he always that way?”

Pavel Semenovich said nothing for a few minutes. He then looked at his companion with some embarrassment and replied:

“Y-yes, you’re right.⁠ ⁠… That actually happened.⁠ ⁠… Semen Nikolayevich⁠ ⁠… and Gavrilo.⁠ ⁠… Both together.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I remember.⁠ ⁠…”

“He was a fine man for our city.⁠ ⁠… Educated, independent, with ideas.⁠ ⁠… He went to the university but never finished because of some escapade.⁠ ⁠… He once spoke of it as if he had made an unfortunate venture into love. ‘My heart was broken,’ he said. On the other hand I know that he corresponded with a friend in some outlandish place. That shows there was something behind it.⁠ ⁠… His father, he said, was a usurer, but not a malicious one. This caused a row between father and son. The young student didn’t approve of it and wouldn’t touch the money, but lived by teaching.⁠ ⁠… When the father died, Semen Nikolayevich came and inherited the property. He said to someone: ‘I don’t want it.⁠ ⁠… This is owed to society.’ Then I don’t know what happened.⁠ ⁠… The house, land, long-term leases, a lawsuit.⁠ ⁠… He carried it on one, two, three years, and then got to like it. Many still remember how he said: ‘I’ll finish the lawsuit with these curs and settle up.⁠ ⁠… I won’t stay a day longer in this confounded hole.’⁠ ⁠… But it’s the usual story.⁠ ⁠… We had a teacher once, a zoölogist, who came to our gymnasium and said bluntly: ‘As soon as I write my dissertation, I’ll get out of the swamp!’ ”

“That’s Kallistov, isn’t it?” asked the mathematician, with great interest. The narrator waved assent.

“He’s still writing it. He married; had three children.⁠ ⁠… That’s just the way with Semen Nikolayevich Budnikov. He’s been making a dissertation of his life, so to speak. He began to enjoy this lawsuit. Challenges, protests, cassation, the whole game.⁠ ⁠… And he kept writing himself without consulting lawyers.⁠ ⁠… Then, after a while, he commenced to build a new house. When I got to know him, he was already a lucky, middle-aged bachelor, with a reddish face, and such a pleasant, quiet, substantial and sleepy voice. Then he had a few peculiarities. He sometimes used to come to see me, especially when it was time to pay my rent.⁠ ⁠… This was due on the twentieth. That meant that on the twentieth he used to come at eight o’clock in the evening and drink two cups of tea with rum in it. No more, no less! In each cup two spoonfuls of rum and one of sugar. I got to look at this as an addition to my rent. He did the same with all his lodgers⁠—only some with and some without rum. The rents were all different, about twenty in his four houses (one in the city was quite large).⁠ ⁠… That made forty cups of tea.⁠ ⁠… He seemed as if he had included that in his budget and marked it down.⁠ ⁠… Sometimes, ‘I didn’t find so-and-so at home, but he brought the money the next day. Still owing, two cups of tea.’ ”

“Really?” laughed Petr Petrovich. “He never reasoned that way! Why do you think