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

broad smile; his small eyes sparkled merrily, as he gazed on Vasíli with roguish familiarity, a glance that seemed to say to everyone, “We understand each other. I’m a rogue, to be sure, but a sharp one.” His interlocutor, looking at his face with its high cheekbones, its merry wrinkles about the eyes, the large, thin ears that stood out so comically, involuntarily smiled also. Then Akhmétka, concluding that matters were amicable, nodded his head with a satisfied look, as much as to say, “Now we understand each other.”

“A comrade,” he said, nodding towards Vasíli; “we tramped together.”

“Where do you live?” I inquired. “I never saw you before in the village.”

“I’ve come for my papers. I’ve been carrying wine to the goldmines.”18

I looked at Vasíli; he dropped his eyes and gathered up the reins. Then, raising his head, he gazed at me defiantly. His lips were tightly compressed, but the lower one trembled perceptibly.

“I will go with him into the forest! Why do you look at me so strangely? I’m a vagrant! a vagrant!”

He was already on the gallop even as he uttered the last words. For one moment a cloud of frosty dust was visible in the street, then nothing was to be seen or heard but the clatter of the horse’s hoofs.

A year later Akhmétka again returned to the settlement for the “papers,” but Vasíli was seen no more.

Sketches of a Siberian Tourist I The Cormorants

As I reached the ferry in my post-horse troika,19 it was already growing dark. A brisk and piercing wind rippled the surface of the broad and turbid river, splashing its waves against the steep banks. As the distant sound of the tinkling post-bells reached the ears of the ferrymen, they stopped the ferryboat and waited for us. Brakes were put on the wheels, the telyéga20 was driven downhill, and the cable unfastened. The waves dashed against the boarded sides of the ferryboat, the pilot sharply turned the wheel, and the shore gradually receded from us, as though yielding to the pressure of the waves.

There were two telyégas on the ferryboat, beside ours. In one of them sat an elderly, quiet-looking man, apparently belonging to the merchant class; the other was occupied by three fellows, unmistakably bourgeois. The merchant sat motionless, protecting himself by his collar from the piercing autumnal wind, and heedless of his travelling companions. The bourgeois, on the contrary, were jolly and talkative. One of them, a cross-eyed fellow, with a torn nostril, played the balaláïka21 incessantly, singing wild melodies in a harsh voice. But the wind soon dispersed these sharp tones, carrying them hither and thither along the swift and turbid stream. Another, with a brandy-flask and tumbler in his hand, was treating my driver; while the third, a man possibly thirty years of age, a healthy, handsome, and powerfully built fellow, was stretched out in the telyéga, with his hand under his head, pensively watching the gray clouds as they flitted across the sky. In the course of my two days’ journey from the city of N⁠⸺, I had frequently encountered the same familiar faces. I was travelling on urgent business, speeding with the utmost haste; but both the merchant, who drove a plump mare, harnessed into a two-wheeled kibítka,22 and the bourgeois, with their lean hacks, constantly kept up with me, and after each stopping-place I met them, either on the way or at some ferry.

“Who are these men?” I inquired of my driver, as he approached my telyéga.

“Kostiúshka23 and his friends,” he replied, with an air of reserve.

“And who are they?” I asked once more, for the name sounded unfamiliar to me.

The driver evidently felt unwilling to give me further particulars, lest our conversation might be overheard by the men. Glancing at them, he hastily pointed with his whip toward the river.

Looking in that direction, I saw that its broad expanse was here and there darkened by the tossing of the turbid waters, and overhead large white birds like gulls soared in widening circles, now and then plunging below the waves, and rising again with a shrill and plaintive cry.

“Cormorants!” the driver remarked, by way of explanation, as soon as the ferry had landed us on the shore, and we had reached the top of the hill.

“Those men are like cormorants,” he continued. “They have neither home nor property, for I have heard that they have sold even the land they owned, and now they are scouring the country like wolves. They give us no peace.”

“What do you mean? Are they robbers?”

“They are up to all sorts of mischief; cutting off a traveller’s valise, or stealing chests of tea from a transport, is their favorite amusement.⁠ ⁠… And if they are hard up, they will not hesitate to steal a horse from us drivers, when we are on our return trip. It often happens that one of us may fall asleep⁠—everyone is liable to that, you know⁠—and they are always on the lookout. It was a driver who tore this very Kostiúshka’s nostril with his whip, and that’s a fact! Mark my words, this same Kóyska is the biggest scoundrel!⁠ ⁠… He has no mate now⁠ ⁠… since the transport-drivers killed him.⁠ ⁠…”

“They caught him, then?”

“Yes, they did, in the very act, and they made him pay for his fun. The transport-drivers had their turn, and he gave them plenty of sport.”

The speaker chuckled to himself.

“In the first place, they chopped off his fingers, then they singed him, and finally they disembowelled him with a stick.⁠ ⁠… He died, the dog!⁠ ⁠…”

“How comes it that you are acquainted with them? Why did you let them treat you with brandy?”

“I cannot help being acquainted,” he replied, gloomily. “I have often had to treat them myself, because I stand in fear of them all the time.⁠ ⁠… Mark my words! Kostiúshka has