Short Fiction - Aleksandr Kuprin (best ebook reader for ubuntu .TXT) 📗

never kiss ladies’ hands. What a bear you are! Come here, and I’ll make your tie for you. You dress goodness knows how.”

The student came up awkwardly and, as he leaned over her, he caught through the strong aroma of her perfume the smell of her hair as the light agile fingers ran round his neck.

Voskresenski was chaste in the straightforward, healthy meaning of the word. Naturally, from the time that he entered his Lycée, he could not help learning everything about the most intimate relations of the sexes, but he never dreamed of doing what his comrades boasted of openly. The tranquil, healthy blood of an old Church family showed itself in him. For all that, he had no sanctimonious, hypocritical anathemas for the “shameless men.” He would listen indifferently to what was said on the subject and he would make no protest against those little anecdotes without which no conversation is possible in Russian intellectual society.

He knew well what Anna Georgievna’s constant playfulness really meant. When saying “good morning” or “goodbye,” she would keep his hand lingeringly in her soft, feminine and, at the same time, strong, fingers. Under the mask of playfulness, she liked to ruffle his hair, sometimes called him patronisingly by the diminutive of his name, and would say in front of him risky things with a double meaning. If by any chance they were looking over an album together or happened to be leaning side by side over the balcony watching a steamer out at sea, she would always press against him with her large bust and he would feel her hot breath on his neck, while the curls of her hard hair tickled his cheek.

And she roused in the student a medley of strange, mixed feelings⁠—fear, shame, passionate desire and disgust. When he thought about her she seemed to him just as exaggerated and unnatural as southern Nature. Her eyes seemed much too expressive and liquid, her hair much too dark, her lips unnaturally bright. The lazy, backward, unprincipled, sensual southern woman could be detected in every one of her movements, in every smile. If she came too close to him he could even detect, through her clothes, the warmth oozing up from her large, over-developed body.

Two schoolboys, Voskresenski’s pupils, and three little girls were seated at the table dangling their feet. Voskresenski glanced at them sideways as he stooped, and suddenly he felt ashamed of himself, ashamed for them and particularly for their mother’s warm bare hands which were moving so close to his lips. Unexpectedly he drew himself up and said with a red face and a hoarse voice:

“Excuse me, I’ll tie it myself.”

Zavalishine was now on the balcony dressed in a fantastic national costume, a silk kaftan with a blue silk Russian shirt and high patent leather boots. This costume, which he always wore at home, made him resemble one of those provincial contractors who are so willing to exploit to the merchant-class their large Russian nature and their clothes in the Russian style. The likeness was completed by a heavy gold chain across his stomach which tinkled with dozens of trinkets.

Zavalishine came towards the group with a quick, heavy step, carrying his head high and smoothing picturesquely each side of his fluffy beard, which was turning slightly grey. As he came, the children jumped up from the table. Anna Georgievna rose slowly from her rocking-chair.

“Good morning, Ivan Nikolaevitch. Good morning, Cicero,” said Zavalishine, as he stretched out his hand carelessly to the doctor and the student. “I have kept you waiting, perhaps? Boris, grace.”

Boris, with a frightened expression, jabbered out: “Our Father, which art in Heaven.”

“Now, gentlemen,” said Zavalishine, waving towards the table. “Doctor, some vodka?”

The hors d’oeuvre were laid on a small side table. The doctor approached it, walking like a buffoon, stooping a little, bowing, clicking his heels together and rubbing his hands.

“A man was once offered some vodka,” he began, as usual trying to be funny, “and he answered ‘No, thank you; firstly, I don’t drink, secondly, it’s too early, and thirdly, I’ve had a drink already.’ ”

“Twentieth edition,” observed Zavalishine. “Have some caviar.”

He pushed over to the doctor a large wooden bucket in which a silver fish-basin of caviar was standing in ice.

“How can you drink vodka in such heat?” Anna Georgievna exclaimed, with a grimace.

Her husband looked at her solemnly, as he held to his lips a silver embossed goblet.

“There’s no harm in vodka for a Russian man,” he replied imposingly.

And the doctor, having finished his glass, quacked loudly and added in the bass voice of a deacon:

“This was in time, anyhow. Well, Pavel Arkadievitch? Does Father Meleti order a third one?”

A man in a dress suit was serving at table. Formerly he used to wear something like a coachman’s sleeveless coat, but one fine day Anna Georgievna discovered that it was improper for masters and servants to deck themselves out almost in the same costumes, and she insisted on a European dress for the footmen. On the other hand, all the dining-room furniture and ornaments displayed that restless, racking style which is called Russian decadence. Instead of a table, there was a long chest, closed on every side, and as one sat in front of it it was impossible to move one’s feet forward. One had to keep them cramped all the time, while one’s knees would be painfully knocking against the protuberances of the carved ornaments and one had to stretch to reach one’s plate. The heavy, low chairs, with high backs and widespread arms, were hard and uncomfortable, like wooden stage thrones. The wooden cans for kvass, the water-jugs and the wine ewers were of such monstrous dimensions and of such absurd shapes that one had to stand up to pour out from them. And all these things were carved, burnished, and adorned with multicoloured peacocks, fish, flowers, and the inevitable cock.

“One eats nowhere as one does in Russia,” Zavalishine began in a juicy voice, arranging his napkin in his collar with