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

Perebrod were distinguished by a particularly obstinate uncommunicativeness, or I myself did not know how to approach them⁠—my relations with them went no further than that when they saw me a mile off they took off their caps, and when they came alongside said sternly, “God with you,” which should mean “God help you.” And when I attempted to enter into conversation with them they looked at me in bewilderment, refused to understand the simplest questions, and tried all the while to kiss my hands⁠—a habit that has survived from their Polish serfdom.

I read all the books I had with me very soon. Out of boredom⁠—though at first it seemed to me very unpleasant⁠—I made an attempt to get to know the local “intellectuals,” a Catholic priest who lived fifteen versts away, the gentleman organist who lived with him, the local police-sergeant, and the bailiff of the neighbouring estate, a retired noncommissioned officer. But nothing came of it.

Then I tried to occupy myself with doctoring the inhabitants of Perebrod. I had at my disposal castor-oil, carbolic acid, boracic, and iodine. But here, besides the scantiness of my knowledge, I came up against the complete impossibility of making a diagnosis, because the symptoms of all patients were exactly the same: “I’ve got a pain inside,” and “I can’t take bite nor sup.”

For instance an old woman comes to me. With a disturbed look she wipes her nose with the forefinger of her right hand. I catch a glimpse of her brown skin as she takes a couple of eggs from her bosom, and puts them on the table. Then she begins to seize my hands in order to plant a kiss on them. I hide them and persuade the old woman: “Come, granny⁠ ⁠… don’t.⁠ ⁠… I’m not a priest.⁠ ⁠… I have no right.⁠ ⁠… What’s the matter with you?”

“I’ve got a pain in the inside, sir; just right inside, so that I can’t take nor bite nor sup.”

“Have you had it long?”

“How do I know?” she answers with a question. “It just burns, burns all the while. Not a bite, nor a sup.”

However much I try, I can get no more definite symptoms.

“Don’t you worry,” the non.-com. bailiff once said to me. “They’ll cure themselves. It’ll dry on them like a dog. I beg you to note I use only one medicine⁠—sal-volatile. A peasant comes to me. ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I’m ill,’ says he. I just run off for the bottle of sal-volatile. ‘Sniff!’⁠ ⁠… he sniffs.⁠ ⁠… ‘Sniff again⁠ ⁠… go on!’ He sniffs again. ‘Feel better?’ ‘I do seem to feel better.’ ‘Well, then, be off, and God be with you.’ ”

Besides I did not at all like the kissing of my hands. (Some just fell at my feet and did all they could to kiss my boots.) For it wasn’t by any means the emotion of a grateful heart, but simply a loathsome habit, rooted in them by centuries of slavery and brutality. And I could only wonder at the non.-com. bailiff and the police-sergeant when I saw the imperturbable gravity with which they shoved their enormous red hands to the peasants’ lips.⁠ ⁠…

Only hunting was left. But with the end of January came such terrible weather that even hunting was impossible. Every day there was an awful wind, and during the night a hard icy crust formed on the snow, on which the hares could run without leaving a trace. As I sat shut up in the house listening to the howling wind, I felt terribly sad, and I eagerly seized such an innocent distraction as teaching Yarmola the gamekeeper to read and write.

It came about quite curiously. Once I was writing a letter, when suddenly I felt that someone was behind me. Turning round I saw Yarmola, who had approached noiselessly, as his habit was, in his soft bast shoes.

“What d’you want, Yarmola?” I asked.

“I was only looking how you write. I wish I could.⁠ ⁠… No, no⁠ ⁠… not like you,” he began hastily, seeing me smile. “I only wish I could write my name.”

“Why do you want to do that?” I was surprised. (It must be remembered that Yarmola is supposed to be the poorest and laziest peasant in the whole of Perebrod. His wages and earnings go in drink. There isn’t such another scarecrow even among the local oxen. I thought that he would have been the last person to find reading and writing necessary.) I asked him again, doubtfully:

“What do you want to know how to write your name for?”

“You see how it stands, sir.” Yarmola answered with extraordinary softness. “There isn’t a single man who can read and write in the village. When there’s a paper to be signed or some business to be done on the council or anything⁠ ⁠… nobody can.⁠ ⁠… The mayor only puts the seal; but he doesn’t know what’s in the paper. It would be a good thing for everybody if one of us could write his name.”

Yarmola’s solicitude⁠—Yarmola, a known poacher, an idle vagabond, whose opinion the village council would never dream of considering⁠—this solicitude of his for the public interest of his native village somehow moved me. I offered to give him lessons myself. What a job it was⁠—my attempt to teach him to read and write! Yarmola, who knew to perfection every path in the forest, almost every tree; who could find his whereabouts day and night, no matter where he was; who could distinguish all the wolves, hares, and foxes of the neighbourhood by their spoor⁠—this same Yarmola could not for the life of him see why, for instance, the letters m and a together make ma. In front of that problem he usually thought painfully for ten minutes and more, and his lean swarthy face with its sunken black eyes, which had been completely absorbed into a stiff black beard and a generous moustache, betrayed an extremity of mental strain.

“Come, Yarmola, say ma. Just say ma simply,” I urged him. “Don’t look at the paper. Look