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

ladies, she shouted with the roguishness and audacity of a privileged young lady:

“Gentlemen, what do I see? The ladies have arrived long ago, and here you are sitting and having a good old time. We want to dance.”

Two or three young officers arose to go into the ballroom. The rest coolly remained sitting where they were, chatting, drinking, and smoking, without taking the slightest notice of the coquettish lady. Only Liech, the chivalrous old professional flirt, strutted up with bandy, uncertain legs to Raisa, with hands crossed over his chest⁠—and pouring the contents of his glass over his uniform, cried with a drunken emotion:

“Most divine among women, how can anyone forget his duties to a queen of beauty? Your hand, my charmer; just one kiss⁠—”

“Yuri Alexievich,” Raisa babbled, “it’s your turn today to arrange the dancing. You are a nice one to do that.”

“Mille pardons, madame. C’est ma faute. This is my fault,” cried Bobetinski, as he flew off to her. On the way he improvised a sort of ballet with scrapes, bounds, genuflections, and a lot of wonderful attitudes and gestures. “Your hand. Votre main, madame. Gentlemen, to the ballroom, to the ballroom!”

He offered his arm to Raisa Alexandrovna, and walked out of the room as proud as a peacock. Directly afterwards he was heard shouting in his well-known, affected tone:

“Messieurs, take partners for a waltz. Band! a waltz!”

“Excuse me, Colonel, I am obliged to go now. Duty calls me,” said Romashov.

“Ah, my dear fellow,” replied Liech, as his head drooped with a dejected look⁠—“are you, too, such a coxcomb as the others? But wait just a moment, Ensign; have you heard the story of Moltke⁠—about the great Field-Marshal Moltke, the strategist?”

“Colonel, on my honour, I must really go⁠—I⁠—”

“Well, well, don’t get excited. I won’t be long. You see, it was like this: the great Man of Silence used to take his meals in the officers’ mess, and every day he laid in front of him on the table a purse full of gold with the intention of bestowing it on the first officer from whose lips he heard a single intelligent word. Well, at last, you know, the old man died after having borne with this world for ninety years, but⁠—you see⁠—the purse had always been in safe keeping. Now run along, my boy. Go and hop about like a sparrow.”

IX

In the ballroom, the walls of which seemed to vibrate in the same rhythm as the deafening music, two couples were dancing. Bobetinski, whose elbows flapped like a pair of wings, pirouetted with short, quick steps around his partner, Madame Taliman, who was dancing with the stately composure of a stone monument. The gigantic Artschakovski of the fair locks made the youngest of the Lykatschev girls, a little thing with rosy cheeks, rotate round him, whereas he, leaning forward, and closely observing his partner’s hair and shoulders, moved his legs as if he were dancing with a child. Fifteen ladies lined the walls quite deserted, and trying to look as if they did not mind it. As, which was always the case at these soirées, the gentlemen numbered less than a quarter of the ladies, the prospect of a lively and enjoyable evening was not particularly promising.

Raisa Alexandrovna, who had just opened the ball, and was, therefore, the object of the other ladies’ envy, was now dancing with the slender, ceremonious Olisár. He held one of her hands as if it had been fixed to his left side. She supported her chin in a languishing way against her other hand, which rested on his right shoulder. She kept her head far thrown back in an affected and unnatural attitude. When the dance was over she sat purposely near Romashov, who was leaning against the doorpost of the ladies’ dressing-room. She fanned herself violently, and looking up to Olisár, who was leaning over her, lisped in a soft dolcissimo:

“Tell me, Count, tell me, please, why do I always feel so hot? Do tell me.”

Olisár made a slight bow, clicked his spurs, stroked his moustache several times.

“Dear lady, that is a question which I don’t think even Martin Sadek could answer.”

When Olisár cast a scrutinizing glance at the fair Raisa’s décolleté bosom, pitiable and bare as the desert itself, she began at once to breathe quickly and deeply.

“Ah, I have always an abnormally high temperature,” Raisa Alexandrovna went on to say with a significant expression, insinuating by her smile that her words had a double meaning. “I suffer, too, from an unusually fiery temperament.”

Olisár gave vent to a short, soft chuckle.

Romashov stood looking sideways at Raisa, thinking with disgust, “Oh, how loathsome she is.” And at the thought that he had once enjoyed her favours, he experienced the sensation as if he had not changed his linen for months.

“Well, well, Count, don’t laugh. Perhaps you do not know that my mother was a Greek?”

“And how horribly she speaks, too,” thought Romashov. “Curious that I never noticed this before. It sounds as if she had a chronic cold or a polypus in her nose⁠—‘by buther was a Greek.’ ”

Now Raisa turned to Romashov and threw him a challenging glance.

Romashov mentally said, “His face became impassive like a mask.”

“How do you do, Yuri Alexievich? Why don’t you come and speak to me?” Romashov went up to her. With a venomous glance from her small, sharp eyes she pressed his hand. The pupils of her eyes stood motionless.

“At your desire I have kept the third quadrille for you. I hope you have not forgotten that.”

Romashov bowed.

“You are very polite! At least you might say Enchanté, madame!” (“Edchadté, badabe” was what Romashov heard.) “Isn’t he a blockhead, Count?”

“Of course, I remember,” mumbled Romashov insincerely. “I thank you for the great honour.”

Bobetinski did nothing to liven up the evening. He conducted the ball with an apathetic, condescending look, just as if he was performing, from a strict sense of duty, something very