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

shoulder with my hands and begin to squeeze⁠ ⁠… stronger, stronger, stronger.⁠ ⁠… I stare at you, just like this. Look!⁠ ⁠…”

Her thin eyebrows suddenly closed together. Her eyes were fixed upon me in a stare, fascinating, threatening. Her pupils dilated and became blue. Instantly I remembered a Medusa’s head, the work of a painter I have forgotten, in the Trietyakov Gallery in Moscow. Beneath this strange look I was seized by a cold terror of the supernatural.

“Well, that’ll do, Olyessia.⁠ ⁠… That’s enough,” I said with a forced laugh. “I much prefer you when you smile. Your face is so kind and childlike.”

We went on. I suddenly recollected the expressiveness of Olyessia’s conversation⁠—elegance even for a simple girl⁠—and I said:

“Do you know what surprises me in you, Olyessia? You’ve grown up in the forest without seeing a soul.⁠ ⁠… Of course, you can’t read very much.⁠ ⁠…”

“I can’t read at all.”

“Well, that makes it all the more.⁠ ⁠… Yet you speak as well as a real lady. Tell me, where did you learn it? You understand what I mean?”

“Yes, I understand. It’s from granny. You mustn’t judge her by her appearance. She is so clever! Some day she may speak when you are there, when she has become used to you. She knows everything, everything on earth that you can ask her. It’s true she’s old now.”

“Then she has seen a great deal in her lifetime. Where does she come from? Where did she live before?”

It seemed that these questions did not please Olyessia. She hesitated to answer, evasive and reluctant.

“I don’t know.⁠ ⁠… She doesn’t like to talk of that herself. If ever she says anything about it, she asks you to forget it, to put it quite out of mind.⁠ ⁠… But it’s time for me.⁠ ⁠…” Olyessia hastened, “Granny will be cross. Goodbye.⁠ ⁠… Forgive me, but I don’t know your name.”

I gave her my name.

“Ivan Timofeyevich? Well, that’s all right. Goodbye, Ivan Timofeyevich! Don’t disdain our hut. Come sometimes.”

I held out my hand at parting, and her small strong hand responded with a vigorous friendly grip.

VI

From that day I began to be a frequent visitor to the chicken-legged house. Every time I came Olyessia met me with her usual dignified reserve. But I always could tell, by the first involuntary she made on seeing me, that she was glad that I had come. The old woman still went on grumbling as she used, muttering under her nose, but she expressed no open malevolence, owing to her granddaughter’s intercession, of which I was certain though I had not witnessed it. Also, the presents I would bring her from time to time made a considerable impression in my favour⁠—a warm shawl, a pot of jam, a bottle of cherry brandy. As though by tacit consent, Olyessia began to make a habit of accompanying me as far as the Irenov road as I went home. And there always began such a lively interesting conversation, that involuntarily we both made an effort to prolong the journey, walking as slowly as possible in the silent fringes of the forest. When we came to the Irenov road, I went back half a mile with her, and even then before we parted we would stand talking for a long while beneath the fragrant shade of the pine branches.

It was not only Olyessia’s beauty that fascinated me, but her whole free independent nature, her mind at once clear and enwrapped in unshakable ancestral superstitions, childlike and innocent, yet not wholly devoid of the sly coquetry of the handsome woman. She never tired of asking me every detail concerning things which stirred her bright unspoiled imagination⁠—countries and peoples, natural phenomena, the order of the earth and the universe, learned men, large towns.⁠ ⁠… Many things seemed to her wonderful, fairy, incredible. But from the very beginning of our acquaintance I took such a serious, sincere, and simple tone with her that she readily put a complete trust in all my stories. Sometimes when I was at a loss for an explanation of something which I thought was too difficult for her half-savage mind⁠—it was often by no means clear to my own⁠—I answered her eager questions with, “You see.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t be able to explain this to you.⁠ ⁠… You won’t understand me.”

Then she would begin to entreat me.

“Please tell me, please, I’ll try.⁠ ⁠… Tell me somehow, though⁠ ⁠… even if it’s not clear.”

She forced me to have recourse to preposterous comparisons and incredibly bold analogies, and when I was at a loss for a suitable expression she would help me out with a torrent of impatient conclusions, like those which we offer to a stammerer. And, indeed, in the end her pliant mobile mind and her fresh imagination triumphed over my pedagogic impotence. I became convinced that, considering her environment and her education (rather, lack of education) her abilities were amazing.

Once I happened in passing to mention Petersburg. Olyessia was instantly intrigued.

“What is Petersburg? A small town?”

“No, it’s not a small one. It’s the biggest Russian city.”

“The biggest? The very largest of all? There isn’t one bigger?” she insisted naively.

“The largest of all. The chief authorities live there⁠ ⁠… the big folks. The houses there are all made of stone; there aren’t any wooden ones.”

“Of course, it’s much bigger than our Stiepany?” Olyessia asked confidently.

“Oh, yes. A good bit bigger. Say five hundred times as big. There are houses there so big that twice as many people live in a single one of them as in the whole of Stiepany.”

“My God! What kind of houses can they be?” Olyessia asked almost in fright.

“Terrible houses. Five, six, even seven stories. You see that fir tree there?”

“The tall one. I see.”

“Houses as tall as that, and they’re crammed with people from top to bottom. The people live in wretched little holes, like birds in cages, ten people in each, so that there isn’t enough air to breathe. Some of them live downstairs, right under the earth, in the damp and cold. They don’t see the sun