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

to steal from her, to get drunk, to make a row and be taken off to the police station.

“You⁠ ⁠… have you come from the steamer?” Anna Friedrichovna asked.

“Yes. I’ve brought half a dozen pilgrims. It was a job to get ’em away from Jacob⁠—the ‘Commercial.’ He was just leading them off, when I comes up to him and says, ‘It’s all the same to me, I says, go wherever you like. But as there are people who don’t know these places, and I’m very sorry for you, I tell you straight you’d better not go with that man. In their hotel last week they put some powder in a pilgrim’s food and robbed him.’ So I got them away. Afterwards Jacob shook his fist at me in the distance, and called out: ‘You just wait, Arseny. I’ll get you. You won’t get away from me!’ But when that happens, I’ll do it myself.⁠ ⁠…”

“All right,” the landlady interrupted. “I don’t care twopence about your Jacob. What price did you fix?”

“Thirty kopeks. I did my best, but I couldn’t make them give more.”

“You fool. You can’t do anything.⁠ ⁠… Give them No. 2.”

“All in the one room?”

“You fool. Two rooms, each.⁠ ⁠… Of course, all in one room. Bring three mattresses from the old ones, and tell them that they’re not to lie on the sofa. These pilgrims have always got bugs. Get along!”

When he had gone the lieutenant said in a tender and solicitous undertone: “Anna, darling, I wonder why you allow him to enter the room in his hat. It is disrespectful to you, both as a lady and proprietress. And then⁠—consider my position. I’m an officer in Reserve, and he is a private. It’s rather awkward.”

But Anna Friedrichovna leapt upon him in fresh exasperation: “Don’t you poke your nose in where it’s not wanted. Officer indeed! There are plenty of officers like you spending the night in a shelter. Arseny’s a working man. He earns his bread⁠ ⁠… not like.⁠ ⁠… Get away, you lazy brats, take your hands away!”

“Ye-es, but give us something to eat,” roars Adka.

“Give us something to eat.⁠ ⁠…”

Meanwhile the bigoss is ready. Anna Friedrichovna clatters the dishes on the table. The lieutenant keeps his head busily down over the register. He is completely absorbed in his business.

“Well, sit down,” the landlady abruptly invited him.

“No thanks, Anna, darling. Eat, yourself. I’m not very keen,” Tchijhevich said, without turning round, in a stifled voice, loudly swallowing.

“You do what you are told.⁠ ⁠… He’s giving himself airs, too.⁠ ⁠… Come on!”

“Immediately, this very minute. I’ll just finish the last page. ‘The certificate issued by the Bilden Rural District Council⁠ ⁠… of the province⁠ ⁠… number 2039.⁠ ⁠…’ Ready.” The lieutenant rose and rubbed his hands. “I love working.”

“H’m. You call that work,” the landlady snorted in disdain. “Sit down.”

“Anna, darling, just one⁠ ⁠… little.⁠ ⁠…”

“You can manage without.”

But since peace is already almost restored, Anna Friedrichovna takes a small, fat-bodied cut-glass decanter from the cupboard, out of which the deceased’s father used to drink. Adka spreads his cabbage all over his plate and teases his brother because he has more. Edka is upset and screams:

“Adka’s got more. You gave him⁠—”

Shlop! Edka gets a sounding smack with the spoon upon his forehead. Immediately Anna Friedrichovna continues the conversation as if nothing had happened:

“Tell us another of your lies. I bet you were with some woman.”

“Anna, darling!” the lieutenant exclaimed reproachfully. Then he stopped eating and pressed his hands⁠—in one of which was a fork with a piece of sausage⁠—to his chest. “I⁠ ⁠… oh, how little you know me. I’d rather have my head cut off than let such a thing happen. When I went away that time, I felt so bitter, so hard! I just walked in the street, and you can imagine, I was drowned in tears. My God,” I thought, “and I’ve let myself insult that woman⁠—the one woman whom I love sacredly, madly.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s a pretty story,” put in the landlady, gratified, but still somewhat suspicious.

“You don’t believe me,” the lieutenant replied in a quiet, deep, tragic voice. “Well, I’ve deserved it. Every night I came to your window and prayed for you in my soul.” The lieutenant instantly tipped the glass into his mouth, took a bite, and went on with his mouth full and his eyes watering:

“I was thinking that if a fire were to break out suddenly or murderers attack, I would prove to you then.⁠ ⁠… I’d have given my life joyfully. Alas! my life is short without that. My days are numbered.⁠ ⁠…”

Meanwhile the landlady fumbled in her purse.

“Go on!” she replied, coquettishly. “Adka, here’s the money. Run to Vasily Vasilich’s and get a bottle of beer. But tell him it’s got to be fresh. Quick!”

Breakfast is finished, the bigoss eaten, and the beer all drunk, when Romka, the depraved member of the preparatory class of the gymnasium, appears covered in chalk and ink. Still standing at the door he pouts and looks angrily. Then he flings his satchel down on the floor and begins to howl:

“There!⁠ ⁠… you’ve been and eaten everything without me. I’m as hungry as a do-og.”

“I’ve got some more. But I shan’t give you any,” Adka teases him, showing him his plate across the room.

“There!⁠ ⁠… it’s a dirty trick,” Romka drags out the words. “Mother, tell Adka⁠—”

“Be quiet!” Anna Friedrichovna cries in a piercing voice. “Dawdle till it’s dark, why don’t you? Take twopence. Buy yourself some sausage. That’ll do for you.”

“Ye-es, twopence! You and Valerian Ivanich eat bigoss, and you make me go to school. I’m just like a do-o-o-g.”

“Get out!” Anna Friedrichovna shouts in a terrible voice, and Romka precipitately disappears. Still he managed to pick his satchel up from the floor. A thought had suddenly come into his head. He would go and sell his books in the Rag-market. In the doorway he ran into his elder sister Alychka, and seized the opportunity to pinch her arm very hard. Alychka entered grumbling aloud:

“Mamma! tell Romka not to pinch.”

She is a handsome girl of