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

because he called me ‘sublieutenant.’ Suddenly he began showering insults and abuse on me. Although we sat at the same table and drank ale together, he shouted at me: ‘In the first place, I am not lieutenant to you, but Mr. Lieutenant, and, secondly, be good enough to stand up when you are speaking to your superior.’ And there I stood in the room, like a schoolboy under punishment, until Lieutenant-Colonel Liech came and sat between us. No, no, pray don’t say anything, Pavel Pavlich. I am just sick of all that goes on here.” XI

The 22nd of April was for Romashov not only an uncomfortable and tiresome day, but a very remarkable one. At 10 a.m., before Romashov had got out of bed, Nikoläiev’s servant, Stepan, arrived with a letter from Alexandra Petrovna.

My dear Romotchka (she wrote), I should not be in the least surprised if you have forgotten that today is my name-day, of which I also take the liberty to remind you. And in spite of all your transgressions, I should like to see you at my house today. But don’t come at the conventional hour of congratulation, but at 5 p.m. We are going to a little picnic at Dubetschnaia.⁠—Yours,

A. N.

The letter trembled in Romashov’s hands as he read it. For a whole week he had not once seen Shurochka’s saucy, smiling, bewitching face; had not felt the delicious enchantment he always experienced in her presence. “Today,” a joyful voice sang exultant in his heart.

“Today,” shouted Romashov, in a ringing voice, as he jumped out of bed. “Hainán, my bathwater, quick.”

Hainán rushed in.

“Your Honour, the servant is waiting for an answer.”

“Oh⁠—yes, of course.” Romashov dropped, with eyes wide open, on a chair. “The deuce, he is waiting for a ‘tip,’ and I haven’t a single copeck.” Romashov stared at his trusty servant with a look of absolute helplessness.

Hainán returned his look with a broad grin of delight.

“No more have I either, your Excellency. You have nothing, and I have nothing⁠—what’s to be done? Nichevó!”

At that moment Romashov called to mind that dark spring night when he stood in the dirty road, leaning against the wet, sticky fence, and heard Stepan’s scornful remark: “That man hangs about here every day.” Now he remembered the intolerable feeling of shame he experienced at that moment, and what would he not give if only he could conjure up a single silver coin, a twenty-copeck piece, wherewith to stop the mouth of Shurochka’s messenger.

He pressed his hands convulsively against his temples and almost cried from annoyance.

“Hainán,” he whispered, looking shyly askance at the door, “Hainán, go and tell him he shall have his ‘tip’ tonight⁠—for certain, do you hear? For certain.”

Romashov was just then as hard up as it was possible to be. His credit was gone everywhere⁠—at mess, with the buffet proprietor, at the regimental treasury, etc. He certainly still drew his dinner and supper rations, but without sakuska. He had not even tea and sugar in his room; only a tremendous tin can containing coffee grounds⁠—a dark, awesome mixture which, when diluted with water, was heroically swallowed every morning by Romashov and his trusty servant.

With grimaces of the deepest disgust, Romashov sat and absorbed this bitter, nauseous morning beverage. His brain was working at high pressure as to how he should find some escape from the present desperate situation. First, where and how was he to obtain a name-day present for Shurochka? It would be an impossibility for him to show up at her house without one. And, besides, what should he give her? Sweets or gloves? But he did not know what size she wore⁠—sweets, then? But in the town the sweets were notoriously nasty, therefore something else⁠—scent⁠—a fan? No, scent would, he thought, be preferable. She liked “Ess Bouquet,” so “Ess Bouquet” it should be. Moreover, the expense of the evening’s picnic. A trap there and back, “tip” to Stepan, incidental expenses. “Ah, my good Romashov, you won’t do it for less than ten roubles.”

After this he reviewed his resources. His month’s pay⁠—every copeck of that was spent and receipted. Advance of pay perhaps. Alas, he had tried that way quite thirty times, but always with an unhappy result. The paymaster to the regiment, Staff-Captain Doroshenko, was known far and wide as the most disobliging “swine,” especially to sublieutenants. He had taken part in the Turkish War, and was there, alas! wounded in the most mortifying and humiliating spot⁠—in his heel. This had not happened during retreat, but on an occasion when he was turning to his troops to order an attack. None the less he was, on account of his ill-omened wound, the object of everlasting flings and sarcasms, with the result that Doroshenko, who went to the campaign a merry ensign, was now changed into a jealous, irritable hypochondriac. No, Doroshenko would not advance a single copeck, least of all to a sublieutenant who, with uncommon eagerness, had long since drawn all the pay that was due to him.

“But one need not hang oneself, I suppose, for that,” Romashov consoled himself by thinking, after he had finished the foregoing meditation. “One must try and borrow. Let us now take the victims in turn. Well, the 1st Company, Osadchi?”

Before Romashov’s mind’s eye appeared Osadchi’s peculiar but well-formed features and his heavy, brutal expression. “No, anybody else in the world except him. Second Company, Taliman? Ah, that poor devil, who is borrowing all the year round, even from the ensigns. He won’t do. Take another name⁠—Khutinski?”

But just at that moment a mad boyish idea crossed Romashov’s mind. “Suppose I go and borrow money from the Colonel himself. What then would be likely to happen? First he would be numbed with horror at such a piece of impudence; next he would begin trembling with rage, then he would fire, as if from a mortar, the words: ‘Wha-at! Si-lence!’ ”

Romashov burst out laughing. “How in the world can