Short Fiction - Fyodor Sologub (best romance ebooks .txt) 📗

were you there?”

Shura explained.

The director continued: “Very well, after a book. But why in someone else’s pocket?”

“It was a mistake,” said Shura, distressed.

“A nice mistake,” remarked the director dryly. “Now confess, haven’t you taken by mistake a penknife and a rouble. By mistake, mind you? Look through your pockets, my lad.”

Shura began to cry, and said through his tears: “I haven’t stolen anything.”

The director smiled. It was pleasant to provoke tears. Such beautiful and such large childish tears trickled down the pink cheeks in three separate streams: two streams of tears came from one eye, and only one from the other.

“If you haven’t stolen anything why do you cry?” said the director in a bantering tone. “I don’t even say that you have stolen. I assume that you merely made a mistake: caught hold of something that came into your hand, and then forgot all about it. Suppose you look through your pockets.”

Shura quickly drew from his pockets all the absurd trifles usually found on boys, and then turned both his pockets inside out.

“Nothing,” he said sadly.

The director gave him a searching look.

“You are sure it hasn’t dropped down in your clothes somewhere⁠—the knife might have slipped into your boots, eh?”

He rang. The watchman came.

Shura was crying. And everything round him seemed to float in a rose mist, in the incomprehensible mental void of his degradation. They turned Shura about, felt him all over, searched him. Little by little they undressed him. First they took off his boots and shook them out; they did the same with his stockings. His belt, blouse and breeches followed. Everything was shaken out and searched.

And through all this torment of shame, through all this indignity of a degrading and needless ceremony there penetrated one resplendent ray of joy; the torn shirt was at home, and the new, clean one rustled in the coarse hands of the zealous pedagogue.

Shura stood in his shirt, crying. Behind the door he could hear tumultuous voices and cries of joy.

The door burst open, and a little, red-cheeked, smiling chap entered hurriedly. And through his shame, through his tears, and through his joy about the new shirt, Shura heard a confused and panting voice say:

“It’s been found, Sergey Ivanovich. On Epiphanov himself. There was a hole in his pocket⁠—the penknife and rouble slipped down into his boot.”

Then, suddenly, they became gentle with Shura. They stroked his head, comforted him, and helped him to dress.

V

Now he cried, now he laughed. At home he again cried and laughed. He complained:

“I was entirely undressed. It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, if I had been wearing that torn shirt!”

Later⁠—yes, what happened later? His mother would go to the director. She wished to make a scene. Afterwards she would lodge a complaint against him. But she recalled, in the street, that her boy was a non-paying student. There was no scene. Besides, the director received her pleasantly. He was so apologetic.

The impression of his degradation remained with the boy. All its incidents had impressed themselves upon him: he had been suspected of theft, and searched, and he had stood, almost naked, undergoing the scrutiny of an officious person. Shameful? Let us, by all means, console ourselves that it is an experience useful to life.

Weeping, the mother said: “Who knows⁠—perhaps when you grow up, something of the sort will really happen. We’ve heard of such things in our time.”

The White Mother I

Easter was near. Esper Constantinovich Saksaoolov was in a painful and undecided state of mind. It seemed to have begun when he was asked at the Gorodischevs: “Where are you greeting the holiday?”

Saksaoolov, for some reason, did not reply at once. The housewife, who was stout, shortsighted and fussy, went on: “Come to us.”

Saksaoolov felt vexed⁠—most likely at the young girl, who at the words of her mother gave him a quick glance, then averted it, and continued her conversation with a professor’s young assistant.

Mothers of grown daughters saw a possible husband in Saksaoolov, which annoyed him. He considered himself an old bachelor at thirty-seven.

He answered sharply: “Thank you. But I always pass that night at home.”

The girl glanced at him with a smile and asked: “With whom?”

“Alone,” answered Saksaoolov with a shade of astonishment in his voice.

“You’re a misanthrope,” said Madame Gorodischeva, with a sour smile.

Saksaoolov valued his freedom. It seemed strange to him, whenever he thought of it, that he had been so near marriage once. He had lived long in his small but tastefully furnished apartment, had got used to his man attendant, the elderly and steady Fedota, and to Fedota’s not less reliable spouse, who cooked his dinner; and he persuaded himself that he ought to remain single out of memory to his first love. In truth, his heart was growing cold from indifference born of a lonely, incomplete life.

He had his own fortune, his father and mother had died long ago, and he had no near relatives. He lived methodically and quietly; had something to do with a government department; was intimately acquainted with contemporary literature and art; and was something of an epicurean⁠—but life itself seemed to him to be empty and aimless. Were it not that one pure, radiant fancy visited him at times he would have become entirely cold, like many others.

II

His first and only love, which ended before it had time to blossom, wrapt him closely in sad and sweet reveries, usually in the evenings. Five years earlier he had met a young girl who left an indelible impression upon him. She was pale, gentle, slender, with blue eyes, and fair wavy hair. She almost seemed to him not to belong to this earth, but was like a creature of air and mist, blown for a brief moment by fate into the city turmoil. Her movements were slow; her gentle, clear voice was soft, like the murmur of a brook purling over stones.

Saksaoolov, whether by chance or not, saw