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

bitter to me.⁠ ⁠… I never even suspected that granny was the cause of it all, Olyessia.”

Olyessia’s face suddenly flamed bright red.

“But it wasn’t granny at all.⁠ ⁠… It was me. I didn’t want it, myself,” she exclaimed with a passionate challenge.

“But why didn’t you want it, Olyessia, why?” I asked. My voice broke for agitation, and I caught her by the hand and made her stop. We were just in the middle of a long narrow path, straight as an arrow through the forest. On either side we were surrounded by tall slender pines, that formed a gigantic corridor, receding into the distance, vaulted with fragrant interwoven branches. The bare peeled trunks were tinged with the purple glow of the burnt-out red of the evening sky.

“Tell me why, Olyessia, why?” I whispered again, pressing her hand closer and closer.

“I could not⁠ ⁠… I was afraid,” Olyessia said so low that I could hardly hear. “I thought it was possible to escape one’s destiny.⁠ ⁠… But, now⁠ ⁠… now.”

Her breath failed her, as though there were no air; and suddenly her hands twined quick and vehement about my neck, and my lips were sweetly burnt by Olyessia’s quick trembling whisper:

“But it’s all the same, now⁠ ⁠… all the same!⁠ ⁠… Because I love you, my dear, my joy, my beloved!”

She pressed closer and closer to me, and I could feel how her strong, vigorous, fervent body pulsed beneath my hands, how quickly her heart beat against my chest. Her passionate kisses poured like intoxicating wine into my head, still weak with disease, and I began to lose my hold upon myself.

“Olyessia, for God’s sake, don’t⁠ ⁠… leave me,” I said, trying to unclasp her hands. “Now I am afraid.⁠ ⁠… I’m afraid of myself.⁠ ⁠… Let me go, Olyessia.”

She raised her head. Her face was all lighted with a slow, languid smile.

“Don’t be afraid, my darling,” she said with an indescribable expression of tender passion and touching fearlessness. “I shall never reproach you, never be jealous of anyone.⁠ ⁠… Tell me only, do you love me?”

“I love you, Olyessia. I loved you long ago, and I love you passionately. But⁠ ⁠… don’t kiss me any more.⁠ ⁠… I grow weak, my head swims, I can’t answer for myself.⁠ ⁠…”

Her lips were once more pressed to mine in a long, painful sweetness. I did not hear, rather I divined her words.

“Then don’t be afraid. Don’t think of anything besides.⁠ ⁠… Today is ours; no one can take it from us.”

And the whole night melted into a magical fairy tale. The moon rose, and its radiance poured fantastically in motley and mysterious colours over the forest. It lay amid the darkness in pale blue stains upon the gnarled tree-trunks, on the bent branches and the soft carpet of moss. The high birch-trunks showed clear and keenly white, and it seemed that a silvery transparent veil of gauze had been thrown over the thin leaves. In places the light could by no means penetrate the thick canopy of pine branches. There was complete, impenetrable darkness, save only that in the middle a ray slipped in unknown from somewhere and suddenly shone brightly on a long row of trees, casting a straight narrow path on the earth, as bright and trim and beautiful as a path fashioned by fairies for the triumphant procession of Oberon and Titania. And we walked with our arms enlocked through this vivid, smiling fairy tale, without a single word, under the weight of our happiness and the dreadful silence of the night.

“Darling, I’ve forgotten quite that you must hurry home,” Olyessia suddenly remembered. “What a wicked girl I am! You’re only just recovering from your illness and I’ve kept you all this while in the forest.”

I kissed her, and threw back the shawl from her thick dark hair, and asked her in the softest whisper, bending to her ear:

“You don’t regret it, Olyessia? You don’t repent?”

She shook her head slowly.

“No, no.⁠ ⁠… Come what may, I shan’t regret.⁠ ⁠… I am so happy!”

“Is something bound to happen, then?”

There appeared in her eyes a flash of the mystical terror I had grown to recognise.

“Yes, it is certain. You remember I told you about the queen of clubs. That queen of clubs is me, myself; the misfortune that the cards told of will happen to me.⁠ ⁠… You know I thought of asking you not to come and see us any more. But then you fell ill, and I never saw you for nearly a fortnight.⁠ ⁠… I was so anxious and sad for you that I felt I could have given the whole world to be with you, just one little minute. Then I thought that I would not give up my happiness, whatever should come of it.⁠ ⁠…”

“It’s true, Olyessia. That’s how it was with me, too,” I said, touching her forehead with my lips. “I never knew that I loved you until I parted from you. It seems that man was right who said that parting to love is like wind to a fire: it blows out a small one, and makes a large one blaze.”

“What did you say? Say it again, again, please.” Olyessia was interested.

I repeated the words again. I do not know whose they are. Olyessia mused over them, and I could see by the movement of her lips that she was saying the words over to herself.

I looked closely into her pale face, thrown back, her large black eyes with glimmering bright lights within them from the moon; and with a sudden chill a vague foreboding of imminent calamity crept into my soul.

XI

The naive enchanting tale of our love lasted for nearly a month. To this day there live with undiminished potency in my soul Olyessia’s beautiful face and those blazing twilights, those dewy mornings fragrant with lilies and honey, full of vigorous freshness and the sonorous noise of birds, those hot, languid, idle days of June. In that time neither weariness, nor fatigue, nor my eternal passion for a wandering life ever touched my soul. I was a pagan