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

“Money?”

“Yes, I am ashamed to trouble you. I don’t require much⁠—only ten roubles⁠—but I can’t promise to repay you just yet.”

Ivan Antonovich pulled his hands out of the water and began slowly to dry them on a towel.

“I can manage ten roubles⁠—I have not more, but these I’ll lend you with the greatest pleasure. You’re wanting to be off, I suppose, on some spree or dissipation? Well, well, don’t be offended; I’m merely jesting. Come, let us go.”

“Colonel Brehm” took Romashov through his suite of apartments, which consisted of five or six rooms, in which every trace of furniture and curtains was lacking. Everywhere one’s nose was assailed by the curious, pungent odour that is always rife in places where small animals are freely allowed to run riot. The floors were so filthy that one stumbled at nearly every step. In all the corners, small holes and lairs, formed of wooden boxes, hollow stubble, empty casks without bottoms, etc., etc., were arranged. Trees with bending branches stood in another room. The one room was intended for birds, the other for squirrels and martens. All the arrangements witnessed to a love of animals, careful attention, and a great faculty for observation.

“Look here,” Rafalski pointed to a little cage, surrounded by a thick railing of barbed wire; from the semicircular opening, which was no larger than the bottom of a drinking-glass, glowed two small, keen black eyes. “That’s a polecat, the cruellest and most bloodthirsty beast in creation. You may not believe me, but it’s none the less true, that, in comparison with it, the lion and panther are as tame as lambs. When a lion has eaten his thirty-four pounds or so of flesh, and is resting after his meal, he looks on good-humouredly at the jackals gorging on the remains of the banquet. But if that little brute gets into a henhouse it does not spare a single life. There are no limits to its murderous instinct, and, besides, it is the wildest beast in the world and the one hardest to tame. Fie, you little monster.”

Rafalski put his hand behind the bars, and at once, in the narrow outlet to the cage, an open jaw with sharp, white teeth was displayed. The polecat accompanied its rapid movements backwards and forwards by a spiteful, cough-like sound.

“Have you ever seen such a nasty brute? And yet I myself have fed it every day for a whole year.”

“Colonel Brehm” had now evidently forgotten Romashov’s business. He took him from cage to cage, and showed him all his favourites, and he spoke with as much enthusiasm, knowledge, and tenderness of the animals’ tempers and habits, as if the question concerned his oldest and most intimate friends. Rafalski’s collection of animals was really an extraordinarily large and fine one for a private individual to own, who was, moreover, compelled to live in an out-of-the-way and wretched provincial hole. There were rabbits, white rats, otters, hedgehogs, marmots, several venomous snakes in glass cases, ant-bears, several sorts of monkeys, a black Australian hare, and an exceedingly fine specimen of an Angora cat.

“Well, what do you say to this?” asked Rafalski, as he exhibited the cat. “Isn’t he charming? And yet he does not stand high in my favour, for he is awfully stupid⁠—much more stupid than our ordinary cats.” Rafalski then exclaimed hotly: “Another proof of the little we know and how wrongly we value our ordinary domestic animals. What do we know about the cat, horse, cow, and pig? The pig is a remarkably clever animal. You’re laughing, I see, but wait and you shall hear.” (Romashov had not shown the least signs of amusement.) “Last year I had in my possession a wild boar which invented the following trick. I had got home from the sugar factory four bushels of waste, intended for my pigs and hotbeds. Well, my big boar could not, of course, wait patiently. Whilst the foreman went to find my servant, the boar with his tusks tore the bung out of the cask, and, in a few seconds, was in his seventh heaven. What do you say of a chap like that? But listen further”⁠—Rafalski peered out of one eye, and assumed a crafty expression⁠—“I am at present engaged in writing a treatise on my pigs⁠—for God’s sake, not a whisper of this to anyone. Just fancy if people got to hear that a Lieutenant-Colonel in the glorious Russian Army was writing a book, and one about pigs into the bargain; but the fact is, I managed to obtain a genuine Yorkshire sow. Have you seen her? Come, let me show you her. Besides, I have down in the yard a young beagle, the dearest little beast. Come!”

“Pardon me, Ivan Antonovich,” stammered Romashov, “I should be only too pleased to accompany you, but⁠—but I really haven’t the time now.”

Rafalski struck his forehead with the palm of his hand.

“Oh, yes, what an incorrigible old gossip I am. Excuse me⁠—I’ll go and get it⁠—come along.”

They went into a little bare room in which there was literally nothing but a low tent-bedstead which, with its bottom composed of a sheet hanging down to the floor, reminded one of a boat; a little night-table, and a chair without a back. Rafalski pulled out a drawer of the little table and produced the money.

“I am very glad to be able to help you, ensign, very glad. If you please, no thanks or such nonsense. It’s a pleasure, you know. Look me up when convenient, and we’ll have a chat. Goodbye.”

When Romashov reached the street, he ran into Viätkin. Pavel Pavlich’s moustaches were twisted up ferociously, à la Kaiser, and his regimental cap, stuck on one side in a rakish manner, lay carelessly thrown on one ear.

“Ha, look at Prince Hamlet,” shouted Viätkin, “whence and whither? You’re beaming like a man in luck.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I am,” replied Romashov smilingly.

“Ah-ah! splendid; come and give me a big hug.”

With the enthusiasm