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

thirteen, beginning to develop early, a swarthy, olive brunette, with beautiful dark eyes, which are not at all childish. Her lips are red, full and shining, and on her upper lip, which is lightly covered with a fine black down, there are two delightful moles. She is a general favourite in the house. The men give her chocolates, often invite her into their rooms, kiss her and say impudent things to her. She knows as much as any grownup, but in these cases she never blushes, but just casts down her long black eyelashes which throw a blue shade on her amber cheeks, and smiles with a strange, modest, tender yet voluptuous, and somehow expectant smile. Her best friend is the woman Eugenia who lives in No. 12⁠—a quiet girl, punctual in paying for her room, a stout blonde, who is kept by a timber merchant, but on her free days invites her cavaliers from the street. Anna Friedrichovna holds her in high esteem, and says of her: “Well, what does it matter if Eugenia is not quite respectable, she’s an independent woman anyhow.”

Seeing that breakfast is over Alychka gives one of her constrained smiles and says aloud in her thin voice, rather theatrically: “Ah! you’ve finished already. I’m too late. Mamma! may I go to Eugenia Nicolaievna?”

“Go wherever you like!”

“Merci!”

She goes away. After breakfast complete peace reigns. The lieutenant whispers the most ardent words into the widow’s ear, and presses her generous knee under the table. Flushing with the food and beer, she presses her shoulder close to him, then pushes him away and sighs with nervous laughter.

“Yes, Valerian. You’re shameless. The children!”

Adka and Edka look at them, with their fingers in their mouths and their eyes wide open. Their mother suddenly springs upon them.

“Go for a run, you ruffians. Sitting there like dummies in a museum. Quick march!”

“But I don’t want to,” roars Adka.

“I don’ wan’⁠—”

“I’ll teach you ‘Don’t want to.’ A halfpenny for candy, and out you go.”

She locks the door after them, sits on the lieutenant’s knee, and they begin to kiss.

“You’re not cross, my treasure?” the lieutenant whispers in her ear.

But there is a knock at the door. They have to open. The new chambermaid enters, a tall, gloomy woman with one eye, and says hoarsely, with a ferocious look:

“No. 12 wants a samovar, some tea, and some sugar.”

Anna Friedrichovna impatiently gives out what is wanted. The lieutenant says languidly, stretched on the sofa:

“I would like to rest a bit, Anna, dear. Isn’t there a room empty? People are always knocking about here.”

There is only one room empty, No. 5, and there they go. Their room is long, narrow, and dark, like a skittle-alley, with one window. A bed, a chest of drawers, a blistered brown washstand, and a commode are all its furniture. The landlady and the lieutenant once more begin to kiss; and they moan like doves on the roof in springtime.

“Anna, darling, if you love me, send for a packet of ten Cigarettes Plaisir, six kopeks,” says the lieutenant coaxingly, while he undresses.

“Later⁠—”

The spring evening darkens quickly, and it is already night. Through the window comes the whistling of the steamers on the Dnieper, and with it creeps a faint smell of hay, dust, lilac and warm stone. The water falls into the washstand, dripping regularly. There is another knock.

“Who’s there? What the devil are you prowling about for?” cries Anna Friedrichovna awakened. She jumps barefoot from the bed and angrily opens the door. “Well, what do you want?”

Lieutenant Tchijhevich modestly pulls the blanket over his head.

“A student wants a room,” Arseny says behind the door in a stage whisper.

“What student? Tell him there’s only one room, and that’s two roubles. Is he alone, or with a woman?”

“Alone.”

“Tell him then: passport and money in advance. I know these students.”

The lieutenant dressed hurriedly. From habit he takes ten seconds over his toilette. Anna Friedrichovna tidies the bed quickly and cleverly. Arseny returns.

“He’s paid in advance,” he said gloomily. “And here’s the passport.”

The landlady went out into the corridor. Her hair was dishevelled and a fringe was sticking to her forehead. The folds of the pillow were imprinted on her crimson cheeks. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant. The lieutenant, under cover of her back, slipped into the landlady’s room as noiseless as a shadow.

The student was waiting by the window on the stairs. He was already no longer a young man. He was thin and fair-haired, and his face was long and pale, tender and sickly. His good-natured, shortsighted blue eyes, with the faintest shade of a squint, look out as through a mist. He bowed politely to the landlady, at which she smiled in confusion and fastened the top hook of her blouse.

“I should like a room,” he said softly, as if his courage was ebbing. “I have to go on from here. But I should be obliged for a candle and pen and ink.”

He was shown the skittle-alley.

“Excellent,” he said. “I couldn’t want anything better. It’s wonderful here. Just let me have a pen and ink, please.” He did not require tea or bed-linen.

III

The lamp was burning in the landlady’s room. Alychka sat Turkish fashion in the open window, watching the dark heavy mass of water, lit by electric lamps, wavering below, and the gentle motion of the scant dead green of the poplars along the quay. Two round spots of bright red were burning in her cheeks, and there was a moist and weary light in her eyes. In the cooling air the petulant sound of a valse graciously floated from far away on the other side of the river, where the lights of the café chantant were shining.

They were drinking tea with shop bought raspberry jam. Adka and Edka crumbled pieces of black bread into their saucers, and made a kind of porridge. They smeared their faces, foreheads, and noses with it. They blew bubbles in their saucers. Romka, returned with a black eye, was