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

the middle of her forehead, stole down to her coquettish little ears. Behind her, and looking over her shoulder, stood a gigantic young man in a light suit, with a scornful look, and moustaches after the style affected by Kaiser Wilhelm. In fact, he bore a certain resemblance to Wilhelm. The lady looked at Romashov, it seemed to him with an expression of interest, and he said to himself: “The fair unknown’s eyes rested with pleasure on the young warrior’s tall, well-formed figure.” But when, after walking on a few steps, he turned round to catch the lady’s eyes again, he saw that both she and her companion were looking after him and laughing. In that moment he saw himself from outside, as it were⁠—his awful goloshes, his cloak, pale face, stiff, angular figure⁠—and experienced a feeling of shame and indignation at the thought of the bombastic, romantic phrase he had just applied to himself. Ah! even at this moment, when he was walking along the road in the gloomy spring evening, he flushed at that torturing recollection.

“No, I shall not go to the station,” he whispered to himself with bitter hopelessness. “I’ll take a little stroll and then go straight home.”

It was in the beginning of April. The dusk was deepening into night. The poplars that bordered the road, the small white houses with their red-tiled roofs, the few wanderers one met in the street at this hour⁠—all grew darker, lost colour and perspective. All objects were changed into black shadow, the lines of which, however, still showed distinctly against the dark sky. Far away westwards, outside the town, the sunset still gleamed fiery red. Vast dark-blue clouds melted slowly down into a glowing crater of streaming, flaming gold, and then assumed a blood-red hue with rays of violet and amber. But above the volcano, like a dome of varying green, turquoise and beryl, arose the boundless sky of a luminous spring night.

Romashov looked steadily at this enchanting picture whilst he slowly and laboriously dragged himself and his goloshes along the causeway. As he always did, even from childhood, he even now indulged in fancies of a mysterious, marvellous world that waited for and beckoned to him in the far distance, beyond the sunset. Just there⁠—there behind the clouds and the horizon⁠—is hidden a wonderfully beautiful city lighted up by the beams of a sun invisible from here, and protected against our eyes by heavy, inexorable, threatening clouds. There the human eye is blinded by streets paved with gold; there, to a dazzling height, the dome-capped towers rise above the purple-hued roofs, where the palace windows shimmer in the sun like innumerable gems, where countless flags and banners resplendent with colour sway in the breeze. And in this fairy city throng bands of rejoicing people, whose whole life is nothing but an endless, intoxicating feast, a chord of harmony and bliss vibrating forever and ever. In paradisaical parks and gardens, amidst fountains and flowers, stroll godlike men and women fair as the day, who have never yet known an unfulfilled desire, who have never yet experienced sorrow and struggle and shame.

Romashov suddenly called to mind the painful scene in the parade-ground, the Commander’s coarse invectives and that outrageous insult in the presence of his comrades and subordinates. Ah! what affected him most bitterly of all was that a person had railed at him before the soldiers in the same rough and ruthless way as he himself, alas! had only too often done to his subordinates. This he felt almost as a degradation, nay, even as a debasement of his dignity as a human being.

Then awoke within him, exactly as was the case in his early youth⁠—alas! in many respects he still much resembled a big child⁠—feelings at once revengeful, fantastic, and intoxicating. “Stuff and nonsense!” he shouted out to himself. “All my life is before me.” And, as it were, in keeping with his thoughts, he took firmer strides, and breathed more deeply. “Tomorrow to spite them all I shall rise with the sun, stick to my books, and force an entrance into the Military Academy. Hard work? I can work hard if I like. I must take myself in hand, that is all. I’ll read and cram like fury, early and late, and then, some fine day, to everyone’s astonishment, I shall pass a brilliant examination. And then, of course, everyone will say: ‘This was nothing unexpected, we might have foretold that long ago. Such an energetic, talented young man!’ ”

And our Romashov already saw himself in his mind’s eye with a snug Staff appointment and unlimited possibilities in the future. His name stood engraved on the golden tablet of the Military Academy. The professors had predicted a brilliant career for him, tried to retain him as a lecturer at the Academy, etc. etc.⁠—but in vain. All his tastes were for the practical side, for troop service. He had also first to perform his duties as company officer, and as a matter of course⁠—yes, as a matter of course⁠—in his old regiment. He would, therefore, have to make another appearance here⁠—in this disgusting little out-of-the-way hole⁠—as a Staff officer uncommonly learned and all-accomplished, in every respect unsurpassable, well-bred and elegant, inexorably severe to himself, but benevolently condescending towards others, a pattern for all, envied by all, etc. etc. He had seen at the manoeuvres in the previous year a similar prodigy, who stood millions of miles above the rest of mankind, and who, therefore, kept himself far apart from his comrades at the officers’ mess. Cards, dice, heavy drinking and noisy buffoonery were not in his line; he had higher views. Besides, he had only honoured with a short visit that miserable place, which for him was only a stage, a stepladder on the road to honour⁠—and decorations.

And Romashov pursued his fancies. The grand manoeuvres have begun, and the battalion is busy. Colonel Shulgovich, who never managed to make out the strategical or tactical situation, gets more and