Short Fiction Aleksandr Kuprin (free novel reading sites TXT) 📖

angrily; he had become purple. “If the manager orders you to stand on one foot with your tongue out, you must obey in absolute silence. Kindly repeat.”

I repeated and the effect was still more grotesque. But at this point Lara-Larsky came to my rescue.

“Leave it alone, Boris,” he said weariedly to Samoilenko. “Can’t you see that he isn’t up to it? And apart from this, as you know yourself, history gives us no direct indications. The question⁠ ⁠… hum⁠ ⁠… is debatable.”

Samoilenko left me in peace about his classical gesture. But after that he never missed a chance of knifing me, stinging me, and generally insulting me. He followed all my blunders jealously. He hated me so much that I’m sure he dreamed of me every night. For my part, even now, after ten years, this very day, as soon as I remember this man, rage surges up in me and chokes my throat. It is true that before my departure⁠ ⁠… however, I’ll tell about that later on, otherwise it will spoil the harmony of the story.

Towards the very end of the rehearsal, there suddenly appeared on the stage a tall, thin, long-nosed man, with a bowler hat and a moustache. He staggered slightly, knocking against the wings, and his eyes were exactly like a pair of pewter buttons. Everyone looked at him with disgust, but no one passed any remark.

“Who is he?” I asked Doukhovskoi in a whisper.

“Eh! A drunkard,” he answered casually. “Nelioubov-Olguine, our scene-painter. He’s a clever fellow, acts sometimes when he’s sober, but he’s a perfectly hopeless drunkard. Still, there’s no one to take his place; he’s cheap and paints scenes very quickly.”

VIII

The rehearsal ended. People were going away. The actors were joking, playing on words: Mercia-Commercia. Lara-Larsky was telling Boev meaningly to come “there.” I caught up with Valerianov in one of the alleys and, scarcely able to keep pace with his long strides, I said:

“Victor Victorovitch⁠ ⁠… I want very much to ask you for some money⁠ ⁠… if only a little.”

He stopped and seemed quite stupefied.

“What? What money? Why money? For whom?”

I began to explain my position to him, but, without hearing me to the end, he turned his back on me and went on. Then suddenly he stopped and called out:

“I say, you there⁠ ⁠… what’s your name?⁠ ⁠… Vassiliev. You’d better go to that man, your proprietor, and tell him to come and enquire for me here. I shall remain at the box-office for another half-hour. I’ll have a word with him.”

I didn’t go to the hotel, I flew to it. The Ukrainian listened with gloomy distrust; however, he put on his brown jacket and crawled slowly to the theatre. I waited for him. A quarter of an hour later he returned. His face was like a stormy cloud, and a bundle of theatre passes was sticking out of his right hand. He shoved them right under my nose and said in a muffled bass:

“There you are! I thought he’d give me coins and he gives me bits of paper. What good are they to me?”

I stood confused. However, the bits of paper had a certain utility. After long exhortations, the proprietor consented to share my belongings: he kept as a deposit my beautiful new English leather portmanteau and I took my underclothes, my passport and, what was more precious to me than anything else, my travelling notebooks. By way of goodbye, the Ukrainian asked me:

“What⁠—are you, too, going to play the fool over there?”

“Yes, I, too,” I said with dignity.

“Ho, ho, you be careful. As soon as I set eyes on you on the stage, I’ll shout out: ‘What about my twenty roubles?’ ”

For the next three days, I didn’t venture to trouble Valerianov, and slept on the little green bench with my small parcel of underclothes under my head as a pillow. Two nights, thank God, were warm; I even felt, as I lay on the bench, a dry heat mounting up from the pavement that had been well warmed during the day. But on the third night there was a fine, continuous rain and I took shelter on a doorstep and was unable to sleep till the morning. The town gardens were open at eight. I stole in behind the scenes, lay down on an old curtain, and slept soundly for two hours. Of course I came under Samoilenko’s eyes and he, at great length and stingingly, informed me that a theatre was the temple of art and not at all a dormitory or a boudoir or a dosshouse. Then I decided to overtake the manager again in the alley and ask him for some money, however little, as I had nowhere to sleep.

“I beg your pardon,” he said waving his arms apart, “what has it got to do with me? You’re not a child, are you? And in any case I’m not your nurse.”

I kept silent. His half-closed eyes wandered over the bright, sunny sand of the footpath and then he said thoughtfully:

“Suppose⁠ ⁠… look here⁠ ⁠… suppose you spend the nights in the theatre. I suggested that to the night watch, but the fool was afraid.”

I thanked him.

“But only on one condition. No smoking in the theatre. If you want to smoke, go out into the gardens.”

After that I was guaranteed a sleeping place under a roof. Sometimes, in the daytime, I would go some three miles along the river and wash my clothes in a modest little corner and dry them on the branches of the willows. My linen was of great help to me. From time to time I would go to the bazaar and sell there a shirt or something. On the twenty or thirty kopecks acquired in this way I would feed myself for two whole days. Things were taking visibly a favourable turn for me. Once I even managed, in a happy moment, to get a rouble out of Valerianov and immediately I dispatched a telegram to Ilia:

“Dying from hunger. Wire money C. Theatre.⁠—