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

high store by his former dignity as an officer. However, he is wearing out some of the older portions of the deceased’s linen. II

From time to time storms break out in the landlady’s room. Sometimes it happens that the lieutenant, with the assistance of his pupil Romka, sells a heap of somebody else’s books to a secondhand dealer. Sometimes he takes advantage of the landlady’s absence to intercept the payment for a room by day. Or he secretly begins to have playful relations with the servant-maid. Just the other day the lieutenant abused Anna Friedrichovna’s credit in the public-house over the way. This came to light, and a quarrel raged, with abuse and a fight in the corridor. The doors of all the rooms opened, and men and women poked their heads out in curiosity. Anna Friedrichovna shouted so loud that she was heard in the street:

“You get out of here, you blackguard, get out, you tramp! I’ve spent on you every penny of the money I’ve earned by sweating blood. You fill your belly with the farthings I sweat for my children!”

“You fill your belly with our farthings,” squalled the schoolboy Romka, making faces at him from behind his mother’s skirt.

“You fill your belly!” Adka and Edka accompanied from a distance.

Arseny the porter, in stony silence, pressed his chest against the lieutenant. From room No. 9, the valiant possessor of a magnificently parted black beard leaned out to his waist in his underclothes, with a round hat for some reason perched on his head, and resolutely gave his advice:

“Arseny, give him one between the eyes.”

Thus the lieutenant was driven to the stairs; but there was a broad window opening on to these very stairs from the corridor. Anna Friedrichovna hung out of it and still went on shouting after the lieutenant:

“You dirty beast⁠ ⁠… you murderer⁠ ⁠… scoundrel⁠ ⁠… Kiev gutter-sweeping!”

“Gutter-sweeping!” “Gutter-sweeping!” the brats in the corridor strained their voices, shouting.

“Don’t come eating here any more! Take your filthy things away with you. Take them. Take them!”

The things the lieutenant had left upstairs in his haste descended on him: a stick, his paper collar, and his notebook. The lieutenant halted on the bottom stair, raised his head, and brandished his fist. His face was pale, a bruise showed red beneath his left eye.

“You just wait, you scum. I tell everything in the proper quarter. Ah! ah.⁠ ⁠… They’re a lot of pimps, robbing the lodgers!”

“You just sling your hook while you’ve got a whole skin,” said Arseny sternly, pressing on the lieutenant from behind and pushing him with his shoulder.

“Get away, you swine! You’ve not the right to lay a finger on an officer,” the lieutenant proudly exclaimed. “I know about everything! You let people in here without passports! You receive⁠—you receive stolen goods.⁠ ⁠… You keep a broth⁠—”

At this point Arseny seized the lieutenant adroitly from behind. The door slammed with a shattering noise. The two men rolled out into the street together like a ball, and thence came an angry: “Brothel!”

This morning, as it had always happened before, Lieutenant Tchijhevich came back penitent, with a bouquet of lilac torn out of somebody’s garden. His face was weary. A dim blue surrounded his hollow eyes. His forehead was yellow, his clothes unbrushed, and there were feathers in his hair. The reconciliation goes slowly. Anna Friedrichovna hasn’t yet had her fill of her lover’s submissive look and repentant words. Besides, she is a little jealous of the three nights her Valerian has passed, she knows not where.

“Anna, darling,⁠ ⁠… where⁠ ⁠…” the lieutenant began in an extraordinarily meek and tender falsetto, slightly tremulous even.

“Wha-at! Who’s Anna darling, I’d like to know,” the landlady contemptuously cut him short. “I’m not Anna darling to any scum of a road sweeper!”

“But I only wanted to ask what address I was to write for ‘Praskovia Uvertiesheva, 34 years old,’ there’s nothing written down here.”

“Put her down at the Rag-market, and put yourself there, too. You’re a pretty pair. Or put yourself in a dosshouse.”

“Dirty beast,” thinks the lieutenant, but he only gives a deep, submissive sigh. “You’re very nervous today, Anna, darling!”

“Nervous! Whatever I am, I know I’m an honest, hardworking woman.⁠ ⁠… Get out of the way, you bastards,” she shouts at the children, and suddenly, “Shlop, shlop”⁠—two well-aimed smacks with the spoon come down on Adka’s and Edka’s foreheads. The boys begin to snivel.

“There’s a curse on my business, and on me,” the landlady growls angrily. “When I lived with my husband I never had any sorrows. Now, all the porters are drunkards, and all the maids are thieves. Sh! you cursed brats!⁠ ⁠… That Proska⁠ ⁠… she hasn’t been here two days when she steals the stockings from the girl in No. 12. Other people go off to pubs with other people’s money, and never do a stroke.⁠ ⁠…”

The lieutenant knew perfectly who Anna Friedrichovna was speaking about, but he maintained a concentrated silence. The smell of the bigoss inspired him with some faint hopes. Then the door opened and Arseny the porter entered without taking off his hat with the three gold braids. He looks like an Albino eunuch, and his dirty face is pitted. This is at least the fortieth time he has had this place with Anna Friedrichovna. He keeps it until the first fit of drinking, when the landlady herself beats him and puts him into the streets, first having taken away the symbol of his authority, his three-braided cap.

Then Arseny puts a white Caucasian fur hat on his head and a dark blue pince-nez on his nose, and swaggers in the public-house opposite until he’s drunk everything on him away, and at the end of his spree he will cry on the bosom of the indifferent waiter about his hopeless love for Friedrich and threaten to murder Lieutenant Tchijhevich. When he sobers down he comes to the “Serbia” and falls at his landlady’s feet. And she takes him back again, because the porter who succeeded Arseny had already managed in this short time