Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

preparing dinner. Seeing Sasha in tears with his books, she guessed what had happened, and after showering abuse on him had rushed off to his father, awakened him, and explained what had happened, and his father had thereupon beaten him.

Sasha was then fifteen years old. Two years later he took up military service as a volunteer, and at twenty years of age was already an independent man, a Second Lieutenant in an infantry regiment of the Line.⁠ ⁠…

“It is very nice,” he would reflect, as he lay under the blanket.⁠ ⁠… “This evening at the Club there is to be a dance.”

And Alexander Michailovich would picture to himself the hall of the Officers’ Club brilliantly lighted up, the heat, and music, and young girls in long rows seated along the wall, only waiting for some young ofhcer to invite them to take a few turns in a waltz. And Stebelkoff with a click of his heels (What a pity, dash it! he sighed, he could not wear spurs), and neatly bending before the Major’s pretty daughter, with a graceful sweep of his hand would say “Permettez,” and the Major’s daughter, placing her little hand on his shoulder near his epaulette, they would glide away.⁠ ⁠…

“Yes, that’s not being a ‘herring’⁠—how idiotic, and why a ‘herring’? Those who attend the first course at the University are much more like herrings, going there and starving, but I⁠ ⁠… And why is it absolutely necessary to go to the University? We will allow that a magistrate or doctor receives a bigger salary than my pay, but think how long it takes to get it!⁠ ⁠… and all this time one must live at one’s own expense. But with us, once you get into the school everything goes of itself. If one serves well it is possible to become a General.⁠ ⁠… Ah, then I would give it⁠ ⁠…” Alexander Michailovich did not say to whom or what he would give, for other reminiscences than of “herrings” at this instance flashed into his mind.

“Nikita,” he called, “have we any tea?”

“None at all. Your Excellency⁠—all used.”

“Go out and buy some;” and then he would draw his new purse from under the pillow, and give Nikita the money, and whilst Nikita is out getting the tea Alexander Michailovich continues his reveries, but before Nikita returns has succeeded in going to sleep again.

“Sir! Your Excellency!” whispers Nikita.

“What? Eh? Have you got the tea? All right, I will get up in a moment.⁠ ⁠… Help me dress.”

Alexander Michailovich, both at home and at the school, had always dressed himself (excepting, of course, during his babyhood), but having become possessed of a manservant, he in two weeks had absolutely forgotten how to put on or take off his clothes. Nikita pulls on his master’s socks and boots, helps him with his trousers, throws around his master’s shoulders the summer military cloak which does duty as a dressing-gown. And Alexander Michailovich, without washing, sits down to drink his morning tea.

They bring him the lithographed regimental orders, and Stebelkoff, reading it from beginning to end, notes with satisfaction that his turn for “guard” is still far off. “But what is this novelty?” he wonders as he reads:

“With a view to maintaining the standard of knowledge amongst officers of the regiment, Captain Ermolin and Lieutenant Petroff (2nd) are detailed from the commencement of next week to lecture, the former on tactics, the latter on fortification. Further special notice will be given as to the hours for these lectures, which will take place in the Officers’ Club.”

“Well! Goodness knows, I suppose I shall have to go and listen,” thinks Alexander Michailovich. “They were boring enough at the school, and they will not say anything new, but will only read from the old handbooks.”

Having read through the Orders and finished his tea, Alexander Michailovich orders Nikita to clear away the samovar, and settles himself down to roll cigarettes, continuing the while his never-ending cogitations about his past, present, and future, which last promises him, if not the embonpoint of a General, at least the substantial epaulettes of a Staff-Officer. And when all the cigarettes have been rolled he lies on his bed, and reads the back numbers of the Niva, looking at the already familiar pictures, and not missing a line of the text. Finally, from long lying and reading, his head begins to get dizzy.

“Nikita!” he shouts.

Nikita jumps up from the cloak stretched out on the floor in the passage near the stove, which serves him as a bed, and rushes to the Barin.

“See what time it is!⁠ ⁠… No, better bring me my watch.”

Nikita gingerly takes up a silver watch, with its chain of new gold, from the table, and, having handed it to his master again, repairs into the passage to his cloak.

“Half-past one⁠ ⁠… about time to dine,” thinks Stebelkoff, winding up the watch with a brass key which he had just purchased, and in the head of which was inserted a little photographic picture visible in magnified shape if held up to the light. Alexander Michailovich looks at the picture, screwing up his left eye, and smiles. “What extraordinarily amusing things they make nowadays, to be sure,” he reflects, “and how clever.⁠ ⁠… However, I must be going.⁠ ⁠… Nikita!” he shouts.

Nikita appears.

“I want to wash.”

Nikita brings an unpainted deal stool into the room, and places a wash-hand basin on it. Alexander Michailovich begins to wash. The icy cold water scarcely touches his hands before he yells out.

“How many times have I told you, you clown, to leave the water in the room overnight. This water is cold enough to freeze one’s face.⁠ ⁠… Idiot!”

Nikita, fully conscious of the enormity of his crime, remains silent, and continues busily to pour water into the enraged gentleman’s palms.

“Have you brushed my tunic?”

“Yes, Your Excellency, I have brushed it,” replies Nikita, as he gives the Barin a new tunic, with glistening gold shoulder-straps, decorated with a numeral and one star, which had been hanging on the back of