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

And he again hit the horse a whack with his whip, but as it paid not the slightest attention to the blow, he added: “What’s to be done with it? Also, I expect, twenty-one years old. Get on, you⁠ ⁠… Look, how it swishes its tail!”

On the illuminated face of a clock in one of the windows of a large building the hands pointed to half-past seven.

“They must have already started,” thought the passenger of the doctor and his wife. “But perhaps not yet.⁠ ⁠… Grandad, don’t hurry, please. Go slower. I am not in a hurry.”

“That’s known, sir,” said the old man, pleased. “All the better slower. Now then, you old⁠ ⁠…”

They went along for a little time in silence, then the old man grew bold.

“Tell me, Your Excellency,” he said, suddenly turning round towards his passenger, revealing a wrinkled face with red eyelids, and framed in a straggly grey beard, “why does this kind of thing happen to a man? There was an izvoschik amongst us called Ivan, a young fellow, twenty-five or perhaps less years old. And who knows why, from what reason, he laid hands on himself.”

“Who?” quietly inquired the passenger in a hoarse voice.

“Why, Ivan Sidoroff. He lived amongst us izvoschiks. He was a bright young fellow and hardworking. Well, on Monday we had supper and laid down to sleep. But Ivan laid down without having any supper. His head, he said was breaking. We slept, but in the night he got up and went out. Only no one saw this. We went out in the morning to harness up, and there he was in the stable on a peg. He had taken the harness from off a peg, placed it alongside, and fastened a cord.⁠ ⁠… Ah me! It was heartbreaking. And what was the reason this izvoschik hanged himself? How could it have happened? Wonderful!”

“Why?” asked the passenger, coughing, and with trembling hands wrapping himself up more closely in his shuba.

“There are no such thoughts with an izvoschik. Work is hard and difficult. In the early morning, when there is no light before dawn, harness up and away from the yard. Frost and cold. Only the traktir in which to get warm. Money to be earned so as to pay the two roubles and a half for hire of the horse, and money for the lodging to be found, and⁠—sleep. It is difficult to think much then. But with you, sir, you know that everything crowds into the head with ‘light’ food.”

“With what kind of food?”

“With bread lightly earned. Therefore the Barin will get up, put on his dressing-grown, drink his tea, and wander about his room with wicked thoughts around him. I have seen it. I know. In our regiment at T⁠⸺, in the Caucasus, when I was serving, there was a young subaltern, Prince V⁠⸺. They made me his servant⁠ ⁠…”

“Stop, stop!⁠ ⁠…” suddenly called out the passenger. “Here, by the lamp. I will walk from here.”

“As the Barin wishes. Walk if he wishes to walk. Thank you, Your Excellency.”

The izvoschik turned and disappeared in the miatel which had arisen, and the passenger went on with dragging steps. In ten minutes’ time he reached the house, and having arrived at the third story by way of the front staircase, he rang at a door covered with green baize, and ornamented with a highly polished brass nameplate. As he waited for the door to be opened, the few minutes seemed to drag as if they would never come to an end. A dull oblivion seized him; everything disappeared; the tormenting past, the chatter of the half-drunken izvoschik, so strangely apposite that it compelled him to walk, and even the intention which had brought him here⁠—all had disappeared. Before his eyes was only a green-baize door edged with black tape studded with brass-headed nails. Naught else in the whole world.

“Ah, Alexei Petrovich!”

It was Dunyasha who, candle in hand, opened the door.

“And the Barin and Barinia have just gone out. Only this minute gone down the stairs. How is it you did not meet them?”

“Gone? Oh, what a pity!” He lied in such a strange voice that Dunyasha’s face betrayed some bewilderment as she looked him straight in the eyes. “And I wanted to see them. Look here, Dunyasha; I am going into the Barin’s study for a minute.⁠ ⁠… May I?” he asked, even timidly. “I won’t be a minute. Only just a note⁠ ⁠… it is a matter⁠ ⁠…”

He looked at her with an inquiring glance, not removing his shuba or galoshes, or moving from where he stood.

Dunyasha became confused.

“But what is the matter with you, Alexei Petrovich? Have I ever⁠ ⁠… it is not the first time,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “Please come in.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, why all this? Why am I talking like this? However, she will come in after me. I must send her away. Where can I send her? She will guess, of course. She has even guessed already.”

Dunyasha had guessed nothing, but was only extremely surprised at the strange appearance and behaviour of the visitor. She had been left alone in the flat and was glad, if only for five minutes, to be with a living being. Having placed the candle on a table, she stood by the door.

“Go away, go away, for goodness’ sake!” Alexei Petrovich kept saying inwardly. He sat down at the table, took a sheet of paper, and began to think of what he should write, feeling Dunyasha’s glance on him, which, it seemed to him, was reading his thoughts.

“Peter Nicolaivich,” he wrote, stopping at each word, “I came to see you about a very important matter which⁠ ⁠…”

“… Which, which,” he muttered, “and she keeps standing and standing there.⁠ ⁠… Dunyasha, go and get me a glass of water,” he suddenly said in a loud voice.

“Certainly, Alexei Petrovich.”