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

Alexandra Millievna had an honoured place, with her own kneeling-mat and soft folding chair. And somehow or other he contrived to come home alone with Lenotchka. The mother and Oletchka stayed for the consecration of the Easter cakes, and Lenotchka, Arkasha and Kolya came out of church together. But Arkasha diplomatically vanished⁠—he disappeared as suddenly as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up. The two young people found themselves alone.

They went arm in arm through the crowd, their young legs moving easily and swiftly. Both were overcome by the beauty of the night, the joyous hymns, the multitude of lights, the Easter kisses, the smiles and greetings in the church. Outside there was a cheerful crowd of people; the dark and tender sky was full of brightly twinkling stars; the scent of moist young leaves was wafted from gardens, and they, too, were unexpectedly so near to one another they seemed lost together in the crowd, and they were out at an unusually late hour.

Pretending to himself that it was by accident, Voznitsin pressed Lenotchka’s elbow to his side, and she answered with a barely noticeable movement in return. He repeated the secret caress, and she again responded. Then in the darkness he felt for her fingertips and gently stroked them, and her hand made no objection, was not snatched away.

And so they came to the gate of the church house. Arkasha had left the little gate open for them. Narrow wooden planks placed over the mud led up to the house between two rows of spreading old lime trees. When the gate closed after them, Voznitsin caught Lenotchka’s hand and began to kiss her fingers, so warm, so soft, so full of life.

“Lenotchka, I love you; I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

He put his arms around her and kissed her in the darkness, somewhere just below her ear. His hat fell off on to the ground, but he did not stop to pick it up. He kissed the girl’s cool cheek, and whispered as in a dream:

“Lenotchka, I love you, I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, no,” said she in a whisper, and hearing the whisper he sought her lips. “No, no, let me go; let me.⁠ ⁠…”

Dear lips of hers, half childish, simple, innocent lips. When he kissed her she made no opposition, yet she did not return his kisses; she breathed in a touching manner, quickly, deeply, submissively. Down his cheeks there flowed cool tears, tears of rapture. And when he drew his lips away from hers and looked up into the sky, the stars shining through the lime branches seemed to dance and come towards one another, to meet and swim together in silvery clusters, seen through his flowing tears.

“Lenotchka, I love you.⁠ ⁠…”

“Let me go.⁠ ⁠…”

“Lenotchka!”

But suddenly she cried out angrily: “Let me go, you nasty, horrid boy. You’ll see, I’ll tell mother everything; I’ll tell her all about it. Indeed, I will.”

She didn’t say anything to her mother, but after that night she never allowed Voznitsin to be alone with her. And then the summertime came.⁠ ⁠…

“And do you remember, Elena Vladimirovna, how one beautiful Easter night two young people kissed one another just inside the church-house gate?” asked Voznitsin.

“No, I don’t remember anything.⁠ ⁠… Nasty, horrid boy,” said the lady, smiling gently. “But look, here comes my daughter. You must make her acquaintance.”

“Lenotchka, this is Nikolai Ivanitch Voznitsin, my old, old friend. I knew him as a child. And this is my Lenotchka. She’s just exactly the same age as I was on that Easter night.⁠ ⁠…”

“Big Lenotchka and little Lenotchka,” said Voznitsin.

“No, old Lenotchka and young Lenotchka,” she answered, simply and quietly.

Lenotchka was very much like her mother, but taller and more beautiful than she had been in her youth. Her hair was not red, but the colour of a hazel nut with a brilliant lustre; her dark eyebrows were finely and clearly outlined; her mouth full and sensitive, fresh and beautiful.

The young girl was interested in the floating lightships, and Voznitsin explained their construction and use. Then they talked about stationary lighthouses, the depth of the Black Sea, about divers, about collisions of steamers, and so on. Voznitsin could talk well, and the young girl listened to him with lightly parted lips, never taking her eyes from his face.

And he⁠ ⁠… the longer he looked at her the more his heart was overcome by a sweet and tender melancholy⁠—sympathy for himself, pleasure in her, in this new Lenotchka, and a quiet thankfulness to the elder one. It was this very feeling for which he had thirsted in Moscow, but clearer, brighter, purified from all self-love.

When the young girl went off to look at the Kherson monastery he took the elder Lenotchka’s hand and kissed it gently.

“Life is wise, and we must submit to her laws,” he said thoughtfully. “But life is beautiful too. It is an eternal rising from the dead. You and I will pass away and vanish out of sight, but from our bodies, from our thoughts and actions, from our minds, our inspiration and our talents, there will arise, as from our ashes, a new Lenotchka and a new Kolya Voznitsin. All is connected, all linked together. I shall depart and yet I shall also remain. But one must love Life and follow her guidance. We are all alive together⁠—the living and the dead.”

He bent down once more to kiss her hand, and she kissed him tenderly on his white-haired brow. They looked at one another, and their eyes were wet with tears; they smiled gently, sadly, tenderly.

The Idiot

We were seated in a little park, driven there by the unbearable heat of the noonday sun. It was much cooler there than in the streets, where the paving stones, steeped in the rays of the July sun, burnt the soles of one’s feet, and the walls of the buildings seemed red-hot. The fine scorching dust of the roadway did not penetrate through the close border of leafy old limes and spreading chestnuts, the latter with