Captain Ribnikov Page #9

"Captain Ribnikov" is a novel by Russian author Aleksandr Kuprin, published in 1913. The story revolves around the experiences of Captain Ribnikov, a dedicated and principled officer in the Russian Navy, as he confronts moral dilemmas and the harsh realities of life at sea. The narrative explores themes of duty, honor, and the complexities of human relationships, set against the backdrop of naval life. Kuprin's vivid storytelling captures the struggles of individuals grappling with their ideals and the often brutal world around them, making it a poignant reflection on the nature of loyalty and sacrifice.

• Novel

								

and said simply: ‘Let us go too, darling. It really is late.’

V

She had a little gay room with a bright blue paper, a pale blue hanging
lamp. On the toilet-table stood a round mirror in a frame of light
blue satin. There were two oleographs on one wall, ‘Girls Bathing’ and
‘The Royal Bridegroom,’ on the other a hanging, with a wide brass bed
alongside.

The woman undressed, and with a sense of pleasant relief passed her
hands over her body, where her chemise had been folded under her
corset. Then she turned the lamp down and sat on the bed, and began
calmly to unlace her boots.

Ribnikov sat by the table with his elbows apart and his head resting in
his hands. He could not tear his eyes from her big, handsome legs and
plump calves, which her black, transparent stockings so closely fitted.

‘Why don’t you undress, officer?’ the woman asked. ‘Tell me, darling,
why do they call you Japanese General?’

Ribnikov gave a laugh, with his eyes still fixed upon her legs.

‘Oh, it’s just nonsense. Only a joke. Do you know the verses:

   “It hardly can be called a sin,
    If something’s funny and you grin!...”’

‘Will you stand me some champagne, darling.... Since you’re so stingy,
oranges will do. Are you going soon or staying the night?’

‘Staying the night. Come to me.’

She lay down with him, hastily threw her cigarette over on to the floor
and wriggled beneath the blanket.

‘Do you like to be next to the wall?’ she asked. ‘Do if you want to.
O-oh, how cold your legs are! You know I love army men. What’s your
name?’

‘Mine?’ He coughed and answered in an uncertain tone: ‘I am Captain
Ribnikov. Vassily Alexandrovich Ribnikov!’

‘Ah, Vasya! I have a friend called Vasya, a little chap from the Lycée.
Oh, what a darling he is!’

She began to sing, pretending to shiver under the bedclothes, laughing
and half-closing her eyes:

  ‘“Vasya, Vasya, Vasinke,
    It’s a tale you’re telling me.”

‘You are like a Japanese, you know, by Jove. Do you know who? The
Mikado. We take in the Niva and there’s a picture of him there. It’s
late now--else I’d get it to show you. You’re as like as two peas.’

‘I’m very glad,’ said Ribnikov, quietly kissing her smooth, round
shoulder.

‘Perhaps you’re really a Japanese? They say you’ve been at the war. Is
it true? O-oh, darling, I’m afraid of being tickled--Is it dreadful at
the war?’

‘Dreadful ... no, not particularly.... Don’t let’s talk about it,’ he
said wearily. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Clotilde.... No, I’ll tell you a secret. My name’s Nastya. They
only called me Clotilde here because my name’s so ugly. Nastya,
Nastasya--sounds like a cook.’

‘Nastya,’ he repeated musingly, and cautiously kissed her breast. ‘No,
it’s a nice name. Na--stya,’ he repeated slowly.

‘What is there nice about it? Malvina, Wanda, Zhenia, they’re nice
names--especially Irma.... Oh, darling,’ and she pressed close to him.
‘You are a dear ... so dark. I love dark men. You’re married, surely?’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Oh, tell us another. Every one here says he’s a bachelor. You’ve got
six children for sure!’

It was dark in the room, for the windows were shuttered and the lamp
hardly burned. Her face was quite close to his head, and showed
fantastic and changing on the dim whiteness of the pillow. Already it
was different from the simple, handsome, round grey-eyed, Russian face
of before. It seemed to have grown thinner, and, strangely changing
its expression every minute, seemed now tender, kind, mysterious.
It reminded Ribnikov of some one infinitely familiar, long beloved,
beautiful and fascinating.

‘How beautiful you are!’ he murmured. ‘I love you.... I love you....’

He suddenly uttered an unintelligible word, completely foreign to the
woman’s ear.

‘What did you say?’ she asked in surprise.

‘Nothing.... Nothing.... Nothing at all.... My dear! Dear woman ... you
are a woman ... I love you....’

He kissed her arms, her neck, trembling with impatience, which it
gave him wonderful delight to suppress. He was possessed by a tender
and tempestuous passion for the well-fed, childless woman, for her
big young body, so cared for and beautiful. His longing for woman had
been till now suppressed by his austere, ascetic life, his constant
weariness, by the intense exertion of his mind and will: now it
devoured him suddenly with an intolerable, intoxicating flame.

‘Your hands are cold,’ she said, awkward and shy. In this man was
something strange and alarming which she could in no way understand.
‘Cold hands and a warm heart.’

‘Yes, yes, yes.... My heart,’ he repeated it like a madman, ‘My heart
is warm, my heart....’

Long ago she had grown used to the outward rites and the
shameful details of love; she performed them several times every
day--mechanically, indifferently, and often with silent disgust.
Hundreds of men, from the aged and old, who put their teeth in a glass
of water for the night, to youngsters whose voice was only beginning to
break and was bass and soprano at once, civilians, army men, priests
in mufti, baldheads and men overgrown with hair from head to foot
like monkeys, excited and impotent, morphomaniacs who did not conceal
their vice from her, beaux, cripples, rakes, who sometimes nauseated
her, boys who cried for the bitterness of their first fall--they
all embraced her with shameful words, with long kisses, breathed
into her face, moaned in the paroxysm of animal passion, which, she
knew beforehand, would then and there be changed to unconcealed and
insuperable disgust. Long ago all men’s faces had in her eyes lost
every individual trait--as though they had united into one lascivious,
inevitable face, eternally bent over her, the face of a he-goat with
stubbly, slobbering lips, clouded eyes, dimmed like frosted glass,
distorted and disfigured by a voluptuous grimace, which sickened her
because she never shared it.

Besides, they were all rude, exacting and devoid of the elements of
shame. They were ludicrously ugly, as only the modern man can be in his
underclothes. But this elderly little officer made a new, peculiar,
attractive impression on her. His every movement was distinguished by
a gentle, insinuating discretion. His kiss, his caress, and his touch
were strangely gentle. At the same time he surrounded her imperceptibly
with the nervous atmosphere of real and intense passion which even from
a distance and against her will arouses a woman’s sensuality, makes her
docile, and subject to the male’s desire. But her poor little mind had
never passed beyond the round of everyday life in the house, and could
not perceive this strange and agitating spell. She could only whisper
shyly, happy and surprised, the usual trivial words: ‘What a nice man
you are! You’re my sweet, aren’t you?’

She got up, put the lamp out, and lay beside him again. Through the
chinks between the shutters and the wall showed thin threads of the
whitening dawn, which filled the room with a misty blue half-light.
Behind the partition, somewhere an alarm-clock hurriedly rang. Far away
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