Easter Day

"Easter Day" by Aleksandr Kuprin is a poignant short story that explores themes of faith, renewal, and the complexities of human emotion. Set against the backdrop of the Orthodox Easter celebration, the narrative delves into the lives of its characters as they navigate moments of joy, despair, and introspection. Through vivid imagery and rich characterizations, Kuprin captures the essence of springtime rebirth and the profound impact of spiritual rituals on the human spirit. The story invites readers to reflect on the interplay of tradition and personal belief, making it a compelling piece within Kuprin's body of work.

• Novel

								
On his way from Petersburg to the Crimea Colonel Voznitsin purposely
broke his journey at Moscow, where his childhood and youth had been
spent, and stayed there two days. It is said that some animals when
they feel that they are about to die go round to all their favourite
and familiar haunts, taking leave of them, as it were. Voznitsin was
not threatened by the near approach of death; at forty years of age he
was still strong and well-preserved. But in his tastes and feelings and
in his relations with the world he had reached the point from which
life slips almost imperceptibly into old age. He had begun to narrow
the circle of his enjoyments and pleasures; a habit of retrospection
and of sceptical suspicion was manifest in his behaviour; his dumb,
unconscious, animal love of Nature had become less and was giving
place to a more refined appreciation of the shades of beauty; he was
no longer agitated and disturbed by the adorable loveliness of women,
but chiefly--and this was the first sign of spiritual blight--he began
to think about his own death. Formerly he had thought about it in a
careless and transient fashion--sooner or later death would come, not
to him personally, but to some other, someone of the name of Voznitsin.
But now he thought of it with a grievous, sharp, cruel, unwavering,
merciless clearness, so that at nights his heart beat in terror and his
blood ran cold. It was this feeling which had impelled him to visit
once more those places familiar to his youth, to live over again in
memory those dear, painfully sweet recollections of his childhood,
overshadowed with a poetical sadness, to wound his soul once more
with the sweet grief of recalling that which was for ever past--the
irrevocable purity and clearness of his first impressions of life.

And so he did. He stayed two days in Moscow, returning to his old
haunts. He went to see the boarding-house where once he had lived for
six years in the charge of his form mistress, being educated under the
Froebelian system. Everything there was altered and reconstituted; the
boys' department no longer existed, but in the girls' class-rooms there
was still the pleasant and alluring smell of freshly varnished tables
and stools; there was still the marvellous mixture of odours in the
dining-room, with a special smell of the apples which now, as then, the
scholars hid in their private cupboards. He visited his old military
school, and went into the private chapel where as a cadet he used to
serve at the altar, swinging the censer and coming out in his surplice
with a candle at the reading of the Gospel, but also stealing the wax
candle-ends, drinking the wine after Communion, and sometimes making
grimaces at the funny deacon and sending him into fits of laughter,
so that once he was solemnly sent away from the altar by the priest,
a magnificent and plump greybeard, strikingly like the picture of the
God of Sabaoth behind the altar. He went along all the old streets,
and purposely lingered in front of the houses where first of all had
come to him the naïve and childish languishments of love; he went into
the courtyards and up the stair-cases, hardly recognising any of them,
so much alteration and rebuilding had taken place in the quarter of a
century of his absence. And he noticed with irritation and surprise
that his staled and life-wearied soul remained cold and unmoved, and
did not reflect in itself the old familiar grief for the past, that
gentle grief, so bright, so calm, reflective and submissive.

"Yes, yes, yes--it's old age," he repeated to himself, nodding his head
sadly.... "Old age, old age, old age.... It can't be helped...."

After he left Moscow he was kept in Kief for a whole day on business,
and only arrived at Odessa at the beginning of Holy Week. But it had
been bad weather for some days, and Voznitsin, who was a very bad
sailor, could not make up his mind to embark. It was only on the
morning of Easter Eve that the weather became fine and the sea calm.

At six o'clock in the evening the steamer Grand Duke Alexis left
the harbour. Voznitsin had no one to see him off, for which he was
thankful. He had no patience with the somewhat hypocritical and
always difficult comedy of farewell, when God knows why one stands
a full half-hour at the side of the boat and looks down upon the
people standing on the pier, smiling constrained smiles, throwing
kisses, calling out from time to time in a theatrical tone foolish and
meaningless phrases for the benefit of the bystanders, till at last,
with a sigh of relief, one feels the steamer begin slowly and heavily
to move away.

There were very few passengers on board, and the majority of them
were third-class people. In the first-class there were only two others
besides himself a lady and her daughter, as the steward informed him.
"That's good," thought he to himself.

Everything promised a smooth and easy voyage. His cabin was excellent,
large and well lighted, with two divans and no upper berths at all. The
sea, though gently tossing, grew gradually calmer, and the ship did not
roll. At sunset, however, there was a fresh breeze on deck.

Voznitsin slept that night with open windows, and more soundly than
he had slept for many months, perhaps for a year past. When the boat
arrived at Eupatoria he was awakened by the noise of the cranes and by
the running of the sailors on the deck. He got up, dressed quickly,
ordered a glass of tea, and went above.

The steamer was at anchor in a half-transparent mist of a milky rose
tint, pierced by the golden rays of the rising sun. Scarcely noticeable
in the distance, the flat shore lay glimmering. The sea was gently
lapping the steamer's sides. There was a marvellous odour of fish,
pitch and seaweed. From a barge alongside they were lading packages and
bales. The captain's directions rang out clearly in the pure air of
morning: "Maina, véra, véra po malu, stop!"

When the barge had gone off and the steamer began to move again,
Voznitsin went down into the dining saloon. A strange sight met his
gaze. The tables were placed flat against the walls of the long room
and were decorated with gay flowers and covered with Easter fare. There
were lambs roasted whole, and turkeys, with their long necks supported
by unseen rods and wire, raised their foolish heads on high. Their
thin necks were bent info the form of an interrogation mark, and they
trembled and shook with every movement of the steamer. They might have
been strange antediluvian beasts, like the brontozauri or ichthauri
one sees in pictures, lying there upon the large dishes, their legs
bent under them, their heads on their twisted necks looking around with
a comical and cautious wariness. The clear sunlight streamed through
the port-holes and made golden circles of light on the tablecloths,
transforming the colours of the Easter eggs into purple and sapphire,
and making the flowers--hyacinths, pansies, tulips, violets,
wallflowers, forget-me-nots--glow with living fire.

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