Tempting Providence Page #3

"Tempting Providence" is a poignant short story by Aleksandr Kuprin, set against the backdrop of early 20th-century Russia. The narrative explores themes of love, longing, and the tumultuous nature of human relationships through the tale of a love-struck soldier and a mysterious woman. Kuprin's lyrical prose vividly captures the emotional depth of his characters as they navigate the complexities of passion, desire, and the impact of fate. The story delves into the moral dilemmas they face, ultimately revealing the delicate balance between hope and disillusionment in the quest for genuine connection.

• Novel

								

about except his family happiness--"Hope you are well. We send kisses
and await your arrival impatiently.--SANNOCHKA, YUROCHKA." Or: "With
watch in hand we follow on the timetable the course of your train from
station to station. Our spirits and thoughts are with you." All the
telegrams were of this kind. There was even one like this: "Put your
watch to Petersburg time, and exactly at eleven o'clock look at the
star Alpha in the Great Bear. I will do the same."

There was one passenger on the train who was owner or bookkeeper, or
manager of a gold mine, a Siberian, with a face like that of Moses
the Moor,[1] dry and elongated, thick, black, stern brows, and a long,
full, greyish beard--a man who looked as if he were exceptionally
experienced in all the trials of life. He made a warning remark to the
engineer:

[1] One of the hermits of the Egyptian Desert, a saint in the Russian
Calendar.

"You know, young man, it's no use you abusing the telegraph service in
such a way."

"What do you mean? How is it no use?"

"Well, it's impossible for a woman to keep herself all the time in such
an exalted and wound-up state of mind. You ought to have mercy on other
peoples' nerves."

But the engineer only laughed and clapped the wiseacre on the knee.

"Ah, little father, I know you, you people of the Old Testament. You're
always stealing back home unexpectedly and on the quiet. 'Is everything
as it should be on the domestic hearth?' Eh?"

But the man with the ikon face only raised his eyebrows and smiled.

"Well, what of it? Sometimes there's no harm in that."

At Nizhni we had new fellow-travellers, and at Moscow new ones again.
The agitation of my engineer was still increasing. What could be done
with him? He made acquaintance with everybody; talked to married folks
of the sacredness of home, reproached bachelors for the slovenliness
and disorder of bachelor life, talked to young ladies about a single
and eternal love, conversed with mothers about their children, and
always led the conversation to talk about his Sannochka and Yurochka.
Even now I remember that his daughter used to lisp: "I have thome
yellow thlipperth," and the like. And once, when she was pulling
the cat's tail, and the cat mewed, her mother said, "Don't do that,
Yurochka, you're hurting the cat," and the child answered, "No, mother,
it liketh it."

It was all very tender, very touching, but, I'm bound to confess, a
little tiresome.

Next morning we were nearing Petersburg. It was a dull, wet, unpleasant
day. There was not exactly a fog, but a kind of dirty cloudiness
enveloped the rusty, thin-looking pines, and the wet hills looked like
hairy warts extending on both sides of the line. I got up early and
went along to the lavatory to wash; on the way I ran into the engineer,
he was standing by the window and looking alternately at his watch and
then out of the window.

"Good morning," said I. "What are you doing?"

"Oh, good morning," said he. "I'm just testing the speed of the train;
it's going about sixty versts an hour."

"You test it by your watch?"

"Yes, it's very simple. You see, there are twenty-five sazhens between
the posts--a twentieth part of a verst. Therefore, if we travel these
twenty-five sazhens in four seconds, it means we are going forty-five
versts an hour; if in three seconds, we're going sixty versts an hour;
if in two seconds, ninety. But you can reckon the speed without a watch
if you know how to count the seconds--you must count as quickly as
possible, but quite distinctly, one, two, three, four, five, six--one,
two, three, four, five, six--that's a speciality of the Austrian
General Staff."

He talked on, with fidgety movements and restless eyes, and I knew
quite well, of course, that all this talk about the counting of
the Austrian General Staff was all beside the point, just a simple
diversion of his to cheat his impatience.

It became dreadful to watch him after we had passed the station of
Luban. He looked to me paler and thinner, and, in a way, older. He even
stopped talking. He pretended to read a newspaper, but it was evident
that it was a tiresome and distasteful occupation for him; sometimes
he even held the paper upside down. He would sit still for about five
minutes, then go to the window, sit down for a while and seem as if he
were trying to push the train forward, then go again to the window and
test the speed of the train, again turning his head, first to the right
and then to the left. I know--who doesn't know?--that days and weeks of
expectation are as nothing in comparison with those last half-hours,
with the last quarter of an hour.

But at last the signal-box, the endless network of crossing rails, and
then the long wooden platform edged with a row of porters in white
aprons.... The engineer put on his coat, took his bag in his hand, and
went along the corridor to the door of the train. I was looking out of
the window to hail a porter as soon as the train stopped. I could see
the engineer very well, he had got outside the door on to the step.
He noticed me, nodded, and smiled, but it struck me, even at that
distance, how pale he was.

A tall lady in a sort of silvery bodice and a large velvet hat and blue
veil went past our carriage. A little girl in a short frock, with long,
white-gaitered legs, was with her. They were both looking for someone,
and anxiously scanning every window. But they passed him over. I heard
the engineer cry out in a strange, choking, trembling voice:

"Sannochka!"

I think they both turned round. And then, suddenly a sharp and dreadful
wail.... I shall never forget it. A cry of perplexity, terror, pain,
lamentation, like nothing else I've ever heard.

The next second I saw the engineer's head, without a cap, somewhere
between the lower part of the train and the platform. I couldn't see
his face, only his bright upstanding hair and the pinky flesh beneath,
but only for a moment, it flashed past me and was gone....

Afterwards they questioned me as a witness. I remember how I tried
to calm the wife, but what could one say in such a case? I saw him,
too--a distorted red lump of flesh. He was dead when they got him out
from under the train. I heard afterwards that his leg had been severed
first, and as he was trying instinctively to save himself, he fell
under the train, and his whole body was crushed under the wheels.

But now I'm coming to the most dreadful point of my story. In those
terrible, never-to-be-forgotten moments I had a strange consciousness
which would not leave me. "It's a stupid death," I thought, "absurd,
cruel, unjust," but why, from the very first moment that I heard his
cry, why did it seem clear to me that the thing must happen, and that
it was somehow natural and logical? Why was it? Can you explain it? Was
it not that I felt here the careless indifferent smile of my devil?
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes