The Last Word

"The Last Word" by Aleksandr Kuprin is a poignant novella that explores themes of love, loss, and the human experience. Set in the backdrop of early 20th-century Russia, the story revolves around a young soldier who finds himself torn between his duties and his deep emotional connection to a woman he loves. As he grapples with the realities of war and the fleeting nature of life, Kuprin delivers a profound meditation on the impact of choice and the inevitable passage of time. The narrative is rich with Kuprin’s characteristic lyrical prose, highlighting the beauty and tragedy of human relationships.

• Novel

								
Yes, gentlemen, I killed him!

In vain do you try to obtain for me a medical certificate of temporary
aberration. I shall not take advantage of it.

I killed him soberly, conscientiously, coldly, without the least
regret, fear or hesitation. Were it in your power to resurrect him, I
would repeat my crime.

He followed me always and everywhere. He took a thousand human shapes,
and did not shrink--shameless creature--to dress in women's clothes
upon occasion. He took the guise of my relative, my dear friend,
colleague, good acquaintance. He could dress to look any age except
that of a child (as a child he only failed and looked ridiculous). He
has filled up my life with himself, and poisoned it.

What has been most dreadful was that I have always foreseen in advance
all his words, gestures and actions.

When I met him he would drawl, crushing my hand in his:

"Aha! Whom--do--I--see? Dear me! You must be getting on in years now.
How's your health?"

Then he would answer as for himself, though I had not asked him
anything:

"Thank you. So so. Nothing to boast of. Have you read in to-day's
paper...?"

If he by any chance noticed that I had a flushed cheek, flushed by the
vexation of having met him, he would be sure to croak:

"Eh, neighbour, how red you're getting."

He would come to me just at those moments when I was up to the neck in
work, would sit down and say:

"Ah! I'm afraid I've interrupted you."

For two hours he would bore me to death, prattling of himself and his
children. He would see I was tearing my hair and biting my lips till
the blood came, and would simply delight in my torments.

Having poisoned my working mood for a whole month in advance, he would
stand, yawn a little, and then murmur:

"Lord knows why I stay here talking. I've got lots to do."

When I met him in a railway carriage he always began:

"Permit me to ask, are you going far?" And then:

"On business or ...?"

"Where do you work?"

"Married?"

Oh, well do I know all his ways. Closing my eyes I see him. He strikes
me on the shoulder, on the back, on the knees. He gesticulates so
closely to my eyes and nose that I wince, as if about to be struck.
Catching hold of the lappet of my coat, he draws himself up to me and
breathes in my face. When he visits me he allows his foot to tremble on
the floor Under the table, so that the shade of the lamp tinkles. At
an "at home" he thrums on the back of my chair with his fingers, and
in pauses of the conversation drawls, "y-e-s, y-es." At cards he calls
out, knocks on the table and quacks as he loses: "What's that? What?
What?"

Start him in an argument, and he always begins by:

"Eh, neighbour, it's humbug you're talking."

"Why humbug?" you ask timidly.

"Because it is nonsense."

What evil have I done to this man? I don't know. He set himself to
spoil my existence, and he spoiled it. Thanks to him, I now feel a
great aversion from the sea, the moon, the air, poetry, painting, music.

"Tolstoy"--he bawled orally, and in print--"made his estate over to his
wife, and he himself.... Compared with Turgenief, he.... He sewed his
own jack-boots ... great writer of the Russian earth.... Hurrah!...

"Pushkin? He created the language, didn't he? Do you remember 'Calm was
the Ukraine night, clear was the sky'? You remember what they did to
the woman in the third act. Hsh! There are no ladies present, do you
remember?

    "'In our little boat we go,
    Under the little boat the water.'

"Dostoevsky ... have you read how he went one night to Turgenief to
confess ... Gogol, do you know the sort of disease he had?"

Should I go to a picture gallery, and stand before some quiet evening
landscape, he would be sure to be on my heels, pushing me forward, and
saying to a girl on his arm:

"Very sweetly drawn ... distance ... atmosphere ... the moon to
the life.... Do you remember Nina--the coloured supplement of the
Neva[1]--it was something like it...."

[1] A popular Russian journal.

I sit at the opera listening to "Carmen." He is there, as everywhere.
He is behind me, and has his feet on the lower bar of my fauteuil.
He hums the tune of the duet in the last act, and through his feet
communicates to my nerves every movement of his body. Then, in the
entr'act, I hear him speaking in a voice pitched high enough for me to
hear:

"Wonderful gramophone records the Zadodadofs have. Shalapin absolutely.
You couldn't tell the difference."

Yes, it was he or someone like him who invented the barrel organ, the
gramophone, the bioscope, the photophone, the biograph, the phonograph,
the pathephone, the musical box, the pianino, the motor car, paper
collars, oleographs, and newspapers.

There's no getting away from him. I flee away at night to the wild
seashore, and lie down in solitude upon a cliff, but he steals after me
in the shadow, and suddenly the silencers broken by a self-satisfied
voice which says:

"What a lovely night, Katenka, isn't it? The clouds, eh, look at them!
Just as in a picture. And if a painter painted them just like it, who
would say it was true to Nature?"

He has killed the best minutes of my life--minutes of love, the dear
sweet nights of youth. How often, when I have wandered arm in arm with
the most beauteous creation of Nature, along an avenue where, upon
the ground, the silver moonlight was in pattern with the shadows of
the trees, and he has suddenly and unexpectedly spoken up to me in a
woman's voice, has rested his head on my shoulder and cried out in a
theatrical tone:

"Tell me, do you love to dream by moonlight?"

Or:

"Tell me, do you love Nature? As for me, I madly adore Nature."

He was many shaped and many faced, my persecutor, but was always the
same underneath. He took upon occasion the guise of professor, doctor,
engineer, lady doctor, advocate, girl-student, author, wife of the
excise inspector, official, passenger, customer, guest, stranger,
spectator, reader, neighbour at a country house. In early youth I had
the stupidity to think that these were all separate people. But they
were all one and the same. Bitter experience has at last discovered to
me his name. It is--the Russian intelligent.

If he has at any time missed me personally, he has left everywhere his
traces, his visiting cards. On the heights of Barchau and Machuka I
have found his orange peelings, sardine tins, and chocolate wrappings.
On the rocks of Aloopka, on the top of the belfry of St. John, on the
granites of Imatra, on the walls of Bakhchisari, in the grotto of
Lermontof, I have found the following signatures and remarks:--

"Pusia and Kuziki 1908 year 27 February."

"Ivanof."

"A. M. Plokhokhostof (Bad-tail) from Saratof."

"Ivanof."

"Pechora girl."

"Ivanof."

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