The River of Life Page #2

"The River of Life" by Aleksandr Kuprin is a poignant novella that explores themes of love, nature, and the human spirit. Set against the backdrop of the Russian landscape, the story follows the lives of fishermen and their interactions with the river that nourishes and sustains them. Kuprin skillfully weaves a narrative filled with rich imagery and deep philosophical reflections, addressing the struggle between personal desires and the relentless forces of nature. Through its vivid portrayal of the characters' lives and their connection to the river, the novella invites readers to contemplate the beauty and transience of existence.

• Novel

								


‘You fill your belly with our farthings,’ squalled the schoolboy Romka,
making faces at him from behind his mother’s skirt.

‘You fill your belly!’ Adka and Edka accompanied from a distance.

Arseny the porter, in stony silence, pressed his chest against the
lieutenant. From room No. 9, the valiant possessor of a magnificently
parted black beard leaned out to his waist in his underclothes, with a
round hat for some reason perched on his head, and resolutely gave his
advice:

‘Arseny, give him one between the eyes.’

Thus the lieutenant was driven to the stairs; but there was a broad
window opening on to these very stairs from the corridor. Anna
Friedrichovna hung out of it and still went on shouting after the
lieutenant:

‘You dirty beast ... you murderer ... scoundrel ... Kiev
gutter-sweeping!’

‘Gutter-sweeping!’ ‘Gutter-sweeping!’ the brats in the corridor
strained their voices, shouting.

‘Don’t come eating here any more! Take your filthy things away with
you. Take them. Take them!’

The things the lieutenant had left upstairs in his haste descended on
him: a stick, his paper collar, and his notebook. The lieutenant halted
on the bottom stair, raised his head, and brandished his fist. His face
was pale, a bruise showed red beneath his left eye.

‘You just wait, you scum. I tell everything in the proper quarter. Ah!
ah.... They’re a lot of pimps, robbing the lodgers!’

‘You just sling your hook while you’ve got a whole skin,’ said Arseny
sternly, pressing on the lieutenant from behind and pushing him with
his shoulder.

‘Get away, you swine! You’ve not the right to lay a finger on an
officer,’ the lieutenant proudly exclaimed. ‘I know about everything!
You let people in here without passports! You receive--you receive
stolen goods.... You keep a broth----’

At this point Arseny seized the lieutenant adroitly from behind. The
door slammed with a shattering noise. The two men rolled out into the
street together like a ball, and thence came an angry: ‘Brothel!’

This morning, as it had always happened before, Lieutenant Tchijhevich
came back penitent, with a bouquet of lilac torn out of somebody’s
garden. His face was weary. A dim blue surrounded his hollow eyes. His
forehead was yellow, his clothes unbrushed, and there were feathers in
his hair. The reconciliation goes slowly. Anna Friedrichovna hasn’t
yet had her fill of her lover’s submissive look and repentant words.
Besides, she is a little jealous of the three nights her Valerian has
passed, she knows not where.

‘Anna, darling, ... where ...’ the lieutenant began in an
extraordinarily meek and tender falsetto, slightly tremulous even.

‘Wha-at! Who’s Anna darling, I’d like to know,’ the landlady
contemptuously cut him short. ‘I’m not Anna darling to any scum of a
road sweeper!’

‘But I only wanted to ask what address I was to write for “Praskovia
Uvertiesheva, 34 years old,” there’s nothing written down here.’

‘Put her down at the Rag-market, and put yourself there, too. You’re a
pretty pair. Or put yourself in a doss-house.’

‘Dirty beast,’ thinks the lieutenant, but he only gives a deep,
submissive sigh. ‘You’re very nervous to-day, Anna, darling!’

‘Nervous! Whatever I am, I know I’m an honest, hard-working woman....
Get out of the way, you bastards,’ she shouts at the children, and
suddenly, ‘Shlop, shlop’--two well-aimed smacks with the spoon come
down on Adka’s and Edka’s foreheads. The boys begin to snivel.

‘There’s a curse on my business, and on me,’ the landlady growls
angrily. ‘When I lived with my husband I never had any sorrows. Now,
all the porters are drunkards, and all the maids are thieves. Sh! you
cursed brats!... That Proska ... she hasn’t been here two days when she
steals the stockings from the girl in No. 12. Other people go off to
pubs with other people’s money, and never do a stroke....’

The lieutenant knew perfectly who Anna Friedrichovna was speaking
about, but he maintained a concentrated silence. The smell of the
bigoss inspired him with some faint hopes. Then the door opened and
Arseny the porter entered without taking off his hat with the three
gold braids. He looks like an Albino eunuch, and his dirty face is
pitted. This is at least the fortieth time he has had this place with
Anna Friedrichovna. He keeps it until the first fit of drinking, when
the landlady herself beats him and puts him into the streets, first
having taken away the symbol of his authority, his three-braided cap.

Then Arseny puts a white Caucasian fur hat on his head and a dark blue
pince-nez on his nose, and swaggers in the public-house opposite until
he’s drunk everything on him away, and at the end of his spree he will
cry on the bosom of the indifferent waiter about his hopeless love for
Friedrich and threaten to murder Lieutenant Tchijhevich. When he sobers
down he comes to the ‘Serbia’ and falls at his landlady’s feet. And
she takes him back again, because the porter who succeeded Arseny had
already managed in this short time to steal from her, to get drunk, to
make a row and be taken off to the police station.

‘You ... have you come from the steamer?’ Anna Friedrichovna asked.

‘Yes. I’ve brought half a dozen pilgrims. It was a job to get ’em away
from Jacob--the “Commercial.” He was just leading them off, when I
comes up to him and says, “It’s all the same to me, I says, go wherever
you like. But as there are people who don’t know these places, and I’m
very sorry for you, I tell you straight you’d better not go with that
man. In their hotel last week they put some powder in a pilgrim’s food
and robbed him.” So I got them away. Afterwards Jacob shook his fist at
me in the distance, and called out: “You just wait, Arseny. I’ll get
you. You won’t get away from me!” But when that happens, I’ll do it
myself....’

‘All right,’ the landlady interrupted. ‘I don’t care twopence about
your Jacob. What price did you fix?’

‘Thirty kopeks. I did my best, but I couldn’t make them give more.’

‘You fool. You can’t do anything.... Give them No. 2.’

‘All in the one room?’

‘You fool. Two rooms, each.... Of course, all in one room. Bring three
mattresses from the old ones, and tell them that they’re not to lie on
the sofa. These pilgrims have always got bugs. Get along!’

When he had gone the lieutenant said in a tender and solicitous
undertone: ‘Anna, darling, I wonder why you allow him to enter the
room in his hat. It is disrespectful to you, both as a lady and
proprietress. And then--consider my position. I’m an officer in
Reserve, and he is a private. It’s rather awkward.’

But Anna Friedrichovna leapt upon him in fresh exasperation: ‘Don’t you
poke your nose in where it’s not wanted. Of-ficer indeed! There are
plenty of officers like you spending the night in a shelter. Arseny’s
a working man. He earns his bread ... not like.... Get away, you lazy
brats, take your hands away!’

‘Ye-es, but give us something to eat,’ roars Adka.

‘Give us something to eat....’

Meanwhile the bigoss is ready. Anna Friedrichovna clatters the dishes
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