The River of Life Page #4

"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

								


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The spring evening darkens quickly, and it is already night. Through
the window comes the whistling of the steamers on the Dnieper, and with
it creeps a faint smell of hay, dust, lilac and warm stone. The water
falls into the washstand, dripping regularly. There is another knock.

‘Who’s there? What the devil are you prowling about for?’ cries Anna
Friedrichovna awakened. She jumps barefoot from the bed and angrily
opens the door. ‘Well, what do you want?’

Lieutenant Tchijhevich modestly pulls the blanket over his head.

‘A student wants a room,’ Arseny says behind the door in a stage
whisper.

‘What student? Tell him there’s only one room, and that’s two roubles.
Is he alone, or with a woman?’

‘Alone.’

‘Tell him then: passport and money in advance. I know these students.’

The lieutenant dressed hurriedly. From habit he takes ten seconds over
his toilette. Anna Friedrichovna tidies the bed quickly and cleverly.
Arseny returns.

‘He’s paid in advance,’ he said gloomily. ‘And here’s the passport.’

The landlady went out into the corridor. Her hair was dishevelled and
a fringe was sticking to her forehead. The folds of the pillow were
imprinted on her crimson cheeks. Her eyes were unnaturally brilliant.
The lieutenant, under cover of her back, slipped into the landlady’s
room as noiseless as a shadow.

The student was waiting by the window on the stairs. He was already no
longer a young man. He was thin and fair-haired, and his face was long
and pale, tender and sickly. His good-natured, short-sighted blue eyes,
with the faintest shade of a squint, look out as through a mist. He
bowed politely to the landlady, at which she smiled in confusion and
fastened the top hook of her blouse.

‘I should like a room,’ he said softly, as if his courage was ebbing.
‘I have to go on from here. But I should be obliged for a candle and
pen and ink.’

He was shown the skittle-alley.

‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t want anything better. It’s wonderful
here. Just let me have a pen and ink, please.’ He did not require tea
or bed-linen.

III

The lamp was burning in the landlady’s room. Alychka sat Turkish
fashion in the open window, watching the dark heavy mass of water, lit
by electric lamps, wavering below, and the gentle motion of the scant
dead green of the poplars along the quay. Two round spots of bright red
were burning in her cheeks, and there was a moist and weary light in
her eyes. In the cooling air the petulant sound of a valse graciously
floated from far away on the other side of the river, where the lights
of the café chantant were shining.

They were drinking tea with shop bought raspberry jam. Adka and Edka
crumbled pieces of black bread into their saucers, and made a kind of
porridge. They smeared their faces, foreheads, and noses with it. They
blew bubbles in their saucers. Romka, returned with a black eye, was
hastily taking noisy sups of tea from a saucer. Lieutenant Tchijhevich
had unbuttoned his waistcoat, extruding his paper dickey, and half lay
on the sofa, perfectly happy in this domestic idyll.

‘Thank God, all the rooms are taken,’ Anna Friedrichovna sighed
dreamily.

‘You see, it’s all due to my lucky touch,’ said the lieutenant. ‘When I
came back, everything began to look up.’

‘There, tell us another.’

‘No, really, my touch is amazingly lucky. By God, it is! In the
regiment, when Captain Gorojhevsky took the bank, he always used to
make me sit beside him. My God! how those men used to play! That same
Gorojhevsky, when he was still a subaltern, at the time of the Turkish
War, won twelve thousand. Our regiment came to Bukarest. Of course, the
officers had pots of money--nothing to do with it--no women. They began
cards. Suddenly, Gorojhevsky pounced on a sharp. You could see he was
a crook by the cut of his lug. But he faked the cards so cleverly that
you couldn’t possibly get hold of him....’

‘Wait a second. I’ll be back in a moment,’ interrupted the landlady. ‘I
only want to give out a towel.’

She went out. The lieutenant stealthily came near to Alychka and bent
close to her. Her beautiful profile, dark against the background of
night, took on a subtle, tender outline of silver in the radiance of
the electric lamps.

‘What are you thinking about, Alychka--perhaps I should say, whom?’ he
asked in a sweet tremolo.

She turned away from him. But he quickly lifted the thick plait of her
hair and kissed her beneath her hair on her warm thin neck, greedily
smelling the perfume of her skin.

‘I’ll tell mother,’ whispered Alychka, without drawing away.

The door opened. It was Anna Friedrichovna returned. Immediately the
lieutenant began to talk, unnaturally loud and free.

‘Really, it would be wonderful to be on a boat with your beloved or
your dearest friend on a spring night like this.... Well, to continue,
Anna, darling. So Gorojhevsky dropped a cool six thousand, if you’ll
believe me! At last some one gave him a word of advice. He said:
“Basta--I’m not having any more of this. You won’t mind if we put a
nail through the pack to the table and tear off our cards?” The fellow
wanted to get out of it. Gorojhevsky took out his revolver: “You’ll
play, you dog, or I’ll blow a hole in your head!” There was nothing
for it. The crook sat down, so flustered that he clean forgot there
was a mirror behind him. Gorojhevsky could see every one of his cards.
So Gorojhevsky not only got his own back, but raked in a clear eleven
thousand into the bargain. He even had the nail mounted in gold, and he
wears it as a charm on his watch chain.’

IV

At the moment the student was sitting on the bed in No. 5. On the
commode before him stood a candle and a sheet of writing paper. The
student was writing quickly; then he stopped for a moment, whispered to
himself, shook his head, smiled a constrained smile and wrote again.
He had just dipped his pen deep in the ink. He spooned up the liquid
wax round the wick with it and poked the mixture into the flame. It
crackled and splashed about everywhere with little blue darting flames.
The firework reminded the student of something funny, dimly remembered
from his distant childhood. He looked at the flame of the candle, his
eyes narrowed, and a sad, distracted smile formed upon his lips. Then
suddenly as though awakened he shook his head, sighed, wiped his pen on
the sleeve of his blue blouse, and continued to write:

‘Tell them everything in my letter, which you will believe, I know.
They will not understand me all the same; but you will have simple
words that will be intelligible to them. One thing is very strange.
Here am I writing to you, yet I know that in ten or fifteen minutes
I shall shoot myself--and the thought does not frighten me at all.
But when that huge grey colonel of the gendarmes went red all over
and stamped his feet and swore, I was quite lost. When he cried that
my obstinacy was useless, and only ruined my comrades and myself,
that Bieloussov as well as Knigge and Soloveitchik had confessed,
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