The River of Life Page #6

"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

								

difficult, no, quite impossible for men like me to live.

‘Yes, my darling, I have heard, seen, and read much in the last year.
I tell you there came a moment of awful volcanic eruption. The flame
of long pent-up anger broke out and overwhelmed everything: fear of
the morrow, respect for parents, love of life, peaceful joys of family
happiness. I know of boys, hardly more than children, who refused to
have a bandage on their eyes when they were executed. I myself saw
people who underwent tortures, yet uttered not a word. It was all born
suddenly, in a tempestuous wind. Eagles awoke out of turkey eggs. Let
who will arrest their flight!

‘I am quite certain that a sixth-form boy of to-day would proclaim
the demands of his party, firmly, intelligently, perhaps with a touch
of arrogance, in the presence of all the crowned heads and all the
chiefs of police in Europe, in any throne room. It is true the precious
schoolboy is very nearly ridiculous, but a sacred respect for his proud
free self is already growing up within him, a respect for everything
that has been corroded in us by spiritual poverty and anxious paternal
morality. We must go to the devil.

‘It is just eight minutes to nine. At nine exactly it will be all over
with me. A dog barks outside--one, two--then is silent for a little
and--one, two, three. Perhaps, when my consciousness has been put
out, and with it everything has disappeared from me for ever: towns,
public squares, hooting steamers, mornings and nights, apartment
rooms, ticking clocks, people, animals, the air the light and dark,
time and space, and there is nothing--then there will be no thought of
this “nothing”! Perhaps the dog will go on barking for a long while
to-night, first twice, then three times....

‘Five minutes to nine. A funny idea is occupying me. I think that a
human thought is like a current from some electric centre, an intense,
radiating vibration of the imponderable ether, poured out in the
spaces of the world, and passing with equal ease through the atoms
of stone, iron, and air. A thought springs from my brain and all the
sphere of the universe begins to tremble, to ripple round me like
water into which a stone is flung, like a sound about a vibrating
string. And I think that when a man passes away his consciousness is
put out, but his thought still remains, trembling in its former place.
Perhaps the thoughts and dreams of all the people who were before me
in this long, gloomy room are still hovering round me, directing my
will in secret; and perhaps to-morrow a casual tenant of this room
will suddenly begin to think of life, of death, and suicide, because I
leave my thoughts behind me here. And who can say whether my thoughts,
independent of weight and time and the obstacles of matter, are not at
the same moment being caught by mysterious, delicate, but unconscious
receivers in the brain of an inhabitant of Mars as well as in the brain
of the dog who barks outside? Ah, I think that nothing in the world
vanishes utterly--nothing--not only what is said, but what is thought.
All our deeds and words and thoughts are little streams, trickling
springs underground. I believe, I see, they meet, flow together into
river-heads, ooze to the surface, run into rivulets, and now they rush
in the wild, broad stream of the harmonious River of Life. The River
of Life--how great it is! Sooner or later it will bear everything
away, and wash down all the strongholds which imprisoned the freedom
of the spirit. Where a shoal of triviality was before, there will be
the profoundest depth of heroism. In a moment it will bear me away to
a cold, remote, and inconceivable land, and perhaps within a year it
will pour in torrents over all this mighty town and flood it and carry
away in its waters not merely its ruins, but its very name.

‘Perhaps what I am writing is all ridiculous. I have two minutes left.
The candle is burning and the clock ticking hurriedly in front of me.
The dog is still barking. What if there remain nothing of me--nothing
of me, or in me, but one thing only, the last sensation, perhaps pain,
perhaps the sound of the pistol, perhaps wild naked terror; but it
will remain for ever, for thousands of millions of centuries, in the
millionth degree.

‘The hand has reached the hour. We’ll know it all now. No, wait.
Some ridiculous modesty made me get up and lock the door. Good-bye.
One word more. Surely the obscure soul of the dog must be far more
susceptible to the vibrations of thought than the human.... Do they not
bark because they feel the presence of a dead man? This dog that barks
downstairs too. But in a second, new monstrous currents will rush out
of the central battery of my brain and touch the poor brain of the dog.
It will begin to howl with a queer, intolerable terror.... Good-bye,
I’m going!’

The student sealed the letter--for some reason he carefully closed the
ink-pot with a cork--and took a Browning out of his jacket pocket. He
turned the safety catch from sur to feu. He put his legs apart so
that he could stand firm, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, with both
hands he swiftly raised the revolver to his right temple and pulled the
trigger.

‘What’s that?’ Anna Friedrichovna asked in alarm.

‘That’s your student shooting himself,’ the lieutenant said carelessly.
‘They’re such canaille--these students....’

But Anna Friedrichovna jumped up and ran into the corridor, the
lieutenant following at his leisure. From room No. 5 came a sour smell
of gas and smokeless powder. They looked through the keyhole. The
student lay on the floor.

Within five minutes there was a thick, black, eager crowd standing
in the street outside the hotel. In exasperation Arseny drove the
outsiders away from the stairs. Commotion was everywhere in the hotel.
A locksmith broke open the door of the room. The caretaker ran for
the police; the chambermaid for the doctor. After some time appeared
the police inspector, a tall thin young man with white hair, white
eyelashes, and a white moustache. He was in uniform. His wide trousers
were so full that they fell half way down over his polished jack-boots.
Immediately he pressed his way through the public, and roared with the
voice of authority, sticking out his bright eyes:

‘Get back! Clear off! I can’t understand what it is you find so curious
here. Nothing at all. You, sir!... I ask you once more. And he looks
like an intellectual, in a bowler hat.... What’s that? I’ll show you
“police tyranny.” Mikhailtchuk, just take note of that man! Hi, where
are you crawling to, boy? I’ll----’

The door was broken open. Into the room burst Anna Friedrichovna, the
police inspector, the lieutenant, the four children; for witnesses, one
policeman and two caretakers; and after them, the doctor. The student
lay on the floor, with his face buried in the strip of grey carpet
by the bed. His left arm was bent beneath his chest, his right flung
out. The pistol lay on one side. Under his head was a pool of dark
blood, and a little round hole in his left temple. The candle was still
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