The Gentleman from San Francisco, and Other StoriesBunin, Ivan Alekseevich
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The Gentleman from San Francisco, and Other Stories
Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich
Bunin, Ivan Alekseevich, 1870-1953 -- Translations into English; Soviet Union -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
About ten o'clock he was back again in the hotel. All his overcoat smelt
of the spring air. After coming out of the church, he had seen, near the
porch, the car lined with white satin, and its window reflecting the
sunset, and behind the window there flashed on him for the last time the
face of her who was being carried away from him for ever. After that he
had wandered about in little streets, and had come out on the Novensky
Boulevard.... Now slowly and with trembling hands he took off his
overcoat, put on the table a paper bag containing two green cucumbers
which for some reason he had bought at a hawker's stall. They too smelt
of spring even through the paper, and spring-like through the upper pane
of the window the April moon shone silvery high up in the not yet
darkened sky. Kasimir Stanislavovitch lit a candle, sadly illuminating
his empty, casual home, and sat down on the sofa, feeling on his face
the freshness of evening.... Thus he sat for a long time. He did not
ring the bell, gave no orders, locked himself in--all this seemed
suspicious to the porter who had seen him enter his room with his
shuffling feet and taking the key out of the door in order to lock
himself in from the inside. Several times the porter stole up on tiptoe
to the door and looked through the key-hole: Kasimir Stanislavovitch was
sitting on the sofa, trembling and wiping his face with a handkerchief,
and weeping so bitterly, so copiously that the brown dye came off, and
was smeared over his face.
At night he tore the cord off the blind, and, seeing nothing through his
tears, began to fasten it to the hook of the clothes-peg. But the
guttering candle flickered and the paper bag, and terrible dark waves
swam and flickered over the locked room: he was old, weak--and he
himself was well aware of it.... No, it was not in his power to die by
his own hand!
In the morning he started for the railway station about three hours
before the train left. At the station he quietly walked about among the
passengers, with his eyes on the ground and tear-stained; and he would
stop unexpectedly now before one and now before another, and in a low
voice, evenly but without expression, he would say rather quickly:
"For God's sake ... I am in a desperate position.... My fare to
Briansk.... If only a few copecks...."
And some passengers, trying not to look at his top-hat, at the worn
velvet collar of his overcoat, at the dreadful face with the faded
violet whiskers, hurriedly, and with confusion, gave him something.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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