The Duel by Alexander Kuprin

Author:Alexander Kuprin [Kuprin, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-61219-071-6
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2011-08-15T16:00:00+00:00

XVII

From that night on, a crack began to form in the depths of Romashov’s heart. He avoided the company of the other officers, ate most of his meals in his room, never went out dancing at night, and stopped drinking. He was maturing, somewhat; he himself noticed that he’d been acting older and more serious over the last few days, and that he displayed a sadder and more imperturbable calm in his dealings with other people. Often, the realization of this brought to mind an idea that he’d read about somehwere (and that he’d found funny at the time): namely, that a man’s life was divided up into “lusters,” each of which consisted of seven years, and that over the course of a single of these lusters one’s blood, body, thoughts, feelings, and character all changed completely. And here Romashov had just recently come to the end of his twenty-first year.

The soldier Khlebnikov did come and see him, but only after Romashov reminded him. After that he began to visit more and more often.

The first time he came he had the same look about him, of a naked, mangy, much-beaten dog that shied timidly from any hand that reached out to pet him. But little by little, the attention and kindness that the officer showed him warmed and emboldened his heart. In a fit of remorseful and cringing fellow-feeling, he confessed his entire life story to Romashov. His family consisted of a mother, a drunken father, their half-idiotic son, and four young daughters. What land they owned had been unfairly seized by the village commune; now they lived crammed together in a state-owned hut, designated to them by that very same commune. The parents worked in strangers’ houses, while the children begged. Khlebnikov received no money from home; his general frailness meant that he was never allotted any voluntary work either. Without at least a little money a soldier’s life is hard: he had no tea or sugar and could not afford to buy soap, let alone treat the plattoon commander and squad commander to a sip of vodka at the buffet. His entire salary—twenty-two and a half kopeks a week—went to this kind of little favor to his commanding officers. They beat him daily, mocked him, insulted him, and gave him the hardest and most unpleasant jobs available, whether it was his turn to do them or not.

Romashov realized, to his surprise, and with a feeling of anguish and horror, that the narrow course of his day brought him into contact with hundreds of these gray Khlebnikovs, each of whom sufferend his own pains and rejoiced over his own pleasure, but all of which had been homogenized and degraded by their slavery, the indifference of their commanding officers, and the arbitrary punishments that they had to endure. And the most horrible part of all was that none of the officers—including Romashov himself, until now at least—had any idea that this gray mass, with its thoughtless, unceasingly obedient faces, was

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