The Gentleman From San Francisco and Other Stories by Ivan Bunin

Author:Ivan Bunin [Bunin, Ivan]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Classics, Fiction
ISBN: 9780140185522
Google: 9ZzVwOVsESoC
Amazon: 0140185526
Barnesnoble: 0140185526
Goodreads: 252127
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1984-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

VIII

His life in the country began with peaceful, enchanting days.

That night, as they drove home from the station, Katya’s image had apparently faded and dissolved in the surrounding world. But no, it only seemed so and continued to seem so for a few days longer while he caught up on sleep, recovered his balance, and adjusted to the newness of the impressions, familiar to him since childhood, of his home, the village, springtime in the country, and the vernal bareness and emptiness of the world, pure and young again in its readiness to blossom forth anew.

The estate was small, the house was old and plain, and the uncomplicated farm work did not call for a large staff. A quiet time began for Mitya. His sister Anya, a second-former at grammar school, and his brother Kostya, a young cadet, were not expected home from Oryol before the beginning of June when their summer holidays started. Mitya’s mother, Olga Petrovna, was as always busy with the estate on which her only assistant was the steward (or bailiff, as the servants called him); she was often out in the fields and went to bed as soon as it got dark.

When the next day, having slept for twelve hours, Mitya washed, changed into clean clothes, came out of his sunny room – its windows faced east, over the garden – and walked through all the other rooms, he was suddenly struck by their comforting familiarity and a peaceful simplicity which soothed both soul and body. Everything stood where it had for many years and had the same familiar and pleasant smell. The rooms had been tidied for his homecoming, and all the floors had been scrubbed, though they hadn’t quite finished the large dining-room which adjoined the front hall, or servants’ hall, as they still called it. A freckled wench, hired from the village, stood on the window-sill next to the door that opened onto the veranda and was stretching upwards to reach the topmost pane which she polished with a swishing sound, while her reflection showed in the bottom panes, bluish and remote. Parasha, the housemaid, who had just taken a large washrag out of a pail of hot water, was walking white-legged and barefoot across the wet floor, balancing on her small heels. Pausing to wipe the sweat off her flushed face with the crook of her bare arm, she said to Mitya with a free and easy patter:

‘Go and get breakfast, your Mama left for the station with the bailiff before light; you didn’t even hear ’em, I’ll be bound.’

And instantly Katya forced her way into his mind. Mitya caught himself lusting after that bare, feminine arm, after the feminine curve of the body stretching upwards to the top window pane, after her skirt and the sturdy, bare legs emerging from it like pillars, and he joyfully acknowledged Katya’s power over him and his belonging to her, and felt her unseen presence in all his impressions of that morning.

And this presence

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