Аннотация: Перевод замечательного рассказа И.В.Зорина
The quarrel leapt up because of the trump six. Seraphim Gertzyk covered with it the ace and the knife of Varlaam Nevoda snatched out from the top of his boot nailed the cards down to the table. The blade went between the staff-captains fingers but they didn't stir.
"Something wrong?" he asked nonchalantly.
"Sharper" - Varlaam wheezed blushing. His eyes became bloodshot he was drunk. He raked in the banknotes with the cupped hands.
It happened in the Crimean muddle when the White Guard rushed back to the sea and carried away swindlers, smoked by south sun smugglers, young ladies from St Petersburg, students of the provincial universities, husbands, that have been kissing their wives on the photo only for years and wives which became widows with every bursting shell.
The inn was congested with quick glances and swift hands and nobody paid attention to the officers. A million of similar quarrels leapt up here before that, a million - after. A goggle-eyed organ-grinder with a carnation behind his ear all of a sudden stroke up with anguish: "And the soul fled away through the hole that made the blade..." Two stooped Moldavians strummed on the guitars like madmen in the corner. A wan and emaciated Jew every now and then would leave the piano and run to the lavatory to take a snuff of cocaine from the hand mirror. The Red cavalry swept everything away behind the Sivash rampart.
They met an hour ago. And as it often happens among refugees, Varlaam in no time had told out all: of the arrests in Ekaterinodar, shootings of the "extraordinary committee", of the gun carts mowing down his Cossack squadron. And of the fiancee that ran away to Paris and that they had arranged to meet at "The Maxim's".
Staff-captain was nodding. "And I've got no one, - he expectorated the blood to the handkerchief - Save perhaps this..." He smiled wryly and smoothed out St.Georgian Cross on his soldiers blouse.
"Consumption" - Varlaam thought indifferently. He had seen a lot of such in the trenches of the German war. Being a rubicund, blooming with health he got a nickname "Big esaul*" from his soldiers for he bend the coins and stopped the horse by the bridle when it was galloping past.
A game sprang up, they played for small stakes, mainly to seek the oblivion, staked the money, that in an instant changed to banknotes. Staff-captain was in a desperate luck. Kings and queens came to him but he scarcely gave them a wandering look, covered the cards not to the point but all the same won. His thoughts were far away, in time to them he tapped the wood with the nail, as if a pecking hen. Sometimes he rose and sat down again for no reason pouring on Varlaam an insane biting laugher.
When esaul insulted Gertzyk he balled his hands into the fists expecting the slap in the face. But staff-captain turned to the window as if he was following the thoughts with the eyes. It was drizzling outdoors, flabby paunchy coachman had lounged on the dickey, bored he was flogging the dogs, that barked the horse while the red father of a family laded with the pudgy trunks the tarantass with a crooked and dusty hood.
"I hope we will not tussle as rustics, - staff-captain finally muttered with a cold
grin and gave a cough of blood. - Besides you have an advantage..." Varlaam unclenched his fists.
"It is crowded here and damp outside... - Seraphim Gertzyk chilly flinched his shoulders. - I'm not quite healthy..."
"Chickened out" - Varlaam thought.
Instead of the answer staff-captain put on his service cap, took out of holster the six-shooter, rolled five bullets out on the cards, twirled the drum and leant to the temple. The hollow click rang out. "It's your turn" - stretching out the handle he licked his thin lips.
Nearby the cadets unfamiliar with the smell of powder in the overcoats grey with dust were bawled and squalled with their elbows wide separated, drank the health of the killed tsar, boyishly trying to outvoice each other, and hurled the wineglasses down the floor, the splinters flew at the pauper old man that was warming his heels resting against the dog curled up in a ball.
Varlaam screwed up his eyes and dreamily pulled the trigger. "I was the first one to start" - Varlaam hardly catched his breath when he heard, - hope, you are a man of honour and will give equal chances in all cases..."
Seraphim Gertzyk without a twinkle stared at Varlaam's bridge holding the pistol with a cock upward.
Thus with his eyes opened he met the death - the crashed shot blew off half of his skull.
For an instant a silence fell, women gave a squeal but next the music began playing louder and all as if mad threw themselves into a dance in order not to see how the waiters bustled brushing off the blood of the one, that had been Seraphim Gertzyk a minute ago.
Towards evening the Red were in five verstas* and the soldiers hastily saddled the horses, digged the spurs and didn't spare the lashes. The burial service is never read over the felones-de-se - right after the pierced service cap the river carried the body with the St.Georgian Cross.
The funeral of Seraphym Gerzyk was attended by the green gadfly and the faded carnation, the one that goggle-eyed organ-grinder took out of his ear and threw after.
Esaul didn't keep his word. The fear settled down in him as a worm-hole. He went to church and made a confession in Sevastopol. "So many troubles around, - the parson sighed - and you..."
"To hell with it! - the cavalry captain - (a friend of his with whom he brought a German prisoner for interrogation) gave an advise - "if its intolerable then fire off yourself and put out of your head..." Varlaam summoned up his courage, promised not to postpone, drank with the captain "Bruderschaft", but at heart was quite shure that the dead man will drag him, that if he will keep the word he will certainly shoot himself.
"You see, "- he was complaining to the valet through the tipsy sobs "the dead will kill the alive - is it fair?"
And in the nights he saw the coffin. Bloody staff-captain rose from it and called for the debt. And now as before he would cough dreadfully and smile wryly.
"You searched for the death" renounced Varlaam in his sleep "you knew that you wouldn't get to Constanza" And sometimes he would kneel: "In Christ's name remit the debt, what you need it for? I have to repay mine to my fiancee, she isn't privy..." But staff-captain was inexorable. After awakening Varlaam felt shameful, he would put on the uniform and scratch his head for a while, then throw it back making thick gathers and load the pistol. And each time he would set it aside unable to overcome himself, and again he saw the woman under the veil which passes away her evenings in the restaurant "At Maxim", she keeps looking on the door, bearing the platitudes and sticky glances. Varlaam suspected that staff-captain had put the evil eye on him when he recalled the swarthy features of the latter. Varlaam gilded the hands of the gipsy, thay would take away the bedevil by rolling the egg in the saucer and burning the odorous herbs on the candle. But neither sorcery nor incantation did help.
The steamer frothed the water, moving over the rising waves, Varlaam lolled about the bunk for days on end suffering the sea-sickness. When he would go out on the dec he would take a view of the horizon with his blear eyes that now looked grey.
"Well, I like that - found out a splinter" weak-sighted and pitted valet groaned while polishing the boots, - "in short - gentlemen"
They would philosophize in the mess-room "We have to be proud of the existance itself, for all that we are men, not some animals" - the shipmaster delved on his plate. He was dressed spick-and-span and had no moustache. "A horse for example, I dare say, doesn't even know that she exists. Serve up her with the oats and a wanton stallion... We waste our life for nothing, as if throw off a shirt having a drop in the cheap tavern..." Ladies examined his ironed snow-white tunic with interest, men kept gloomy silence. "We are in debt to the Most High after all..." - he was getting more excited and
looked around with his young cornflower blue eyes.
"Or, stop it" - the cavalry captain (an acquaintance of Varlaam) wouldn't contain finelly, - "what a debt - dung louses" After a pause he waved his hand despairingly "Everything is a matter of luck in life. There was Russia, the oath, forevermore- we thought and then killed brothers, and there is nothing but foreign country ahead..."
"That's right" - Varlaam reassured himself (there was a lump in his throat) - "if I wouldn't met him that day..." And he saw the bonnet with ostrich feathers again and decided to pull himself together and sail so far without fail.
The sky was hanging low and terrifying. Astern short-tailed loud seagulls snatched tattered fishes. The world seemed to be raptorial and merciless.
"A man is sly - the ship priest entered the conversation tucking up the cassock and touching the breastcross - says one thing, thinks about the other, does something third. We sin with our word, with our thought, with our deed, and have not a stiver of repentance.
The gloaming was deepening, the sea showed black uneasily and frightfully, rolling the steep billows amuck. And everybody felt the abyss that was deeper than water, lower than the bottom.
Didn't I lie much? - esaul thought - Otherwise you can't survive. He stood stiffen in front of the pier-glass showing off the palms that seemed to be even ore huge in the glass - is there really the first blood on them? "Hope, you are a man of honour" - and to slaughter the sleepy men at dawn, and to sabre the captives, their honour the Cossacks rush to action drunk - mere butchers... What did he fancy that deceased?
Weary he would drop to his bed, the clinking silence wrapped him more and more, but in his sleep he would gnash and whistle shrill. Being frightened with his own screams, he would half asleep spring up and call his valet with the spotted face like a bird's egg.
Among the servants there were many Greeks and Turks that grew up on the starboard and larboard of their fishing launches. With tanned skin, they got used to the sea wind and archly looked askance at the Russians when at the draw of a slightest gust they fastened thair brass buttons with double-headed eagle. And Varlaam would dash aside recognizing the staff-captain in this or that servant. Stubble appeared on his hollow cheeks, it marked harshly the protruding cheek-bones, sharp nose and withered lack-lustre eyes.
"I say - the word" - he vindicated himself - "the truth lives only a split second in it and dyes out with the sound... Everyone is surrounded with the words as the bee-keeper with the bees. One must live as if there were no this absurd duel".
In three miles of Constanza Varlaam Nevoda shot himself. His cabin was neat, the goblets were wiped dry, there were no bullets in the six-shooter.
"You'll never understand these Russians" - grumbled the steward, throwing over the board the body heavy with the death.
"They don't like life", - nodded the Greek that helped him.