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1、【英文读物】The River of Life and Other StoriesINTRODUCTORY NOTEAlexander Kuprin was born in 1870. He attended the Cadet School and the Military College at Moscow, and entered the Russian Army as a lieutenant in 1890. Seven years later he resigned his commission to devote himself to literature.He achieved
2、 fame by a novel, The Duel, in which he described with a ruthless realism the army life in a garrison town upon the Western Frontier. The book, which in reality falls into line with the rest of his work as a severely objective presentation of a life which he has found vivid and rich, was, fortunatel
3、y for his success, interpreted as an indictment of the Russian Army and the ill-starred Manchurian campaign. He was accepted by the propagandists as one of themselves, and though he protested vigorously against his unsought reputation, his position was thenceforward assured.But the interest of Kupri
4、ns talent is independent of the accidents of his material. He is an artist who has found life wide and rich and inexhaustible. He has been fascinated by thevi reality itself rather than by the problems with which it confronts a differently sensitive mind. Therefore he has not held himself aloof, but
5、 plunged into the riotous waters of the River of Life. He has swum with the stream and battled against it as the mood turned in him; and he has emerged with stories of the joy he has found in his own eager acceptance. Thus Kuprin is alive as none of his contemporaries is alive, and his stories are s
6、tories told for the delight of the telling and of the tale. They may not be profound with the secrets of the universe; but they are, within their compass, shaped by the perfect art of one to whom the telling of a story of life is an exercise of his whole being in complete harmony with the act of lif
7、e itself.J. M. M.I THE RIVER OF LIFE Chapter 1The landladys room in the Serbia. Yellow wallpaper; two windows with dirty muslin curtains; between them an oval squinting mirror, stuck at an angle of forty-five degrees, reflects a painted floor and chair legs; on the window-sills dusty, pimply cactuse
8、s; a cage with a canary hangs from the ceiling. The room is partitioned off by red screens of printed calico: the smaller part on the left is the bedroom of the landlady and her children; that on the right is blocked up with varied odds and ends of furniturebedridden, rickety, and lame. In the corne
9、rs all kinds of rubbish are in chaotic cobwebbed heaps: a sextant in a ginger leather case, and with it a tripod and a chain, some old trunks and boxes, a guitar without strings, hunting boots, a sewing machine, a Monopan musical box, a camera, about five lamps, piles of books, dresses, bundles of l
10、inen, and a great many things besides. All these things had been detained at various times by the landlady for rent unpaid, or left behind by runaway lodgers. You cannot move in the room because of them.The Serbia is a third-rate hotel. Permanent lodgers are a rarity, and those are4 prostitutes. Mos
11、tly they are casual passengers who float up to town on the Dnieper: small farmers, Jewish commission agents, distant provincials, pilgrims, and village priests who come to town to inform, or are returning home when the information has been lodged. Rooms in the Serbia are also occupied by couples fro
12、m the town for the night or a few days.Spring. About three in the afternoon. The curtains of the open windows stir gently, and the room smells of kerosene and baked cabbage. It is the landlady warming up on her stove a bigoss la Polonaise of cabbage, pork fat, and sausage, with a great deal of peppe
13、r and bay leaves. She is a widow between thirty-six and forty, a strong, quick, good-looking woman. The hair that she wears in curls over her forehead has a strong tinge of grey; but her face is fresh, her big sensual mouth red, and her young dark eyes moist and playfully sly. Her name is Anna Fried
14、richovna. She is half German, half Pole, and comes from the Baltic Provinces; but her close friends call her Friedrich simply, which suits her determined character better. She is quick-tempered, scolds and talks bawdy. Sometimes she fights with her porters and the lodgers who have been on the spree;
15、 she drinks as well as any man, and has a mad passion for dancing. She changes from abuse to laughing in a second. She has but small respect for the law, receives lodgers without passports, and with her own hands, as she says, chucks into the street those who5 dont pay upthat is, she unlocks his doo
16、r while he is out, and puts all his things in the passage or on the stairs, and sometimes in her own room. The police are friendly with her for her hospitality, her cheerful character, and particularly for the gay, easy, unceremonious, disinterested complaisance with which she responds to mans passi
17、ng emotions.She has four children. The two eldest, Romka and Alychka, have not yet come back from school, and the younger, Adka, seven, and Edka, five, strong brats with cheeks mottled with mud, blotches, tear-stains, and the sunburn of early spring, are always to be found near their mother. Both of
18、 them hold on to the table leg and beg. They are perpetually hungry, because their mother does not pay much attention to food; they eat anyhow, at different times, sending into a little general shop for anything they want. Sticking out his lips in a circle, frowning, and looking out under his forehe
19、ad, Adka roars in a loud bass: Thats what youre like. You wont give me a taste. Let me try, Edka speaks through his nose, scratching his calf with his bare foot.At the table by the window sits Lieutenant Valerian Ivanovich Tchijhevich of the Army Reserve. Before him is the register, in which he ente
20、rs the lodgers passports. But after yesterdays affair the work goes badly; the letters wave about and crawl away. His trembling fingers quarrel with the pen. There is a roaring in his ears like the telegraph poles in6 autumn. At times it seems to him that his head is beginning to swell, to swell . a
21、nd the table, the book, the inkstand, and the lieutenants hand go terribly far away and become quite tiny. Then again the book comes up to his very eyes, the inkstand grows and repeats itself, and his head grows small, turns to queer strange sizes.Lieutenant Tchijhevichs appearance speaks of former
22、beauty and lost position; his black hair bristles, and a bald patch shows on the nape of his neck. His beard is fashionably trimmed to a sharp point. His face is lean, dirty, pale, dissipated. On it is, as it were written, the full history of the lieutenants obvious weaknesses and secret diseases.Hi
23、s situation in the Serbia is complicated. He goes to the magistrates on Anna Friedrichovnas behalf. He hears the childrens lessons and teaches them deportment, keeps the house register, makes out the lodgers accounts, reads the newspaper aloud in the morning and talks of politics. He usually sleeps
24、in one of the vacant rooms and, in case of an influx of guests, in the passage on an ancient sofa, whose springs and stuffing stick out together. When this happens the lieutenant carefully hangs all his property on nails above the sofa: his overcoat, cap, his morning coat, shiny with age and white i
25、n the seams but tolerably clean, a Monopole paper collar, an officers cap with a blue band; but he puts his notebook and his handkerchief with some one elses initials under his pillow.7 The widow keeps her lieutenant under her thumb. Marry me and Ill do anything for you, she promises. Full equipment
26、, all the linen you want, a fine pair of boots and goloshes as well. Youll have everything, and on holidays Ill let you wear my late husbands watch with the chain. But the lieutenant is still thinking about it. He values his freedom, and sets high store by his former dignity as an officer. However,
27、he is wearing out some of the older portions of the deceaseds linen.Chapter 2From time to time storms break out in the landladys room. Sometimes it happens that the lieutenant, with the assistance of his pupil Romka, sells a heap of somebody elses books to a second-hand dealer. Sometimes he takes ad
28、vantage of the landladys absence to intercept the payment for a room by day. Or he secretly begins to have playful relations with the servant-maid. Just the other day the lieutenant abused Anna Friedrichovnas credit in the public-house over the way. This came to light, and a quarrel raged, with abus
29、e and a fight in the corridor. The doors of all the rooms opened, and men and women poked their heads out in curiosity. Anna Friedrichovna shouted so loud that she was heard in the street:You get out of here, you blackguard, get out, you tramp! Ive spent on you every penny of the money Ive earned by
30、 sweating blood. You fill your belly with the farthings I sweat for my children!You fill your belly with our farthings, squalled the schoolboy Romka, making faces at him from behind his mothers skirt.You fill your belly! Adka and Edka accompanied from a distance.Arseny the porter, in stony silence,
31、pressed9 his chest against the lieutenant. From room No. 9, the valiant possessor of a magnificently parted black beard leaned out to his waist in his underclothes, with a round hat for some reason perched on his head, and resolutely gave his advice:Arseny, give him one between the eyes.Thus the lie
32、utenant was driven to the stairs; but there was a broad window opening on to these very stairs from the corridor. Anna Friedrichovna hung out of it and still went on shouting after the lieutenant:You dirty beast . you murderer . scoundrel . Kiev gutter-sweeping!Gutter-sweeping! Gutter-sweeping! the
33、brats in the corridor strained their voices, shouting.Dont come eating here any more! Take your filthy things away with you. Take them. Take them!The things the lieutenant had left upstairs in his haste descended on him: a stick, his paper collar, and his notebook. The lieutenant halted on the botto
34、m stair, raised his head, and brandished his fist. His face was pale, a bruise showed red beneath his left eye.You just wait, you scum. I tell everything in the proper quarter. Ah! ah. Theyre a lot of pimps, robbing the lodgers!You just sling your hook while youve got a whole skin, said Arseny stern
35、ly, pressing on the lieutenant from behind and pushing him with his shoulder.10 Get away, you swine! Youve not the right to lay a finger on an officer, the lieutenant proudly exclaimed. I know about everything! You let people in here without passports! You receiveyou receive stolen goods. You keep a
36、 brothAt this point Arseny seized the lieutenant adroitly from behind. The door slammed with a shattering noise. The two men rolled out into the street together like a ball, and thence came an angry: Brothel!This morning, as it had always happened before, Lieutenant Tchijhevich came back penitent, w
37、ith a bouquet of lilac torn out of somebodys garden. His face was weary. A dim blue surrounded his hollow eyes. His forehead was yellow, his clothes unbrushed, and there were feathers in his hair. The reconciliation goes slowly. Anna Friedrichovna hasnt yet had her fill of her lovers submissive look
38、 and repentant words. Besides, she is a little jealous of the three nights her Valerian has passed, she knows not where.Anna, darling, . where . the lieutenant began in an extraordinarily meek and tender falsetto, slightly tremulous even.Wha-at! Whos Anna darling, Id like to know, the landlady conte
39、mptuously cut him short. Im not Anna darling to any scum of a road sweeper!But I only wanted to ask what address I was to write for “Praskovia Uvertiesheva, 34 years old,” theres nothing written down here.11 Put her down at the Rag-market, and put yourself there, too. Youre a pretty pair. Or put you
40、rself in a doss-house.Dirty beast, thinks the lieutenant, but he only gives a deep, submissive sigh. Youre very nervous to-day, Anna, darling!Nervous! Whatever I am, I know Im an honest, hard-working woman. Get out of the way, you bastards, she shouts at the children, and suddenly, Shlop, shloptwo w
41、ell-aimed smacks with the spoon come down on Adkas and Edkas foreheads. The boys begin to snivel.Theres a curse on my business, and on me, the landlady growls angrily. When I lived with my husband I never had any sorrows. Now, all the porters are drunkards, and all the maids are thieves. Sh! you cur
42、sed brats!. That Proska . she hasnt been here two days when she steals the stockings from the girl in No. 12. Other people go off to pubs with other peoples money, and never do a stroke.The lieutenant knew perfectly who Anna Friedrichovna was speaking about, but he maintained a concentrated silence.
43、 The smell of the bigoss inspired him with some faint hopes. Then the door opened and Arseny the porter entered without taking off his hat with the three gold braids. He looks like an Albino eunuch, and his dirty face is pitted. This is at least the fortieth time he has had this place with Anna Frie
44、drichovna. He keeps it until the first fit12 of drinking, when the landlady herself beats him and puts him into the streets, first having taken away the symbol of his authority, his three-braided cap.Then Arseny puts a white Caucasian fur hat on his head and a dark blue pince-nez on his nose, and sw
45、aggers in the public-house opposite until hes drunk everything on him away, and at the end of his spree he will cry on the bosom of the indifferent waiter about his hopeless love for Friedrich and threaten to murder Lieutenant Tchijhevich. When he sobers down he comes to the Serbia and falls at his
46、landladys feet. And she takes him back again, because the porter who succeeded Arseny had already managed in this short time to steal from her, to get drunk, to make a row and be taken off to the police station.You . have you come from the steamer? Anna Friedrichovna asked.Yes. Ive brought half a do
47、zen pilgrims. It was a job to get em away from Jacobthe “Commercial.” He was just leading them off, when I comes up to him and says, “Its all the same to me, I says, go wherever you like. But as there are people who dont know these places, and Im very sorry for you, I tell you straight youd better n
48、ot go with that man. In their hotel last week they put some powder in a pilgrims food and robbed him.” So I got them away. Afterwards Jacob shook his fist at me in the distance, and called out: “You just wait, Arseny. Ill get you. You wont get away13 from me!” But when that happens, Ill do it myself.All right, the landlady interrupted. I dont care twopence about your Jacob. What price did you fix?Thirty kopeks. I did my best, but I couldnt make them give more.You fool. You cant do anything. Give them No. 2.All in the one