The Caucases by Ivan Bunin - A Short Story-1937- 5 pages- translated from the by Russian by Sophie Lund -1984 -
Included in The Gentleman from San Francisco and Other Stories
Ivan Bunin
“What the Russian Revolution turned into very soon, none will comprehend who has not seen it. This spectacle was utterably unbearable to any one who had not ceased to be a man in the image and likeness of God, and all who had a chance to flee, fled from Russia.” - Ivan Bunin
October 22, 1870 - Born Voronezh, Russia
March 28, 1920 - moves to Paris where he Will spend The rest of his Life, with countryside interludes
1933 - first Russian to win the Nobel Prize
November 8, 1953 - dies in Paris
Bunin moved to Paris in 1920, his heart broken by the fall of The Romanovs from power in Russia. He, like many Russian Émigrés, spent the rest of his life dreaming of the old days and fantasying about the restoration of a Tsar, along with the return of his family estate.
Once it became clear that the Bolsheviks would be victorious in the ensuing civil war, Bunin emigrated from Russia, never to return. In 1920, at the age of fifty, he had to start a new life and literary career in western Europe. He suffered first a long and tortured affair and then a disastrous marriage, the collapse of which was followed by the death of his only child at the age of five.
His stories bring to my mind the nostalgia for pre-revoluntunary Russian exhibited in , Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisted by Vladimir Nabokov that I read earlier this month.
"The Caucases" is the fifth story I have so far featured on The Reading Life.
Today's brief story centers on what happens when a woman married to a Tsarist Russian Army officer runs of with one of his men.
The couple has made elaborate plans how to get away. They take a train. The wife fears her husband will stop at nothing to track them down, feeling entitled by honor to kill them.
‘It seems to me,’ she said, ‘that he suspects something, maybe knows something. Perhaps he’s read one of your letters, or found a key to fit my desk … I think, with his harsh proud nature, he’s capable of anything. Once he told me, point-blank: “I’ll stop at nothing to defend my honour, the honour of an officer and a husband.” Now, for some reason, he literally watches my every move, and if our plan is to succeed I must be extremely careful … He’s already agreed to let me go because I’ve convinced him that I’ll die unless I get a glimpse of the south and the sea, but in the name of God be patient!’"
Before she left she gave him a deceptive reason why she was leaving and gave him false information as to where she was going. They are very cautious not to be seen boarding the train together.
(Spolier alert)
Of late I have been dominated in my thoughts by the passing of my beloved wife of many years, long before her time.
The husband does find them but the ending is not what they feared. He takes his revenge:
"He searched for her in Gelendzhik, in Gagry and in Sochi. On the morning after his arrival in Sochi he swam in the sea, then shaved, put on a clean shirt and a snow-white, high-collared tunic, lunched at his hotel on the terrace of the restaurant, drank a bottle of champagne, took coffee with chartreuse, and smoked a leisurely cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the divan and using two revolvers shot himself through both temples."
The story elegantly describes the beauty of the Caucases. There is a delightful scene in which a family of snow leopards approach the train.
Mel Ulm
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