The Hunchback Affairs

By Ivan Bunin

The Hunchback received an anonymous love letter, an invitation to a rendezvous:

Come to the public garden on Cathedral Square on Saturday, April sth, at seven in the evening. I am young, well off, and unencumbered, and-why hide it-I have long known and loved you; your melancholy, proud expression; your intelligent and noble features; your loneliness. I would like to hope that in me you will find a soul kindred to your own.

I will be wearing a grey English suit; in my left hand I will carry a silk lavender umbrella; in my right a bouquet of violets.

How amazing he was! How he waited for the day! The first love letter of his life! On Saturday he went to the barber, bought a pair of lilac-colored gloves and a grey tie with a dash of red to match his suit. At home he dressed before a mirror, endlessly reknotting that tie while his long, delicate fingers tremble and turned cold. An attractive flush had begun to spread across his cheeks, and his handsome eyes seemed to grow darker, Then he sat down in an armchair, and like an impeccably dressed guest – like a stranger in his own house – he waited for the fateful hour.

At last, the dining room clock ominously chimed 6:30. He shuddered, then rose with composure, calmly put on his spring hat in the hallway, picked up his walking stick, slowly left the house. Once outside he could no longer restrain himself, however, and although his steps retained the proud solemnity that misshapen backs invariably produce, he moved his long, delicate legs more quickly than usual, seized by that blissful fear with which we all anticipate happiness. Hurrying into the garden by the cathedral, he suddenly froze: a woman was coming toward him in the pink light of the spring sunset. She walked with a certain stateliness, taking long, measured strides. She wore a grey suit and an attractive hat that slightly resembled a man’s. She carried an umbrella in her left hand in her right a bouquet of violets. And she too was a hunchback.

Someone has no mercy for man!

1930

Translated from Russian By A.G Constantine