FICTION: Knouts of Silence

MITYA’S LOVE—Ivan Bunin—Holt ($2). To one who can feel the horror of talking into empty rooms, of screaming into unechoing abysses, of writing to no response, of being knouted by silences—to such a one this story of Mitya’s adolescent love for unanswering Katya tolls familiarly. Mitya did love the young, amorous girl. When she put her little hand on his arm and looked up at him, he was very happy and not a little proud, and “strode along, like a country boy, so fast that she could hardly keep up with him.” There were boyish jealousies. “In his eyes all that went on between them was pure, beautiful and charming. But it was quite different as soon as he thought of somebody else in his place. . . . Where had she learned such kisses?” The increasing sensuality of their relationship wore on the boy, mads him skinny, sunken-eyed. Katya grew plumper, gayer, flattered by his love and the adulation of others. So they decided to separate for a summer. Their parting was youthfully emotional, yet she took it easily, and he found himself almost happy to get away. All summer he mooned about her, seeing her in other girls, in trees, in vistas, even in the yellow wallpaper of his village home. He wrote her a long and tender letter, full of confidence in their love, and received no answer. He made futile journeys to the postoffice. Doubtless she was occupied at Moscow. He wrote more, and was slapped by silence. Into the void of Katya’s silences came Alenka, peasant wench. But one hurried seance with her left him disgusted, horrified. Then, finally, came a letter from Katya. She was going away, as a mistress. “Don’t write to me, my dear love, it is useless!” Mitya shot his brain pan off. The Author. Ivan Bunin, 56, writes with ease and economy. Intimate of the Russian Realists and Symbolists, in all his long writing career he has joined no “school.” Russians extol him, but in English have appeared only The Village, in which he flays the grimy mouzhik, Dreams of Chang, which contains the sardonic “The Gentlemen from San Francisco,” and this Mitya’s Love.