Explore "An Evening Guest" by Aleksandr Kuprin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The lamp throws a bright circle of even light on the table at which I am sitting. Everything beyond this circle is dark, empty, lifeless; everything is strange to me, forgotten by me. The whole world is concentrated in this small space, every ink stain of which, every cut and roughness is perfectly familiar to me. I want nothing else. The sheet of paper before me is blindingly white and its edges are sharply outlined against the green cloth. The seconds of the evening run by with gentle, hasteless monotony, and in that circle of light everything is simple, bright, congenial, close, familiar, and dreamy. I want nothing, nothing else!
But somebody knocks at my door. One, two, three. In rapid and insistent succession come three dull, disquieting knocks. The dreamy fascination of the lighted circle immediately disappears, as a picture moves away from the screen. I am again in my room, in my home in the city. Life has rushed in upon me, just as the noises of the street rush in through an open window.