Short Fiction by Leonid Andreyev (fastest ebook reader TXT) 📕

a basket, with outspread legs, scarcely resembling men in their broken, unconscious movements and ponderous immobility. Some were mute and obedient, others groaned, wailed, swore and showed such a passionate hate towards us that were saving them, as if we had brought about that bloodly, indifferent night, and been the cause of all those terrible wounds and their loneliness amidst the night and dead bodies.

The train was full, and our clothes were saturated with blood, as if we had stood for a long time under a rain of blood, while the wounded were still being brought in, and the field, come to life, was stirring wildly as before.

Some of the wounded crawled up themselves, some walked up tottering and falling. One soldier almost ran up to us. His face was smashed, and only one eye remained, burning wildly and terribly, and he was almost naked, as if he had come from the bathroom. Pushing me aside, he caught sight of the doctor, and rapidly seized him by the chest with his left hand.

“I’ll smash your snout!” he cried, shaking the doctor, and added slowly and mordantly a coarse oath. “I’ll smash your snouts! you rabble!”

The doctor broke away from the soldier, and advancing towards him, cried chokingly⁠—

“I will have you court-martialled, you scoundrel! To prison with you! You’re hindering my work! Scoundrel! Brute!”

We pulled them apart, but the soldier kept on crying out for a long time: “Rabble! I’ll smash your snout!”

I was beginning to get exhausted, and went a little way off to have a smoke and rest a bit. The blood, dried to my hands, covered them like a pair of black gloves, making it difficult for me to bend my fingers, so that I kept dropping my cigarettes and matches. And when I succeeded in lighting my cigarette, the tobacco smoke struck me as novel and strange, with quite a peculiar taste, the like of which I never experienced before or after. Just then the ambulance student with whom I had travelled came up to me, and it seemed to me as if I had met with him several years back, but where I could not remember. His tread was firm as if he were marching, and he was staring through me at something farther on and higher up.

“And they are sleeping,” said he, as it seemed, quite calmly.

I flew into a rage, as if the reproach was addressed to me.

“You forget, that they fought like lions for ten days.”

“And they are sleeping,” he repeated, looking through me and higher up. Then he stooped down to me and shaking his finger, continued in the same dry and calm way: “I will tell you⁠—I will tell you⁠ ⁠…”

“What?”

He stooped still lower towards me, shaking his finger meaningly, and kept repeating the words as if they expressed a completed idea⁠—

“I will tell you⁠—I will tell you. Tell them⁠ ⁠…” And still looking at me in the same severe way, he shook his finger once more, then took out his revolver and shot himself in the temple. And this did not surprise or terrify me in the least. Putting my cigarette into the left hand, I felt his wound with my fingers, and went back to the train.

“The student has shot himself. I believe he is still alive,” said I to the doctor. The latter caught hold of his head and groaned.

“D⁠—n him!⁠ ⁠… There is no room. There, that one will go and shoot himself too, soon. And I give you my word of honour,” cried he, angrily and menacingly, “I will do the same! Yes! And let me beg you⁠—just walk back. There is no room. You can lodge a complaint against me if you like.”

And he turned away, still shouting, while I went up to the other who was about to commit suicide. He was an ambulance man, and also, I believe, a student. He stood, pressing his forehead against the wall of the carriage, and his shoulders shook with sobs.

“Stop!” said I, touching his quivering shoulder. But he did not turn round or answer, and continued crying. And the back of his head was youthful, like the other student’s, and as terrifying, and he stood in an absurd manner with his legs spread out like a person drunk, who is sick; and his neck was covered with blood; probably he had clutched it with his own hands.

“Well?” said I, impatiently.

He pushed himself away from the carriage and, stooping like an old man, with his head bent down, he went away into the darkness, away from all of us. I do not know why, but I followed him, and we walked along for a long time away from the carriages. I believe he was crying, and a feeling of distress stole over me, and I wanted to cry too.

“Stop!” I cried, standing still.

But he walked on, moving his feet ponderously, bent down, looking like an old man with his narrow shoulders and shuffling gait. And soon he disappeared in the reddish haze, that resembled light and yet lit nothing. And I remained alone. To the left of me a row of dim lights floated past⁠—it was the train. I was alone⁠—amidst the dead and dying. How many more remained? Near me all was still and dead, but farther on the field was stirring, as if it were alive⁠—or so it seemed to me in my loneliness. But the moan did not grow less. It spread along the earth⁠—high-pitched, hopeless, like the cry of a child or the yelping of thousands of castaway puppies, starving and cold. Like a sharp, endless, icy needle it pierced your brain and slowly moved backwards and forwards⁠—backwards and forwards.⁠ ⁠…

Fragment VI

… They were our own men. During the strange confusion of all movements that reigned in both armies, our own and the enemy’s, during the last month, frustrating all orders and plans, we were sure it was the enemy that was approaching us, namely, the 4th corps. And everything was ready for