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

The crush and the jostling curiosity of the main streets wearied him, and he preferred to lose himself in the silent, squalid alleys, with their tiny three-room cottages, their broken fences, and slippery wooden sidewalks. Throughout these days he had but one desire⁠—to go the length and breadth of Kawatnaja lane. But he could not bring himself to gratify this wish: it seemed too horrible, too painful, more painful than death itself. And a thrill of wonder came over him as he thought of that earlier September he had driven down the lane quite fearlessly, and had even wished that he might meet some one of the people, to speak to them in passing.

But one spot he never neglected. This was the street that led to the seminary, where each morning, just at nine, it swarmed with little schoolgirls. Forgetting his usual haste, he strode along here like some good-natured, whimsical old General, out for his morning walk. He nodded to them as they came: the big girls first, stately, tall and dignified; then the little ones, with their short brown skirts and their huge knapsacks; and they shyly answered his greeting. His nearsighted eyes could not distinguish their faces. Large and small, in groups they came, and they seemed to him like a cluster of rosy petals. As the last one passed he smiled his quiet, ironical smile, a sly twinkle in his eye meanwhile, and then at the next corner he was transformed again into the silent, stately ghost, seeking death at the head of his column.

At first two spies, at their chief’s secret command, trailed him at a distance; but he did not observe them, as he never looked back. For some days they conscientiously followed his devious paths, but soon tired of it⁠—it seemed so foolish to run after a man who was hanging about the most dangerous spots in such an idiotic way. So they stopped now and again at some friendly shop to gossip with a policeman, dropped in at an alehouse, and often lost sight of their charge for hours at a time.

“It’s all the same⁠—there’s nothing to do anyway!” said one of them apologetically. He had the smug, shaven face of a priest, and seemed a prosy old fool. He was gulping down a hot pâté, and although he had not quite swallowed the first he was already reaching for the second. “When a man’s in his dotage and runs into the trap himself, what are you going to do with him⁠ ⁠… will you kindly tell me?”

“Oh, it’s only for form’s sake,” said the barkeeper.

“And how about the Pike?” asked the second spy, a gloomy man who had seen better days, but was given to drink, and had been caught cheating at cards. Growling like a dog over his bone, he devoured everything in sight, drinking vodka steadily meanwhile; and though he was never drunk, yet he never stopped drinking.

“What about the Pike? He knows well enough that we aren’t angels from heaven!”

“He acts like a horse in a fire⁠ ⁠… take him out of his stall and he rears and plunges. He’d sooner burn up than leave the stable,” said the barkeeper.

“No, he knows we aren’t angels,” repeated the first, with a sigh. And in fact they had very little in common with angels⁠—these two poor devils⁠—and it was quite beyond their feeble power to arrest the course of events!

… Home again over the familiar threshold, even then the Governor felt no thrill of relief, nor any surety of one more day of life. He took things as they came, and forgot the sense of his past wanderings in the awakening dread of what the day would yet bring forth. And the empty, idle days passed by with frightful haste⁠—yet time stood still; as if the mechanism that turned up each new day had been jarred and, instead of the following one, the same old day came round again. Even the calendar on his desk that he used to turn⁠—usually at night, as though he were calling up the advancing day⁠—even this stood pointing to that long-past date, and when occasionally he looked at that back number, his breast heaved, he knew not why, and a feeling of sickness came to him as he turned his eyes away.

“Nonsense!” he exclaimed angrily. Nowadays when he was alone he often broke into short ejaculations, indefinite and disconnected. He was especially apt to say “Nonsense!” or “Disgusting!”

He did not fear death in the least, and viewed it quite impersonally. They would shoot at him; he would fall.⁠ ⁠… And then would come the funeral with the bands, and his Orders carried behind the coffin, etc. He’d go bravely forward to meet it. He did not even think of a life beyond the grave; for him it all ended here. And he ate with his usual appetite and slept soundlessly and dreamlessly.

Yet once in the night⁠—and it was three days before his end⁠—he must have had a heavy dream; for he awoke with the sound of his own hoarse, muffled groans. And as he recognised this strange, dull voice of his, and his eyes encountered the darkness, he felt the shudder and weakness of death. He huddled the clothes up over his head, drew up his bony knees, knotted himself into a bundle in the bed and, reviewing his whole past life, from infancy to age, he began to sob bitterly and softly; and whispered to the damp, white, silent pillow: “Have pity on me! Help me someone, whoever it is! Have mercy! О⁠—о⁠—о!”

But no one was there to pity him; and soon he was conscious through his tears of his great shaken frame in its strange, cramped attitude, and his rough, hoarse voice, and he mastered himself and lay still. And long he lay there silent, in the same tense pose, staring up wide-eyed into the dark.⁠ ⁠… And in the morning he started out again in his military cloak. For two days more its