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

took the cigarette he noticed with pleasure that Liuba had put her chemise straight, and the hope that everything might yet go smoothly rose again. He was a poor smoker; he did not inhale, and womanlike held the cigarette between two straight fingers.

“You don’t even know how to smoke!” the girl exclaimed angrily, and roughly tried to snatch the cigarette from him. “Throw it away!”

“Now, there you are⁠—angry with me again!”

“Yes, I am!”

“But why, Liuba? Just think! For two nights I haven’t had any sleep, running about the town from pillar to post. And now, you’re going to give me up and they’ll have me in jail! That’s a fine finish, isn’t it? But, Liuba, I’ll never give in alive.⁠ ⁠…”

He stopped short.

“Will you shoot?”

“Yes, I shall shoot.”

The music had ceased for a time, but the wild drunken man was still halloing although apparently someone, as a joke or in earnest, had a hand on his mouth, the sounds coming through the compressed fingers even more desperately and savagely. The room reeked no longer with cheap fragrant soap, but with a thick, moist and repulsive odour; on one wall, uncovered, there hung messily and flat some petticoats and blouses. It was all so repugnant, so strange, to think that this also was life⁠—that people were living such a life day in, day out⁠—that he felt dazed and shrugged his shoulders and again looked round slowly.

“What a place this is!” he said, bemused and resting his eyes on Liuba.

“What of it?” she asked curtly.

He looked at her as she stood there, and suddenly understood that she was to be pitied; and as soon as he had grasped this he did pity her⁠—ardently.

“You are poor, Liuba?”

“Well?”

“Give me your hand.”

And, as though to assert in some way his relation to the girl as a human being, he took her hand and respectfully raised it to his lips.

“You mean that⁠ ⁠… for me?”

“Yes, Liuba, for you.”

Then quite quietly, as though thanking him, she said:

“Off you go! Get out of here, you blockhead!”

He did not understand at once.

“What?”

“Off with you. Get out of here! Get out!”

Silently, with a steady step, she crossed the room, picked up the white collar in the corner, and threw it to him with an expression of disgust, as though it had been the dirtiest, filthiest rag. And he, likewise silent, but with an expression of high resolve, without sparing even one glance at the girl, began quietly and slowly buttoning on the collar; but all in a moment, with a savage whine, Liuba struck him on his shaven cheek, with all her strength. The collar fell on the floor; he was shaken from his balance, but steadied himself. Pale, almost blue, but still silent, with the same look of lofty composure and proud incomprehension, he faced her with a stolid, unswerving stare. She was drawing rapid breaths, and staring at him in terror.

“Well?” she gasped.

He looked at her, still silent.

Then, maddened beyond endurance by his haughty unresponsiveness, terror-stricken by the stone wall against which she seemed to have flung herself, the girl lost all control of herself and seizing him by the shoulders forcibly thrust him down upon the bed. She bent over him, her face near his, and eye to eye.

“Well? Why don’t you answer? What are you trying to do with me? You scoundrel⁠—that’s what you are! Kiss my hand, will you? Come here to boast of yourself, will you? To show off your beauty! What are you trying to do with me? Do you think I’m so happy?”

She shook him by the shoulders, and her thin fingers, unconsciously curling and uncurling like a cat’s claws, scratched his body through his shirt.

“And he’s never known a woman, hasn’t he? You brute, you dare come here and brag about this to me⁠—to me for whom any man is simply.⁠ ⁠… Where’s your decency? What do you think you’re doing with me? ‘I’ll never give in alive.’ That’s the tune is it? But I⁠—of course, I’m already dead. You understand, you rascal? I’m dead! But I spit in your face⁠ ⁠… ph!⁠ ⁠… in the face of the living! There! Get out, you brute! Get out of here!”

With anger he could no longer command, he threw her off him and she fell backwards against the wall. Apparently his mind was still confused, for his next movement, equally rapid and decisive, was to seize his revolver and look at its grinning, toothless mouth. But the girl never so much as saw his bespattered face, damp and disfigured with demoniac rage, nor the black revolver. She covered her eyes with her hands, as though to crush them into the farthest recesses of her brain, stepped forward swiftly and steadily, and flung herself on the bed, face down, in a fit of silent sobbing.

Everything had turned out different from what he had anticipated. Out of vapidity and nonsense there had crept forth a chaos⁠—savage, drunken, and hysterical, with a crumpled, distorted face.

He shrugged his shoulders, put away the useless revolver, and began pacing the room, up and down. The girl was crying.

To and fro again. The girl was crying. He stopped beside her, his hands in his pockets, to look at her.

There, under his eyes, face down, lay a woman sobbing frantically in an agony of unbearable sorrow, sobbing as one who looks suddenly back on a wasted life or a better life irretrievably lost. Her naked, finely tapering shoulder blades were heaving as though to heap fuel on the raging furnace within, and sinking as though to compress the tense anguish in her bosom.

The music had started afresh; a mazurka now. And the jingle of spurs could be heard. Some officers must have come.

Such tears he had never seen! He was disconcerted. He took his hands out of his pockets, and said gently:

“Liuba!”

Still she sobbed.

“Liuba! What is the matter, Liuba?”

She answered, but so faintly that he could not hear. He sat by her on the bed, bent his shorn head, and laid a hand on her shoulders;