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

examination, he looked over the cell, trying not to let anything escape. He counted the hours that remained until the execution, made for himself an approximate and quite exact picture of the execution itself and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well?” he said to someone half-questioningly. “Here it is. Where is the fear?”

Indeed there was no fear. Not only was it not there, but something entirely different, the reverse of fear, developed⁠—a sensation of confused, but enormous and savage joy. And the error, which he had not yet discovered, no longer called forth in him vexation or irritation⁠—it seemed to speak loudly of something good and unexpected, as though he had believed a dear friend of his to be dead, and that friend turned out to be alive, safe and sound and laughing.

Werner again shrugged his shoulders and felt his pulse⁠—his heart was beating faster than usual, but soundly and evenly, with a specially ringing throb. He looked about once more, attentively, like a novice for the first time in prison⁠—examined the walls, the bolts, the chair which was screwed to the floor, and thought:

“Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and free? Yes, so free? I think of the execution tomorrow⁠—and I feel as though it is not there. I look at the walls⁠—and I feel as though they are not here, either. And I feel so free, as though I were not in prison, but had just come out of some prison where I had spent all my life. What does this mean?”

His hands began to tremble⁠—something Werner had not experienced before. His thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It was as if tongues of fire had flashed up in his mind, and the fire wanted to burst forth and illumine the distance which was still dark as night. Now the light pierced through and the widely illuminated distance began to shine.

The fatigue that had tormented Werner during the last two years had disappeared; the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed eyes and mouth clinched in death, had fallen away from his breast. Before the face of death, beautiful Youth came back to him physically. Indeed, it was more than beautiful Youth. With that wonderful clarity of the spirit which in rare moments comes over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly perceived both life and death, and he was awed by the splendor of the unprecedented spectacle. It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he saw Life, on the other side⁠—Death⁠—like two sparkling, deep, beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon.

“What is this? What a divine spectacle!” he said slowly, rising involuntarily and straightening himself, as if in the presence of a supreme being. And destroying the walls, space and time with the impetuosity of his all-penetrating look, he cast a wide glance somewhere into the depth of the life he was to forsake.

And life appeared to him in a new light. He did not strive, as before, to clothe in words that which he had seen; nor were there such words in the still poor, meager human language. That small, cynical and evil feeling which had called forth in him a contempt for mankind and at times even an aversion for the sight of a human face, had disappeared completely. Thus, for a man who goes up in an airship, the filth and litter of the narrow streets disappear and that which was ugly becomes beautiful.

Unconsciously Werner stepped over to the table and leaned his right hand on it. Proud and commanding by nature, he had never before assumed such a proud, free, commanding pose, had never turned his head and never looked as he did now⁠—for he had never yet been as free and dominant as he was here in the prison, with but a few hours from execution and death.

Now men seemed new to him⁠—they appeared amiable and charming to his clarified vision. Soaring over time, he saw clearly how young mankind was, that but yesterday it had been howling like a beast in the forests; and that which had seemed to him terrible in human beings, unpardonable and repulsive, suddenly became very dear to him⁠—like the inability of a child to walk as grown people do, like a child’s unconnected lisping, flashing with sparks of genius; like a child’s comical blunders, errors and painful bruises.

“My dear people!” Werner suddenly smiled and at once lost all that was imposing in his pose; he again became a prisoner who finds his cell narrow and uncomfortable under lock, and he was tired of the annoying, searching eye staring at him through the peephole in the door. And, strange to say, almost instantly he forgot all that he had seen a little while before so clearly and distinctly; and, what is still stranger, he did not even make an effort to recall it. He simply sat down as comfortably as possible, without the usual stiffness of his body, and surveyed the walls and the bars with a faint and gentle, strange, un-Werner-like smile. Still another new thing happened to Werner⁠—something that had never happened to him before: he suddenly started to weep.

“My dear comrades!” he whispered, crying bitterly. “My dear comrades!”

By what mysterious ways did he change from the feeling of proud and boundless freedom to this tender and passionate compassion? He did not know, nor did he think of it. Did he pity his dear comrades, or did his tears conceal something else, a still loftier and more passionate feeling?⁠—His suddenly revived and rejuvenated heart did not know this either. He wept and whispered:

“My dear comrades! My dear, dear comrades!”

In this man, who was bitterly weeping and smiling through tears, no one could have recognized the cold and haughty, weary, yet daring Werner⁠—neither the judges, nor the comrades, nor even he himself.

XI On the Way to the