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

in horror, as within the bosom of the earth a tremendous something kept growling⁠—and will dully keep on so doing⁠—tapping and demanding freedom. Then we all prayed: “Kill us!”

But, though we were dying every second, we were immortal, like the gods.

And there passed by a gust of anger mingled with delight, and the Night, weeping tears of rue, sadly sighed, and like a consumptive spat out upon us damp sand. We with joy forgave her, laughed at her in her exhaustion and weakness, and became jocund as children. The sob of the starving man seemed to us a sweet song, and with cheerful envy we watched the quartette which kept on advancing, and retiring, and floating round in the endless dance.

And pair by pair we ourselves began to whirl round, and I, the leper, found a temporary partner. Oh, it was so cheery, so charming! I put my arm round her, and she laughed, and her little teeth were so milky white, her little cheeks so rosy pink. It was so charming!

One could not understand how it came about, but suddenly her teeth, which were displayed in joyful laughter, began to chatter, our kisses turned to bites, and with a shriek, from which all joy had not yet departed, we fell to gnawing and killing one another. And she of the milk white teeth beat me even on my sick weak head, and stuck her sharp nails into my breast, piercing to the very heart⁠—she smote me, me the leper, the miserable, so miserable. And this was more terrible than the anger of the Night, or the soulless laughter of the Wall. And I, the leper, wept and trembled with fear, and quietly, unobserved of any, I kissed the hideous feet of the Wall, and besought it to let me, me alone, pass through into that world where there are no madmen, and where people do not slay one another. But the Wall would not let me through, and then I spat on it, beat it with my fists, and called out:

“Look at this murderess! She is laughing at you.”

But my voice was hideous, and my breath fœtid, and no one cared to listen to me⁠—the leper.

III

And again we crept on, I and the other leper; and again a noise arose around us, and again the quartette circled noiselessly, shaking the dust from their dresses, and licking our bleeding wounds. But we were weary, we were sick, our life was a burden to us. My fellow-traveller sat down, and rhythmically beating the ground with his swollen hands, he jerked out the horrid words:

“Kill us! kill us!”

We then jumped with a sudden movement to our feet, and hurled into the crowd; but they gave way before us, and we saw only their backs. We cursed their backs, and entreated:

“Kill us!”

But immovable and deaf were the backs, like a second wall. It was so terrible never to see the faces of people, but only their backs⁠—immovable, silent. Now my companion deserted me. He had seen a face⁠—the first face⁠—and it was, even as his own, full of sores and horrible. But it was the face of a woman. And he began to smile and walk round her, stretching out his neck, and diffusing a fœtid odour; but she too smiled at him with her mouth all fallen-in, and casting down her eyes which had lost the lashes.

And they married one another. And for a moment all faces were turned towards them, and appealing round of laughter shook people’s sturdy bodies. And I, the leper, laughed too: surely it is a stupid thing to get married when one is ugly and sick.

“Fool,” said I in derision. “What wilt thou do with her?”

The leper answered with a pompous smile:

“We will deal in stones, which fall from the wall.”

“And the children?”

“We will kill them.”

How stupid to beget children only to kill them! But then she will soon deceive him; she has such shifty eyes.

IV

They had finished their work⁠—the one who was occupied in knocking his head against the wall, and the other who was helping him. When I arrived there, one of them was hanging by a hook driven into the wall. He was still warm, and the other was quietly singing a cheerful song.

“Go and tell the starving man,” said I, and he obeyed, singing as he went. And I saw the starving man struggle up from his stone. Trembling and stumbling, hitting against everything with his sharp elbows, sometimes on all fours, sometimes staggering, he managed to reach the wall, where the man was swinging. His teeth chattered; he laughed gleefully like a child:

“Only a little piece of a foot!” But he was too late; already others, being the stronger, had forestalled him. Pressing one against the other, clawing and biting, they clung round the corpse; they gnawed and munched his feet with relish, and crunched the bones they had worried. But they would not let him have any. He squatted down on his heels, and watched the others as they ate, swallowing with furred tongue, and emitted a prolonged howl from his great empty mouth:

“I am st⁠—ar⁠—ving.”

Was it not laughable! He had died for the famished one, and the latter did not get even a piece of his foot! And I laughed, and the other leper laughed, and his wife too winked her crafty eyes in derision.

But he howled only the more loudly and furiously:

“I am st⁠—ar⁠—ving.”

And the hoarseness went out from his voice, which rose in a pure metallic sound, piercing and clear; and striking against the wall, then reverberating, it flew over the dark abysses and the hoary tops of the mountains.

And presently those, who were near the wall, began to howl; and they were numerous, and as greedy and hungry, as locusts, and it seemed as though the burnt-up earth howled in unbearable tortures, opening wide her stony jaws. It was as though a forest of dried-up trees, bent in one