Sanine by Mikhail Artsybashev (ebook pdf reader for pc .TXT) 📕

the figure, in a deep, resonant voice. Yourii remembered that Ivanoff’s uncle was an old, drunken church chorister. He had a grey moustache like one of the soldiers at the time of Nicholas the First, and his shabby black coat had a most unpleasant smell.

“Boum! Boum!” His voice seemed to come out of a barrel, when Ivanoff introduced him to Yourii, who awkwardly shook hands with him, hardly knowing what to say to such a person. He recollected, however, that for him all men should be equal, so he politely gave precedence to the old singer as they went in.

Ivanoff’s lodging was more like an old lumber-room than a place for human habitation, being very dusty and untidy. But when his host had lighted the lamp, Yourii perceived that the walls were covered with engravings of pictures by Vasnetzoff, and that what had seemed rubbish were books piled up in heaps. He still felt somewhat ill at ease, and, to hide this, he began to examine the engravings attentively.

“Do you like Vasnetzoff?” asked Ivanoff as, without waiting for an answer, he left the room to fetch a plate. Sanine told Peter Ilitsch that Semenoff was dead. “God rest his soul!” droned the latter. “Ah! well, it’s all over for him now.”

Yourii glanced wistfully at him, and felt a sudden sympathy for the old man.

Ivanoff now brought in bread, salted cucumbers, and glasses, which he placed on the table that was covered with a newspaper. Then, with a swift, scarcely perceptible movement, he uncorked the bottle, not a drop of its contents being spilt.

“Very neat!” exclaimed Ilitsch approvingly.

“You can tell in a minute if a man knows what he’s about,” said Ivanoff, with a self-complacent air, as he filled the glasses with the greenish liquid.

“Now gentlemen,” said he, raising his voice as he took up his glass. “To the repose of the departed, etc.!”

With that they began to eat, and more vodka was consumed. They talked little, and drank the more. Soon the atmosphere of the little room grew hot and oppressive. Peter Ilitsch lighted a cigarette, and the air was filled with the bluish fumes of bad tobacco. The drink and the smoke and the heat made Yourii feel dizzy. Again he thought of Semenoff.

“There’s something dreadful about death,” he said.

“Why?” asked Peter Ilitsch. “Death? Ho! ho!! It’s absolutely necessary. Death? Suppose one went on living forever? Ho! ho!! You mustn’t talk like that! Eternal life, indeed! What would eternal life be, eh?”

Yourii at once tried to imagine what living forever would be like. He saw an endless grey stripe that stretched aimlessly away into space, as though swept onward from one wave to another. All conception of colour, sound and emotion was blurred and dimmed, being merged and fused in one grey turbid stream that flowed on placidly, eternally. This was not life, but everlasting death. The thought of it horrified him.

“Yes, of course,” he murmured.

“It appears to have made a great impression upon you,” said Ivanoff.

“Upon whom does it not make an impression?” asked Yourii. Ivanoff shook his head vaguely, and began to tell Ilitsch about Semenoff’s last moments. It was now insufferably close in the room. Yourii watched Ivanoff, as his red lips sipped the vodka that shone in the lamplight. Everything seemed to be going round and round.

“A⁠—a⁠—a⁠—a⁠—a!” whispered a voice in his ear, a strange small voice.

“No! death is an awful thing!” he said again, without noticing that he was replying to the mysterious voice. “You’re over-nervous about it,” observed Ivanoff contemptuously.

“Aren’t you?” said Yourii.

“I? N⁠—no! Certainly, I don’t want to die, as there’s not much fun in it, and living is far jollier. But, if one has to die, I should like it to be quickly, without any fuss or nonsense.”

“You have not tried yet!” laughed Sanine.

“No; that’s quite true!” replied the other.

“Ah! well,” continued Yourii, “one has heard all that before. Say what you will, death is death, horrible in itself, and sufficient to rob a man of all pleasure in life who thinks of such a violent and inevitable end to it. What is the meaning of life?”

“It has no meaning,” cried Ivanoff irritably.

“No, that is impossible,” replied Yourii, “everything is too wisely and carefully arranged, and⁠—”

“In my opinion,” said Sanine, “there’s nothing good anywhere.”

“How can you say that? What about Nature?”

“Nature! Ha, ha!” Sanine laughed feebly, and waved his hand in derision. “It is customary, I know, to say that Nature is perfect. The truth is, that Nature is just as defective as mankind. Without any great effort of imagination any of us could present a world a hundred times better than this one. Why should we not have perpetual warmth and light, and a garden ever verdant and ever gay? As to the meaning of life, of course it has a meaning of some sort, because the aim implies the march of things; without an aim all would be chaos, But this aim lies outside the pale of our existence, in the very basis of the universe. That is certain. We cannot be the origin nor the end of the universe. Our role is a passive, and auxiliary one. By the mere fact of living we fulfil our mission. Our life is necessary; thus our death is necessary also.”

“For what?”

“How should I know?” replied Sanine, “and, besides, what do I care? My life means my sensations, pleasant or unpleasant; what is outside those limits; well, to the deuce with it all! Whatever hypothesis we may like to invent, it will always remain an hypothesis upon which it would be folly to construct life. Let him who likes worry about it; as for me, I mean to live!”

“Let us all have a drink on the strength of it!” suggested Ivanoff.

“But you believe in God, don’t you?” said Ilitsch, looking at Sanine with bleared eyes. “Nowadays nobody believes in anything⁠—not even in that which is easy of belief.”

Sanine laughed. “Yes, I believe in God. As a child I did that, and there’s no