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

for some time staring blankly at the last page containing the words, “She is dead.”

“She is dead,” only three words on a sheet of ordinary white paper.

God, how wretched man is! How well I remember the day I wrote the words! If instead of the white paper with the few scrawls there had been a mirror to reflect eternally the face of the man who wrote them with all its anguish and despair! What do these words convey?

What a friend this diary is to me! Its pages contain the name of my Lidotchka which was so much part of her being. She is gone, and now the diary only remains to me.

Lidotchka died on the 27th March, four days after we had taken Przemysl. She became unwell on the very day of rejoicing and her illness lasted only three days and three nights. It was appendicitis she had, in an acute form, only we did not realise it until it was too late to do anything. It was twenty-four hours before we could get a doctor to see her, every man of them being busy at the military hospitals. I fell in with one in the street who turned away as soon as he looked at her, declaring that there was no danger, and we could safely wait. The child was dying, and he asked us to wait, and we waited! I was even fool enough to apologise for having kept him away from his more important duties. We waited with despair in our hearts; we did not like to worry anyone needlessly. We smiled and tried to keep up our courage, fools that we were! When at last the surgeon from Sashenka’s hospital came he declared it was appendicitis, and too late for an operation.

How could I have believed the first man and waited! How could I have let her lie parched with fever, moaning and suffering, and do nothing? There she was, dying and trusting me! How senseless and wicked it was! I remember her black, trusting eyes, her parched lips as I touched mine against them lightly, and how I stroked her tangled hair. On one occasion I bathed her face with eau-de-cologne and felt satisfied that I was doing all that was required. And the poor child suffered agonies. It seemed impossible that such a small child should suffer such great pain.

On the third day I ran about like one possessed. I shouted at the doctors, I threw money in their faces. “I will pay! I will pay!” I cried in despair. In one doctor’s waiting-room, I can’t remember where it was, I struck my head against the lintel of the door in a woman’s presence, hoping thereby to arouse pity.⁠ ⁠…

But that is nothing.

For hours I hunted all over the town, and the surgeon had been twice to our house and assured me that an operation was useless and would only torment the child for nothing. I put her into the coffin myself and carried her to the table.

And here am I living as though nothing particular had happened. I go to my office, I acknowledge my friends in the street, I read the papers. We are being defeated on all hands, and driven out of Poland and Galicia. Przemysl has been retaken. We never got a chance. The gendarme Miasoyedov sold Russia for thirty pieces of silver. Well, well, I don’t exactly hate everyone, but I’m getting on in that direction. Only I hold my peace.

29th June.

How can I express my grief and despair? They are beyond words and tears, and human understanding. I scrutinise my face carefully in the glass to see if I have changed, but there does not seem any difference. There is one grey-haired fool in the glass and another outside of it. My hair has turned grey.

30th June.

When the great die, the town is steeped in mourning and flags are hung up to inform the population of the fact. Had I been great and had I possessed the gift of eloquence, I would have raised my voice and made the whole world mourn for my Lidotchka, but I am only an insignificant little man, and can merely cry for her as a cow cries for its lost calf. Even a cow is more effective in her grief, for her cries may be heard by someone in the night, while I have to stifle my sobs for fear that others may hear and object.

How contemptible I am! nothing but a “cell.”

I remember a certain day⁠—a day to which I could erect a bronze memorial for the edification of posterity. It was a week after Lidotchka’s death, and I, like a conscientious worker, returned to the confounded office. The other fellows are kindhearted enough; they remarked upon the fact that my hair had turned grey, and expressed their sympathy in the usual polite way of “Lost a little daughter? Dear, dear, what a pity it is!”

It was a pity, but what did it matter? Wasn’t I working and adding up figures? When the band of crêpe caught the eye of the sympathetic, I was greeted with, “Have you lost someone at the war?”

“No, not at the war. I have lost my little daughter Lidia.”

“Oh!”

I could see they were disappointed.

Zvoliansky, the Pole, remarked casually⁠—with every degree of politeness and propriety, of course, that no one ought to wear mourning at a time like this, not even for relatives killed at the front. One must consider the public nerves. It stands to reason that when a man dresses himself up in a smart tie and patent shoes he doesn’t want to meet the spectacle of a gloomy, grey-haired old man in mourning. It would spoil his pleasure. Zvoliansky did not dare to say as much, but his remarks implied it plainly. If people had no right to wear mourning for those killed at the front⁠—the only dead that matter now⁠—what right had I to wear it for a