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

before me. What difference was there between the living and the dead? Where do the dead go to? Where do the living come from? And again my thoughts seemed immense, never-ending; and I saw all the living and the dead, and all the people who were to come, and there were numbers and numbers of them; they were floating with the clouds beneath the moon, they came flying through the rays of the sun, they were in the rain and the wind and the river. And then I understood, without knowing how the understanding reached me, that I was immortal, absurdly immortal, and that Petrograd might perish a thousand times, and I should still exist.

I was on the Troitsky Bridge by that time, at the very spot I had chosen for my leap into the water, when the absurdity of suicide struck me so forcibly, that instead of leaping in, I threw the lead weights into the water, so violently that the water never even splashed as they fell. And again I became absorbed in deep, prolonged thought as I gazed on the water flowing down the river in the light of the lamps. I looked up at the dark, infinite sky, and still vast thoughts came to me, and they were as clear as though I had been a sage who understood the meaning of the whole universe. A few motorcars passed over the bridge, recalling me to myself; I turned and waited expectantly for others to come, rejoicing when two bright electric lamps appeared at the bend of the bridge. The car hooted as it passed.

I had been humbled. Humility is the only word that describes the sensation that came to me as I stood shivering with cold by the river. Suddenly, I don’t know why, I shuddered, and was hurled from the heights of wisdom and understanding to the depths of littleness and fear. My hands in my pockets clenched convulsively. It seemed as if my fingers had grown dry and drawn as a bird’s claws. “Coward!” I thought, and such a feeling of terror for the death I had planned came upon me, that I forgot I had thrown away the weights, and that I had decided not to kill myself before this terror came. I know now that it was real cowardice I experienced⁠—cowardice pure and simple, and that there was no very great harm in it, but at the time my terror was truly awful. Where had my wisdom gone? Where my big thoughts? I stood on the bridge, not daring to look at the water, trembling so violently that my teeth chattered. However, desperate as I was, I still kept on making some attempts, measuring the height of the rail, and clutching it with my hands. “Now!” I thought in despair, feeling the freedom of my toes; they were in no way fixed to the pavement, and might leave go any moment, now.⁠ ⁠…

And in that awful moment I suddenly recalled our flight from Shuvalov at the beginning of the war, and my Lidotchka, and the flower I had picked for her on the road, and the inexpressible terror I had felt then.⁠ ⁠… So this was what I had feared! This that my heart had foreboded! This, then, explained the flower and the haste, and the dread of looking behind, and the straining to go ahead, to hide, to seek out a refuge for oneself on earth! The soul had known what threatened it and quaked in the frail human frame!

“My God! It’s all the war, the war!” I thought, and a vision of the war and its horrors appeared before me. I forgot that I was in Petrograd, forgot that I was standing on the bridge, forgot everything surrounding me. My consciousness was filled only with the war, and the war was all about me. I can’t describe this sensation, this new terror, nor the tears that gushed from my eyes⁠—I could cry now at the very thought of it. Some man passing, fortunately, happened to notice me. He had gone by, but turned back and addressed me. Close as in a mirror could I see his unfamiliar face and eyes that, for some reason, seemed awful to me. I backed away from him with a cry, and fled over the bridge to Sashenka.

I can’t remember where I got into a cab, nor how much I paid for my fare, nor how I got to the hospital, I only remember falling on my knees before Sashenka, and trembling in every limb, and swallowing my tears, I blurted out my wild, disjointed confession.⁠ ⁠…

My Sashenka is a saint. I have no right to call her mine. She belongs to God, to all men. I am unworthy to touch her hand; all my life I must weep at her feet and praise God for having created her. Sashenka, my heart of gold, my pure soul, blessed be the day when you were born!

Like a fool, I had expected reproaches, but this is what I heard when I could distinguish her divine words through my sobs and tears, “Never mind about your work, dear; it doesn’t matter. I was offered a salary here, but I refused to take it. I will take it now, and we can get along quite well with the children. We shall be together; we must do the best we can. I must take you home now, as though you had been badly wounded. It will do you good to look at the sleeping children and to kiss mother. You must rest your soul, my poor, dear Ilenka.⁠ ⁠…”

She had it in her heart to call me her “dear Ilenka!” She wept over me, and kissed my grey hair.

“Don’t kiss my hair,” I muttered, “I haven’t been to the baths for a month.”

What did that matter to her! Wonderful woman! I can’t remember her exact words; they were not at all as I have them here, but I was so weak and faint at