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

documents furnished in connection with the case by no less a personage than Dr. Kerzhentseff himself a month after the test had begun; together with other data they formed the groundwork of expert judgment. I

Till the present moment, gentlemen experts, I have concealed the truth; but now circumstances compel me to reveal it. Realizing this, you will comprehend that this business is not at all so simple a matter as it would seem to the ignorant; not at all a matter of the straitjacket or the handcuffs. The thing involved here is neither the one nor the other, but is more terrible than the two combined.

My victim, Alexis Konstantinovich Saveloff, was my companion in the gymnasia and in the university, though in our professions our ways were apart. I, as you know, am a physician; while he completed a course of jurisprudence. I cannot say that I did not love the man; he was always sympathetic toward me, and I never had a more intimate friend than he. Notwithstanding the possession of these sympathetic traits, he did not belong to the class of men capable of commanding my respect. The astonishing softness and yieldingness of his nature, his strange uncertainty in the domain of thought and feeling, the capricious extremes of his views, and the unsoundness of his constantly changing judgments impelled me to regard him as a child or a woman. Those near to him, suffering now and then from his caprices, and at the same time, owing to an illogical human nature, loving him, found a justification for his shortcomings and their own attitude, by calling him an “artist.” Indeed this worthless word seemed to justify him completely; and that which to the normal mind would appear as silly was made to seem indifferent or even good. Such is the power of words that even I at one time succumbed to the popular misconception and eagerly overlooked the petty shortcomings of Alexis. Of grand faults, as indeed of all big things, he was incapable. His literary productions amply attest this fact; they are full of things petty and empty, notwithstanding those shortsighted critics who delight to assail newly-revealed talents. Handsome and shallow were his productions, even as their author was handsome and shallow.

When Alexis died he was thirty-one years old, about a year younger than myself.

Alexis was married. Gazing upon his wife now, in mourning for her husband, you can have but a faint idea of her former beauty. She has grown ugly. Her cheeks are colorless and the skin of her face is flabby, aged⁠—aged like a worn glove. And she has wrinkles. They are wrinkles now, but another year will pass and these will become deep furrows and trenches. How she did love him! And her eyes have ceased to sparkle, and they laugh no longer; formerly they were wont to laugh always, even when they ought to have wept. I have had the opportunity to see her for about a minute, having met her by accident at the district attorney’s office, and was astounded at the change. She was powerless even to cast an angry look upon me. What a pitiful figure!

Only three persons⁠—Alexis, I and Tatiana Nikolayevna⁠—knew that five years ago, two years before the marriage of Alexis, I had proposed to Tatiana Nikolayevna and had been rejected. Of course, it is a mere conjecture about the three; more likely Tatiana Nikolayevna has another half-score of friends who had been apprised in detail of Dr. Kerzhentseff’s onetime desire to marry, and of his humiliating rejection. I do not know whether she remembers that she laughed then; probably she does not remember⁠—she laughed so often. Remind her, if you will: on the fifth of September she laughed. If she should deny it⁠—and she will deny it⁠—recall to her the circumstances. I, that strong man who never had shed a tear, stood before her and trembled. I trembled and saw how she bit her lips, and I already had stretched out my arms to embrace her, when she lifted her eyes, and there was laughter in them. My arms remained suspended in the air. She began to laugh and she laughed for a long time⁠—as long as it pleased her. Later, however, she apologized.

“Please forgive me,” she said, but her eyes laughed.

I also smiled, and though I could forgive her laughter, I never could condone my own smile. This was on the fifth of September, six o’clock in the evening, according to St. Petersburg time. I have added the last remark because we were at that moment in a railroad station; and I see now before me clearly the big white time schedule and the rows of figures running up and down.

Alexis Konstantinovich also had been killed precisely at six o’clock⁠—a curious coincidence which might reveal much to the perspicacious person.

One of the reasons for placing me here has been the absence of motive responsible for the crime. Do you perceive now that a motive existed? Of course, it was not jealousy. The latter presupposes an ardent temperament and a weakness of mental faculties⁠—that is something directly antagonistic to a cool, reasoning nature like mine. Revenge? Yes, sooner that⁠—if it is necessary to employ an old word for defining a new and unfamiliar emotion. The case is this: Tatiana Nikolayevna once more had caused me to blunder, and it irritated me. Knowing Alexis well, I was convinced that Tatiana Nikolayevna, married to him, would be unhappy and would long for me; therefore I insisted that Alexis, who was in love with her, should marry her. Only a month preceding his tragic death he remarked to me:

“It is to you that I owe my present happiness. Isn’t that so, Tanya?”

She glanced at me and said: “That’s true,” while her eyes smiled. I also smiled. Presently we all laughed, as, embracing Tatiana Nikolayevna⁠—they never felt abashed before me⁠—he added:

“Yes, brother, you missed your stroke.”

This misplaced and tactless joke shortened his life a whole week, as originally I had