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

he mentally rehearsed that awful incident with ever increasing torture, and, as if illuminated, all the details stood out vividly before his eyes. That which most irritated him was his recollection of Sina Karsavina’s white dress, of which he caught a glimpse at the very moment when he was vowing futile vengeance.

“Who was it that lifted me up?” He tried to turn his thoughts into another channel. “Was it Tanaroff? Or that Jew boy who was with them! It must have been Tanaroff. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter in the least. What matters is that my whole life is ruined, and that I shall have to leave the regiment. And the duel? What about that? He won’t fight. I shall have to leave the regiment.”

Sarudine recollected how a regimental committee had forced two brother-officers, married men, to resign because they had refused to fight a duel.

“I shall be asked to resign in the same way. Quite civilly, without shaking hands⁠ ⁠… the very fellows that.⁠ ⁠… Nobody will feel flattered now to be seen walking arm-in-arm with me in the boulevard, or envy me, or imitate my manner. But, after all, that’s nothing. It’s the shame, the dishonour of it. Why? Because I was struck in the face? It has happened to me before when I was a cadet. That big fellow, Schwartz, gave me a hiding, and knocked out one of my teeth. Nobody thought anything about it, but we shook hands afterwards, and became the best of friends. Nobody despised me then. Why should it be different now? Surely it is just the same thing! On that occasion, too, blood was spilt, and I fell down. So that⁠ ⁠…”

To these despairing questions Sarudine could find no answer.

“If he had accepted my challenge and had shot me in the face, that would have been worse, and much more painful. Yet no one would have despised me in that case; on the contrary, I should have had sympathy and admiration. Thus there is a difference between a bullet and the fist. What difference is there, and why should there be any?”

His thoughts came swiftly, incoherently, yet his suffering, and irreparable misfortune would seem to have roused something new and latent within him of which in his careless years of selfish enjoyment he had never been conscious.

“Von Deitz, for instance, was always saying, ‘If one smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the left.’ But how did he come back that day from Sanine’s? Shouting angrily, and waving his arms because the fellow wouldn’t accept my challenge! The others are really to blame for my wanting to hit him with the riding-whip. My mistake was that I didn’t do it in time. The whole thing’s absurdly unjust. However, there it is; the disgrace remains; and I shall have to leave the regiment.”

With both hands pressed to his aching brow, Sarudine tossed from side to side, for the pain in his eye was excruciating. Then, in a fit of fury, he muttered:

“Get a revolver, rush at him, and put a couple of bullets through his head⁠ ⁠… and then, as he lies there, stamp on his face, on his eyes, on his teeth!⁠ ⁠…”

The compress fell to the floor with a dull thud. Sarudine, startled, opened his eyes and, in the dimly-lighted room, saw a basin with water, a towel, and the dark window, that like an awful eye, stared at him mysteriously.

“No, no, there’s no help for it now,” he thought, in dull despair. “They all saw it; saw how I was struck in the face, and how I crawled along on all fours. Oh! the shame of it! Struck like that, in the face! No, it’s too much! I shall never be free or happy again!”

And again through his mind there flashed a new, keen thought.

“After all, have I ever been free? No. That’s just why I’ve come to grief now, because my life has never been free; because I’ve never lived it in my own way. Of my own free will should I ever have wanted to fight a duel, or to hit him with the whip? Nobody would have struck me, and everything would have been all right. Who first imagined, and when, that an insult could only be wiped out with blood? Not I, certainly. Well, I’ve wiped it out, or rather, it’s been wiped out with my blood, hasn’t it? I don’t know what it all means, but I know this, that I shall have to leave the regiment!”

His thoughts would fain have taken another direction, yet, like birds with clipped wings, they always fell back again, back to the one central fact that he had been grossly insulted, and would be obliged to leave the regiment.

He remembered having once seen a fly that had fallen into syrup crawling over the floor, dragging its sticky legs and wings along with the utmost difficulty. It was plain that the wretched insect must die, though it still struggled, and made frantic efforts to regain its feet. At the time he had turned away from it in disgust, and now he saw it again, as in a feverish dream. Then he suddenly thought of a fight that he had once witnessed between two peasants, when one, with a terrific blow in the face, felled the other, an elderly, grey-haired man. He got up, wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve, exclaiming with emphasis, “What a fool!”

“Yes, I remember seeing that,” thought Sarudine, “and then they had drinks together at the ‘Crown.’ ”

The night drew near to its end. In silence so strange, so oppressive, it seemed as if Sarudine were the one living, suffering soul left on earth. On the table the guttering candle was still burning with a faint, steady, flame. Lost in the gloom of his disordered thoughts Sarudine stared at it with glittering, feverish eyes.

Amid the wild chaos of impressions and recollections there was one thing which stood out clearly from all others. It was the sense of his utter solitude