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

So saying she kissed him with such passion that Yourii felt dazed. At that moment he almost revered her.

When she had gone, he listened for a long while to the sound of her retreating footsteps, and then picked up his cap from which he shook dead leaves and mould before thrusting it on his head, and going down the hill to the hospice. He made a long detour so as to avoid meeting Sina.

“Ah!” thought he, as he descended the slope, “must I needs bring so pure and innocent a girl to shame? Had it all to end in my doing what any other average man would have done? God bless her! It would have been too vile.⁠ ⁠… I am glad that I wasn’t as bad as all that. How utterly revolting⁠ ⁠… all in a moment⁠ ⁠… without a word⁠ ⁠… like some animal!” Thus he thought with disgust of what a little while before had made him glad and strong. Yet he felt secretly ashamed and dissatisfied. Even his arms and legs seemed to dangle in senseless fashion, and his cap to fit him as might a fool’s.

“After all, am I really capable of living?” he asked himself, in despair.

XXXVIII

In the large corridor of the hospice there was an odour of samovars, and bread, and incense. A strong, active monk was hurrying along, carrying a huge tea-urn.

“Father,” exclaimed Yourii, confused somewhat at addressing him thus, and imagining that the monk would be equally embarrassed.

“What is it, pray?” asked the other politely, through clouds of steam from the samovar.

“Is there not a party of visitors here, from the town?”

“Yes, in number seven,” replied the monk promptly, as if he had anticipated such a question. “This way, please, on the balcony.”

Yourii opened the door. The spacious room was darkened by dense clouds of tobacco-smoke. Near the balcony there was more light, and one could hear the jingling of bottles and glasses above the noisy talk and laughter.

“Life is an incurable malady.” It was Schafroff who spoke.

“And you are an incurable fool!” shouted Ivanoff, in reply, “Can’t you stop your eternal phrase-making?”

On entering, Yourii received a boisterous welcome. Schafroff jumped up, nearly dragging the cloth off the table as he seized Yourii’s hand, and murmured effusively:

“How awfully good of you to come! I am so glad! Really, it’s most kind of you! Thank you ever so much!”

Yourii as he took a seat between Sanine and Peter Ilitsch, proceeded to look about him. The balcony was brightly lighted by two lamps and a lantern, and outside this circle of light there seemed to be a black, impenetrable wall. Yet Yourii could still perceive the greenish lights in the sky, the silhouette of the mountain, the tops of the nearest trees, and, far below, the glimmering surface of the river. From the wood moths and chafers flew to the lamp, and, fluttering round it, fell on to the table, slowly dying there a fiery death. Yourii, as he pitied their fate, thought to himself:

“We, too, like insects, rush to the flame, and flutter round every luminous idea only to perish miserably at the last. We imagine that the idea is the expression of the world’s will, whereas it is nothing but the consuming fire within our brain.”

“Now then, drink up!” said Sanine, as in friendly fashion he passed the bottle to Yourii.

“With pleasure,” replied the latter, dejectedly, and it immediately occurred to him that this was about the best thing, in fact the only thing that remained to be done.

So they all drank and touched glasses. To Yourii vodka tasted horrible. It was burning and bitter as poison. He helped himself to the hors d’oeuvres, but these, too, had a disagreeable flavour, and he could not swallow them.

“No!” he thought. “It doesn’t matter if it’s death, or Siberia, but get away from here I must! Yet, where shall I go? Everywhere it’s the same thing, and there’s no escaping from one’s self. When once a man sets himself above life, then life in any form can never satisfy him, whether he lives in a hole like this, or in St. Petersburg.”

“As I take it,” cried Schafroff, “man, individually, is a mere nothing.”

Yourii looked at the speaker’s dull, unintelligent countenance, with its tired little eyes behind their glasses, and thought that such a man as that was in truth nothing.

“The individual is a cipher. It is only they who emerge from the masses, yet are never out of touch with them, and who do not oppose the crowd, as bourgeois heroes usually do⁠—it is only they who have real strength.”

“And in what does such strength consist, pray?” asked Ivanoff aggressively, as he leant across the table. “Is it in fighting against the actual government? Very likely. But in their struggle for personal happiness, how can the masses help them?”

“Ah! there you go! You’re a superman, and want happiness of a special kind to suit yourself. But, we men of the masses, we think that in fighting for the welfare of others our own happiness lies. The triumph of the idea⁠—that is happiness!”

“Yet, suppose the idea is a false one?”

“That doesn’t matter. Belief’s the thing!” Schafroff tossed his head stubbornly.

“Bah!” said Ivanoff in a contemptuous tone, “every man believes that his own occupation is the most important and most indispensable thing in the whole world. Even a ladies’ tailor thinks so. You know that perfectly well, but apparently you have forgotten it; therefore, as a friend I am bound to remind you of the fact.”

With involuntary hatred Yourii regarded Ivanoff’s flabby, perspiring face, and grey, lustreless eyes.

“And, in your opinion, what constitutes happiness, pray?” he asked, as his lips curled in contempt.

“Well, most assuredly not in perpetual sighing and groaning, or incessant questionings such as, ‘I sneezed just now. Was that the right thing to do? Will it not cause harm to someone? Have I, in sneezing, fulfilled my destiny?’ ”

Yourii could read hatred in the speaker’s cold eyes, and it infuriated him to