Short Fiction by Vladimir Korolenko (ready player one ebook TXT) 📕

He was walking in the avenue over the unbroken snow; and his tragic figure formed a striking contrast with the virgin stillness of the park. Hastily flinging on my overcoat, I ran out after him, calling him by name. The figure walked on without giving heed. After going down the main avenue it turned and disappeared among the tree-trunks. I stood still a moment, looking at the lonely footprints. The veil of snow was unsullied save here and there by the light marks of rooks’ feet, and a squirrel, running from tree to tree, had left traces of its path. A few dead boughs, which had fallen beneath their burden of the snow, showed black on the white surface.

My imagination was struck with some peculiar significance in the line of lonely footsteps across the virgin snow of the park.

“Urmánov!” I called again.

My voice rang out clear among the trees. Several rooks started from the boughs, shaking down lumps of snow. Then the faint echo of my cry came back to me from the lake which Urmánov was approaching. Though he must have heard me, he neither looked round nor altered his course. I saw in this inattention a sign of hostility, not to me personally, for I myself should not have recognised my own voice, but to anyone whatever who called to him in the mournful solitude into which he had plunged.

I felt sure that if it were Urmánov his face must again be wearing the gloomy and doggedly sinister expression which I had twice seen on it before. For that matter, I was not certain that I really had seen Urmánov. My fellow-students, when I told them of the incident, assured me that he had left Moscow a month previously.

As for the American woman, she had got her money and returned to America.

By the next morning the snow was half melted. Here and there the black earth peeped out, and in the morning a thick warm mist hung over the landscape. During the day it partially cleared off; and sharp, cold currents swept past, as though the frost were beginning to stretch out its icy fingers. The air became a clearer medium for both light and sound. The black spots of thawed earth, the damp fences, the humid tree-trunks and bushes all stood out clear in the atmosphere, and seemed to have grown heavy and dark and sorrowful.

The rattle and rush of the goods trains came from the distance so clearly and distinctly that one could almost distinguish every thud of the engine, every click of the wheels. When the train came out of the cutting it seemed quite close. It moved through the snowy fields like a long black serpent and something rumbled and steamed beneath it, as though the earth itself were boiling under the black band that moved along under the foggy sky from west to east.

As we sat in our room after dark, Titus and I heard the rumble of one of these trains through the closed window.

“It is curious how long that engine whistles,” suddenly remarked Titus, raising his head from his notes.

He went to the window and opened it. A great noise rushed into the room. Something was scraping, groaning and screaming, as if right underneath our window. Then the whistling and scraping stopped, and all was quiet. Leaning from our window in the darkness we saw lanterns moving along the rails.

“The train is gone off the rails,” said Titus indifferently. “That happened once last year. Come along Gavrik, let’s have tea.”

But still I stood, looking out of the window at the dark field and the little lights gleaming like glowworms in the night. After the sounds that had just filled the evening air there was something in the sudden silence weird and startling. The moist breeze shook our window-frame; a brook, half released from its frosty fetters, gurgled under the snow, and the bushes swayed their dry twigs under our windows.

Then the train moved on again, with a rumbling noise dying away in the distance. The night grew quite dark, impenetrable clouds covered the sky, and only one light remained on the spot where a moment ago there had been so much hurry and movement.

I shut the window.

Titus and I sat up long after midnight, carrying on a frank, delightful conversation. Then I put out the light and fell sound asleep, never thinking how long it would be before I should know such sweet, untroubled sleep again, nor that the last of my childish dreams hovered round my pillow on that last night of my youth.

Yes, if since then I have known joy, emotion, hope, they have certainly not been the same joys and hopes, and I have dreamt other dreams.

XIII

I was wakened next morning by a knock at my chamber door. Though the gray winter dawn looked in at the window and the flame of a candle shone through our ground glass door, it was still dark in our room. Soon the light disappeared, and the familiar tread of Markelych, the porter, sounded in the corridor. From the corner where Titus’ bed stood I heard sleepy sighs and lazy movements. Titus was dressing.

I surmised that he had heard some news. If anything happened during the evening or night Titus was always the first to know of it, thanks to Markelych, who was devoted to my friend on account of his simplicity and his habits of order.

“You might at least put your books away,” old Markelych used to say to me, pointing with his finger to my table. And he looked reproachfully at me from under his spectacles, which were tied around his bald head with a greasy string. “Just look at Titus Ivanich, that’s what you may call a real tidy gentleman.”

With me, as with most of the other students, Markelych usually put on a reproachful manner, and only spoke to order us about; but he was really fond of Titus, and gave him all the latest