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

I looked down on the railway-sleepers, and the damp stones, and shivered as from cold. Everything looked wet, dirty, and sombre. Here and there along the iron rails were white spots, and there was something in that awful whiteness, clinging to the cold iron, that set my teeth chattering.

Two men were sitting with their backs to me on the platform steps, wrapped in their sheepskin cloaks to keep out the damp. One of them was speaking, evenly and monotonously, the other listening. In all probability they were talking of the most ordinary subjects; but even now I often hear in dreams that even speech without audible words, and think of the damp morning and the splashed sleepers, and close by, in the shed, under a bit of wet matting, the thing that had once been called Urmánov.

And is this really the end of Urmánov’s history and of my dreams? Impossible! It is too senseless to be true. And, to shake off the nightmare I ran hastily down on to the platform and lifted the cold, damp, frozen matting.⁠ ⁠…

But the nightmare remained. Yes, evidently I had been too self-confident. My “way of thinking” was no protection against this, the most horrible of all forms of death.

The station people, in their simplicity, had gathered up the suicide’s brains and laid them mixed with sand and gravel, in the fragments of the shattered skull.

I stood before this thing, lost and helpless as a bird under the baleful eyes of a snake. And I felt how its deadly look pierced into the very depths of my defenceless soul.

The watchman laid his hand on my shoulder. I knew the fellow well (he acted as guard), and I had often talked with him. But now he eyed me as if he did not know me, and his face wore an unwonted look.

“Don’t touch it, sir, it would be sinful,” he said sternly, taking the matting from my hand. Then, probably noticing my stupefied condition, he added in a gentler tone, as he recognized me, “Don’t, sir⁠—it isn’t good for you to look at.”

“But why, why did you⁠ ⁠… ?” I asked, in a vacant sort of way.

“What?”

“Why⁠—did you⁠—pick it up?”

“Why, what else should we do? For decency.”

“It is our business,” added the other man severely. “God will judge him for it up there, but we have got to lay him in the earth⁠—that is our part.”

I looked at the speaker with a helpless, foolish smile.

“Lay him in the earth⁠—Who? Then that means⁠—for then all is not over with Urmánov yet⁠—there is still something to be done⁠—some process to be gone through;” then I stopped a moment and broke into a laugh.

The men glanced at each other in astonishment.

“He laughs!” said the one who was a stranger to me.

“There! There! It has just knocked him over. He doesn’t mean to laugh. I tell you what, sir you go home, and God speed you. He’s not fit for you to see.”

“And⁠—for⁠—you?” I asked mechanically.

“Well, we have to. That is another thing; we are working men,” added the strange peasant, looking away. “But you only get upset. Go, my lad, go away.”

He gave my shoulders a push; I went, and when, as I languidly mounted the hillock, I stopped short, he repeated:⁠—

“There, there, go along.”

And I did go, but it seemed to me that I carried away with me something out of the shed.

Certainly I had been mistaken in hoping that my strength and “way of thinking” could arm me against that awful sight.

I remember once hearing how a servant-maid, while cleaning a third-story window, slipped and fell onto the pavement. By some strange chance, she was able to get up and walk into the house. When asked how she felt, the poor girl replied that there was nothing the matter with her. It turned out, however, that she was all shattered internally, and a few hours later she died.⁠ ⁠…

I, too, when I stood in the shed, should have said that nothing particular had befallen me. Nevertheless, I also was shattered internally, although I felt no pain, no grief, no regret,⁠ ⁠… nothing!

There was only a strange calmness and an indescribable sense of isolation. I asked myself with a certain surprise: Had I really, really walked along that same avenue a few minutes previously? Was it actually myself, not some other body?

Did it ever happen to you in childhood to fall asleep in the daytime, while, though the sun was shining, storm clouds were gathering on the horizon? You slept through the storm, and heard neither the pelting rain nor the thunderclaps, nor the crash of splintered window-shutters, and yet, when you awoke you knew that something extraordinary had befallen since you fell asleep. Everything seems new and strange⁠—not as you left it not like a continuation of the same day.⁠ ⁠… Is it the same day? Is it the same room? Or have you slept a whole day and night through, to the next morning, and even been transported to a new place? A cock crows outside; and his shrill voice sounds as defiant as ever. A dog barks, and its bark only reminds you of the bark of a dog of your own; one you had long, long ago.⁠ ⁠… And you can hear children’s voices; but they, too, have a far-off sound, like faint memories of other and once familiar voices. And the little man who lay down in your bed?⁠ ⁠… You don’t even know whether it was you yourself, or another who merely lives in your recollection.⁠ ⁠…

A like experience had befallen me. During the few minutes that I stood in the shed with the corner of matting in my hand, a great gulf had opened between my present and my past life. It was as though I had really gone to sleep, and while I slept a hurricane had swept over my soul. For my former sensations had left me and faded into dim and confused memories.⁠ ⁠… Urmánov,⁠ ⁠… the American lady,⁠ ⁠… love, ecstasy,⁠ ⁠… his