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

great mission,⁠ ⁠… whither is all that gone? When did it happen? With whom?⁠ ⁠…

There is nothing; and perhaps there never was anything.⁠ ⁠… Otherwise, how could I be so wonderfully calm? How is it that I neither pity nor accuse, nor feel angry with anyone for Urmánov’s death? I am not even sorry.⁠ ⁠…

No; there is nothing of that⁠ ⁠… there is only.⁠ ⁠…

Again a slight inward shiver; and, through all my strange calm, I realize that I am not happy. It is as if there had dripped into me something gray, a spot of foggy mire, which I instinctively fear to disturb. I remember that with this fear was mingled a sense of squeamishness; as if I wanted to get rid of something almost physically repulsive. It was the recollection of the white substance lying there. The shattered fragments of skull.

Whither, I asked, myself, is gone all that which appeared to me as love, suffering, exalted aspirations and high thought?

It all lies there in the shattered skull, together with the sand and the gravel.

The gray, miry stain changes from a foggy spot into a cloud, hiding the light of life in my mind. As I thought of all these things the cloud continued to grow, and I shivered as with inward cold.⁠ ⁠…

Between the larches at the end of the avenue, I could see the chipped and dirty stone pillars of the gate. Beyond these again were the walls of the students’ quarters, pitted with hideous gray spots where the stucco had peeled off. The wet roofs had begun to drip. The clouds were hanging low⁠—as if I had lost the sense of height⁠—and the sky seemed as if it were covered with dirty rags.

“What is wrong with you, Gavrik?” Titus asked me anxiously when I entered the room; “you are frightfully pale. Are you cold? Have some tea.”

He ran for boiling water, made tea, and, according to his habit, carefully covered the teapot with a napkin. I sat on the bed and watched his proceedings indifferently as if they were no concern of mine.

XVII

Till now, I had been very fond of Titus. We had been schoolfellows; although he was much older than I. Poor Titus was rather ill provided with brains, learned everything with incredible effort, and regarded me with adoring admiration. I, in my heart, appreciated the energy with which he overcame difficulties, rendered almost unconquerable by his stupidity, and highly valued his good-nature, his sincere affection for myself, and his sound common-sense⁠—a quality which I completely lacked.

I was often deeply touched by the sight of his arduous toil.

When preparing for examinations he would arm himself with notes a long time beforehand, sit down at the table, stop his ears, schoolboy fashion, and begin to mumble over his book, repeating every sentence again and again. At these moments his face wore a mixed expression of suffering and stern resolve. When he thought that he had got a sentence by heart, he would cover it with his hand, turn up his eyes, and repeat it, first with effort, afterwards more easily. Then a contented look would cross his weary face, only, however, to be replaced with the old careworn expression when he turned over a new page.

He was not ashamed to cram thus in my presence. I knew him well, and knew how hard it was for him, and how sometimes he would despair and imagine that he should never get his diploma. I knew, too, how much he needed his diploma⁠—that all his future depended on it. In some faraway little western town his old mother was struggling on earning her living among strangers, and supporting an invalid daughter by arduous effort. For his sake these two women practised a ferocious economy, putting all their trust in Titus, and looking forward to the completion of his course, for the fruition of their hopes and redemption from the dreary slavery of their lot. And Titus did his best.

I knew all this, and therefore it never entered into my head to laugh at him when he sat rocking himself backwards and forwards with half-shut eyes and an agonized face; or when, on going to bed, he put his book under his pillow according to the schoolboy superstition that he should thereby get its contents into his head during the night. I understood that at this moment, Titus was not in the mood for discussions on rationalism. When he went up to the examination table and held out his hand for the ticket, I trembled for him more than for myself. And when he answered, as was his wont, word for word from the notes which he had learned by rote, I used to fear that the professor would notice the senseless monotony of his voice and his occasional strange mistakes.

All this bound us together in a close friendship. I always did my best to keep Titus out of the complications into which I flung myself with enthusiasm and which might, in one way or another, have spoiled his career. Indeed, when he did occasionally appear at our meetings, in was only as a listener. He himself never uttered a word; and only afterwards, when alone with me, would he venture to submit some idea of his own for discussion. In this there was much that was pathetic. Poor Titus would doubtless have liked to cultivate “ideas,” but he knew that for him this was a forbidden luxury, that his business was to grind at his notes and get his degree. A certain shade of melancholy might therefore be observed in his Platonic affection for “ideas,” which he called by the generic name of “Philosophy,” esteeming them in his own particular fashion from afar, and through me, as people esteem the distinguished acquaintances of an intimate friend. Sometimes I would try to explain these ideas to him, eagerly and enthusiastically, as was my wont. In these talks and expositions he greatly delighted, listening attentively and earnestly, and never interrupting me, however late