Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

Delesof leaped up, and went with a candle into the anteroom. Zakhár in his nightdress was standing against the door; Albert in cap and alma viva was trying to pull him away, and was screaming at him in a pathetic voice.

“You have no right to detain me; I have a passport; I have not stolen anything from you. You must let me go. I will go to the police.”

“I beg of you, Dmitri Ivánovitch,” said Zakhár, turning to his bárin, and continuing to stand guard at the door. “He got up in the night, found the key in my overcoat-pocket, and he has drunk up the whole decanter of sweet vodka. Was that good? And now he wants to go. You didn’t give me orders, and so I could not let him out.”

Albert, seeing Delesof, began to pull still more violently on Zakhár. “No one has the right to detain me! He cannot do it,” he screamed, raising his voice more and more.

“Let him go, Zakhár,” said Delesof. “I do not wish to detain you, and I have no right to, but I advise you to stay till tomorrow,” he added, addressing Albert.

“No one has the right to detain me. I am going to the police,” screamed Albert more and more furiously, addressing only Zakhár, and not heeding Delesof. “Guard!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his voice.

“Now, what are you screaming like that for? You see you are free to go,” said Zakhár, opening the door.

Albert ceased screaming. “How did they dare? They were going to murder me! No!” he muttered to himself as he put on his galoshes. Not offering to say goodbye, and still muttering something unintelligible, he went out of the door. Zakhár accompanied him to the gate, and came back.

“Thank the Lord, Dmitri Ivánovitch! Any longer would have been a sin,” said he to his bárin. “And now we must count the silver.”

Delesof only shook his head, and made no reply. There came over him a lively recollection of the first two evenings which he and the musician had spent together; he remembered the last wretched days which Albert had spent there; and above all he remembered the sweet but absurd sentiment of wonder, of love, and of sympathy, which had been aroused in him by the very first sight of this strange man; and he began to pity him.

“What will become of him now?” he asked himself. “Without money, without warm clothing, alone at midnight!” He thought of sending Zakhár after him, but now it was too late.

“Is it cold outdoors?” he asked.

“A healthy frost, Dmitri Ivánovitch,” replied the man. “I forgot to tell you that you will have to buy some more firewood to last till spring.”

“But what did you mean by saying that it would last?”

Out of doors it was really cold; but Albert did not feel it, he was so excited by the wine that he had taken and by the quarrel.

As he entered the street, he looked around him, and rubbed his hands with pleasure. The street was empty, but the long lines of lights were still brilliantly gleaming; the sky was clear and beautiful. “What!” he cried, addressing the lighted window in Delesof’s apartments; and then thrusting his hands in his trousers pockets under his coat, and looking straight ahead, he walked with heavy and uncertain steps straight up the street.

He felt an absolute weight in his legs and abdomen, something hummed in his head, some invisible power seemed to hurl him from side to side; but he still plunged ahead in the direction of where Anna Ivánovna lived.

Strange, disconnected thoughts rushed through his head. Now he remembered his quarrel with Zakhár, now something recalled the sea and his first voyage in the steamboat to Russia; now the merry night that he had spent with some friend in the wine-shop by which he was passing; then suddenly there came to him a familiar air singing itself in his recollections, and he seemed to see the object of his passion and the terrible night in the theatre.

But notwithstanding their incoherence, all these recollections presented themselves before his imaginations with such distinctness that when he closed his eyes he could not tell which was nearer to the reality: what he was doing, or what he was thinking. He did not realize and he did not feel how his legs moved, how he staggered and hit against a wall, how he looked around him, and how he made his way from street to street.

As he went along the Little Morskaya, Albert tripped and fell. Collecting himself in a moment, he saw before him some huge and magnificent edifice, and he went toward it.

In the sky not a star was to be seen, nor sign of dawn, nor moon, neither were there any streetlights there; but all objects were perfectly distinguishable. The windows of the edifice, which loomed up at the corner of the street, were brilliantly lighted, but the lights wavered like reflections. The building kept coming nearer and nearer, clearer and clearer, to Albert.

But the lights vanished the moment that Albert entered the wide portals. Inside it was dark. He took a few steps under the vaulted ceiling, and something like shades glided by and fled at his approach.

“Why did I come here?” wondered Albert; but some irresistible power dragged him forward into the depths of the immense hall.

There stood some lofty platform, and around it in silence stood what seemed like little men. “Who is going to speak?” asked Albert. No one answered, but someone pointed to the platform. There stood now on the platform a tall, thin man, with bushy hair and dressed in a variegated gown. Albert immediately recognized his friend Petrof.

“How strange! what is he doing here?” said Albert to himself.

“No, brethren,” said Petrof, pointing to something, “you did not appreciate the man while he was living among you; you did not appreciate him! He