Short Fiction, Vsevolod Garshin [howl and other poems .txt] 📗

“Peter Ivanovich, what did the doctor say to you? Shall I die soon?”

“But, Ivanoff, what are you talking about? Of course you will not die; no bones have been broken. My word, but you are lucky. Not a bone or an artery touched. But how have you lived these three and a half days? What had you to eat?”

“Nothing.”

“And to drink?”

“I took the Turk’s water-bottle. Peter Ivanovich, I cannot talk now⁠—afterwards.”

“All right, chum. Try and sleep now.”

Again sleep⁠—oblivion.⁠ ⁠…

When I awake again it is to find myself in the Divisional Hospital tent. Around me stand nurses and doctors, one of whom I recognize as a well-known St. Petersburg professor. He is leaning over me, his hands are bathed in blood. He does not examine my legs long, and turning towards me, he says: “God has been kind to you, young man. You will live. We have had to take one leg from you, but⁠ ⁠… well, that is nothing. Can you talk?” I am able to talk, and I tell him all that I have written here.

How it has come about that I, who for almost two years have never thought seriously about anything, have suddenly commenced to reflect⁠—I cannot understand. It cannot be that man who has set me thinking, because I so often meet with men of his type that I am accustomed to their sermonizing.

Yes, they almost all, with the exception of the absolutely hardened or really clever ones, invariably talk about matters which are of no use to them or even me. First they ask my name and my age; then in the majority of cases, with an air of concern, they begin to ask, “Is it impossible for you to give up such a life?” At first this kind of thing used to upset me, but now I am accustomed to it. One becomes accustomed to a lot.

However, for the last fortnight, whenever I am quite alone and am not feeling gay⁠—that is, not drunk (because can I really be merry except when drunk?)⁠—I begin to think. And, however much I do not wish to think, I cannot help it. I cannot get away from depressing thoughts. There is only one way of forgetting⁠—to go out somewhere where there are plenty of people, where there is drunkenness and indecency. Then I too begin to drink and misbehave. My brain gets muddled, and I remember nothing.⁠ ⁠… Then it is⁠—easier. But why is it that this never happened before?⁠—not from the very first day I bid goodbye to everything? For more than two years I have lived here in this beastly room, always spending the time in the same way, frequenting the various restaurants and dancing-saloons, and all the time, if it has not really been gay, I at least have not thought so. But now⁠—it is quite, quite different.

How dull and stupid it all is! It is not because I go nowhere; I go nowhere simply because I don’t want to. I entangled myself in this life, I know my own road. In a copy of an illustrated paper which one of my “friends” brings me whenever there is something “spicy” in it, I once saw a picture. In the centre there was a pretty little girl with a doll, and around her there were two rows of figures. On the one side above they went from the child to the little schoolgirl, then the modest young girl, afterwards the mother of a family, and finally an honoured, respected old woman. On the other side, below⁠—was a shop-girl carrying a box, then me, me, and again me. First me⁠—like I am now, second me⁠—sweeping the streets with a broom, and third⁠—the same⁠—as an absolutely repulsive, loathsome old hag. However, I shall not let myself get to that stage. Another two or three years, if I can stand this life as long, and then into the canal. I can do this, I am not afraid.

But what a strange chap the man must be who drew this picture! Why does he take it for granted that a schoolgirl becomes a modest young lady, an honoured mother and grandmother? And I? I too can show off my French and German in the street! And I don’t think I have forgotten how to paint or draw flowers, and I remember “Calipso ne pouvait se consoler du départe d’Ulysse.” I remember Pushkin and Lermontoff, and all⁠—all. And the examinations and that momentous, awful time when I became a fool, a silly fool, and listened to all the passionate, silly speeches of that conceited fop, and how stupidly I enjoyed it, and all the lies and filth in the “best society” from which I came into this, where I now make an idiot of myself with vodka.⁠ ⁠… Yes, now I have begun even to drink vodka. “Horreur!” my cousin, Olga Nicolaievna, would say.

Yes, and is it not in reality “horreur”? But am I to blame in this matter? If I⁠—a seventeen-year-old girl, who for eight years had sat within four walls and had seen only other girls like myself and their different mammas⁠—had not met my “friend,” with his hair à la Capoul, but some other and good man⁠—then it would all have been different.

But what an absurd idea! Are there really any good people? Have I ever met any since or before my downfall? Can I believe that there are good people when of the scores I know there is not one whom I could not hate! Can I believe that they exist when amongst those I meet are husbands of young wives, children (almost children⁠—fourteen and fifteen years old) of “good family”! old men, bald, paralytic, half dead?

And finally, can I help hating and despising them, although I am myself a despicable and despised being, when amongst them are such persons as a certain young German with a monogram tattooed on his