Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

drives by they peer at him eagerly from behind the curtains; and when he has passed, go back to their ovens again. It did not surprise them that the Governor, who had always been followed by guards, suddenly appeared without an escort⁠ ⁠… the headsman’s axe, if it could feel, would not be astonished at the sight of a bare throat! It was quite in the order of things that the throat should be bare.

They sat and spun their gruesome threads⁠—these grey, dismal women with their grey, dismal lives⁠—and it was they who awakened that hoary old Law that punished death with death.

Their sorrow for their dead was suppressed and torpid; it was only a part of their great general pain, and they gulped it down as the great, briny ocean would swallow one small briny tear. But on Friday of the third week after the deluge of blood, Nastassja Saasnova, whose little girl (Tanja, only seven) had been killed, went suddenly mad! For three weeks she had worked over her oven like all the rest; had quarrelled with her neighbours, had beaten her other children⁠—and all at once, without any warning, she went insane.

It began in the morning. Her hand trembled, and she broke a cup; then it all came over her with a sickening shock, and she forgot what she was about, ran from one thing to another, and repeated foolishly. “О God, what am I doing?”⁠ ⁠… Then finally she was quite silent! And dumb, with stealthy tread, she slid from corner to corner, taking things up and putting them down⁠—moving them from place to place⁠—and even, in the beginning of her madness, hardly able to tear herself away from the stove. The children were in the garden flying their kites, and when little Petjka ran in for a piece of bread he found his mother stealthily hiding all sorts of things in the oven⁠—a pair of shoes, an old coat, and his cap! At first the boy laughed, but when he caught sight of his mother’s face he ran shrieking into the street. “A⁠—a⁠—ai!” he screamed as he ran, and set the lane in wild alarm.

The women gathered and began to whimper over her like frightened dogs. But she only widened her circles, breaking through their detaining arms; gasped for air and mumbled to herself. Piece by piece she jerked off her rags till, stripped to the waist, her lean and haggard body, with its withered, dangling breasts, showed yellow against the wall. Then with a long and hideous wail she repeated, over and over: “I can’t! Oh, my dear, I can’t⁠—I can’t⁠—I can’t⁠—I can’t!” and ran out into the street, the others following.

Then the whole lane was transformed for one instant into a single shrill howl; it was impossible to tell who was crazy and who was not. The panic subsided when the men ran out from the shops, bound the maniac hand and foot, and poured a bucket of water over her. She lay there in a puddle by the roadside, her naked bosom pressed to the earth, her fists and the blue, mottled arms stretched stiffly forward.

She had turned her face to the side, and her eyes were wild and glaring; her wet grey hair was pressed close to her head, making it seem pitifully small; her whole body was shaken with convulsive jerks. Out from the factory ran her husband, in a fright. He had not washed his sooty face, his shirt was shiny with oil and grime, and a burned finger on his left hand was tied up with a greasy rag.

“Nastja!” he called, bending over her, stern and harsh. “What do you mean? What is the matter with you?” She turned her dumb glassy stare at him and shuddered. He saw the purple bloodshot arms they had so pitilessly bound; loosened the ropes and smoothed her naked yellow shoulder.⁠ ⁠… Then came the police!⁠ ⁠…

When the crowd dispersed two men among them neither went back to the factory nor stayed in the lane: but they went their way slowly to the city. They walked along keeping step; silent and pondering. At the outlet of the Kawatnaja lane they parted.

“What a scene!” said one. “Are you going my way?”

“No!” said the other curtly, and strode along. He had a young tanned throat, and under his cap a shock of curly yellow hair.

VI

Sooner or later the news of the Governor’s assassination had crept into the palace, but here they took it with an extraordinary indifference. As the close presence of the strong man in his full powers hindered their knowledge of the fact that this death meant his death!⁠ ⁠… they regarded it only as a temporary hallucination. Toward the middle of September, the household returned to town, at the urgent request of The Pike who had convinced Maria Petrovna that the country was not safe. And there life took on its accustomed aspect⁠ ⁠… the routine of many years.

Kosloff, the aide, who loathed the dirt and the banal decorations of the Governor’s mansion, had personally supervised its refurnishing. He bought fresh hangings for the walls and reception-rooms, had the ceilings retinted, and ordered new furniture⁠ ⁠… green oak in the style of the Decadence! He quite took upon himself the supervision of the house, to the delight of all; from the servants who were infused with his energy, to Maria Petrovna, who hated all domestic cares, in spite of its roominess the palace was most inconveniently arranged. The bathrooms were next to the reception-rooms, and the lackeys had to carry their dishes down a long cold corridor past the windows of the dining-hall, where one could see them quarrelling and nudging each other as they went. All this Kosloff wished to change, but he had to postpone his plans till summer.

“He will be pleased,” he said to himself, meaning the Governor⁠—but strangely enough this image did not call forth in his mind Peter Iljitch, but some other! Yet in his eager bustle of reform