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

scarlet lining was reflected in the puddles by the wayside, and the tall, stately ghost stalked through the streets, seeking his grave at the head of his column.

The affair came about very simply and quickly⁠—like a picture in a biograph.

At the crossing of two streets was a dingy hay-market, open on Fridays; and here a hesitating voice arrested the Governor.

“Your Excellency!”

“Yes?”

He stood still and faced about.

From behind a lonely hedge across the street two men came hastily striding through the mud: one in high boots, the other in gaiters without overshoes, his trousers rolled up. These wet feet must make him very cold, for his face is greenish pale, and his thick blond hair stands out very stiffly from his head.⁠ ⁠… In his left hand he holds a folded paper, and the right is thrust deep into his pocket.

And directly all is clear; the victim knew that death had come, and they knew that he had seen it.

“If you please,” said the man, and a convulsive tremor passed over his face.

“A petition?⁠ ⁠… What is it about?” the Governor asked superfluously too, but strangely impelled to play the scene out. Yet he did not reach for the petition. The fellow still held out his left hand with the bit of paper that would have deceived no one, and without handing it to the Governor he fumbled with his right hand for the revolver; knitting his brows in his endeavour to free it from the lining of his pocket.

The Governor cast one quick glance about. The squalid marketplace, the mud littered with straw, the lonely hedge⁠—Ah! But it was too late. He gave one short, deep, gasping sigh, and straightened up⁠ ⁠… without terror, and quite without defiance. Yet still there lay somewhere⁠—perhaps in the deep-set wrinkles about his heavy nose⁠—a quiet, almost imperceptible pleading for mercy⁠—just a trace of remorse. But he himself was unconscious of this, and neither of the men observed it.

His death came in three quick shots, sounding together in rapid succession like a single loud report. Three minutes later a policeman hurried up, followed by the Secret Service men, and then the people, as though they had all been hanging about the neighbourhood, behind the corner, awaiting the end.

… And the corpse was covered over.⁠ ⁠…

Some ten minutes later the ambulance drove slowly through the streets with its red cross⁠—and throughout the city questions and answers flew like stones:

“Is he dead?” “On the spot!” “Who was it⁠—did they arrest him?” “No; they got away. No one knows who it was. There were three men.”

And all day long they spoke only of the assassination, some with censure, some with joyful approbation. But through all their talk, whatever its character, one felt the shiver of a mighty terror. Something powerful and annihilating swept like a cyclone over their daily lives; and from behind their dreary counters, their samovars, their beds and wheaten cakes, peered forth through the dimness of the commonplace the threatening figures of that hoary old Law of Revenge.

… And the little schoolgirl wept!⁠ ⁠…

Lazarus I

When Lazarus emerged from the grave wherein for the space of three days and three nights he had dwelt under the mysterious dominion of death, and returned living to his abode, the ominous peculiarities which later made his very name a thing of dread remained for a long time unnoticed.

Rejoicing in his return to life, his friends and neighbors overwhelmed him with caresses and they satisfied their eager interest by ministering to him and caring for his food, his drink and his raiment. They clothed him in rich attire, bright with the hues of hope and merriment, and when he sat among them once more, arrayed like the bridegroom in his wedding garments, and ate and drank once more, they wept for joy and summoned the neighbors to view him, who had so miraculously risen from the dead. The neighbors came and rejoiced; strangers too came from distant cities and villages and in accents of tumultuous praise voiced their homage to the miracle⁠—the house of Mary and Martha hummed like a beehive.

All that seemed novel in the features of Lazarus and in his demeanor they explained as natural traces of his serious illness and the shock through which he had passed. It was manifest that the destructive effect of Death upon the corpse had been merely arrested by the miraculous power, but not altogether undone. And what the hand of Death had already accomplished upon the face and the body of Lazarus was like an artist’s unfinished sketch covered by a thin film. A deep earthy bluish pallor rested on the temples of Lazarus, below his eyes and on his hollow cheeks; his lanky fingers were of the same earthy blue and his nails, which had grown long during his sojourn in the grave had turned livid. Here and there, on the lips and elsewhere, his skin, swollen in the grave, had cracked open and was covered by a fine reddish film that glistened like transparent slime. And he had grown very fat. His body, inflated in the grave, retained that ominous obesity beneath which one scents the putrid sap of dissolution. But the cadaverous and fetid odor which had permeated the burial robes of Lazarus, and seemingly his very body, soon disappeared completely; in the course of weeks even the bluish tint of his hands and of his countenance faded, and time also smoothed out the reddish blisters though they never vanished altogether. Such was the appearance of Lazarus as he faced the world in this his second life. To those who had seen him buried it seemed perfectly natural.

The manner of Lazarus also had undergone a change, but this circumstance surprised no one and failed to attract due attention. Until his death Lazarus had always been care free and merry. He had loved laughter and harmless jests. It was this agreeable and merry disposition, free from malice and gloom, that had made him so well