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

at a point whence he was looking down on some object or person, trying anxiously to recall them out of the deep darkness of the past, even out of what had never existed.

Had he not known it for a thing impossible, he would have said that he had already been here on some occasion, so familiar and habitual had it all become. And this was unpleasant; it had already imperceptibly estranged him from himself and his comrades, and mysteriously made him a part of this institution, part of its wild and loathesome life.

Silence became oppressive.

“Why aren’t you drinking?” he asked.

She shivered.

“What?”

“You haven’t finished your glass, Liuba. Why don’t you?”

“I don’t want to⁠—by myself.”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t drink.”

“And I don’t drink by myself.”

“I would rather eat a pear.”

“Pray do so. They are here for that purposes.”

“Wouldn’t you like a pear?”

The girl did not answer, but turned aside and caught his glance resting on her naked and translucently rosy shoulders, and flung a grey knitted shawl over them.

“It’s rather cold,” she said abruptly.

“Yes, a little cold,” he agreed, although it was very warm in that little room.

And again there was a long and tense silence. From the hall could be heard the catchy rhythm of a noisy ritornello.

“They are dancing,” he said.

“They are dancing,” she replied.

“What was it made you so angry with me, that you struck me, Liuba?”

The girl hesitated and then answered sharply.

“There was nothing else for it so I struck you. I didn’t kill you, so why make a fuss about it?”

Her smile was ugly.

There was nothing else for it? She was looking straight at him with her dark rounded eyes, with a pallid and determined smile. Nothing else for it? He noticed a little dimple in her chin. It was hard to believe that this same head, this evil pallid head, had been lying on his shoulder a minute or two ago, that he had been caressing her!

“So that’s the reason,” he said gloomily. He paced to and fro in the room once or twice, but not toward the girl; and when he sat down again in the same place his face wore a strangely sullen and rather haughty expression. He said nothing, but, raising his eyebrows, stared at the ceiling where there played a spot of light with red edges. Something was crawling across it, something small and black, probably a belated autumn fly, revived by the heat. It had been brought to life in the night, and certainly understood nothing and would soon die. He sighed.

But now she laughed aloud.

“What is there to make you merry?” He looked up coldly and turned aside.

“I suppose⁠—you are very much like the author. You don’t mind? He too at first pities me, and then gets angry, because I do not adore him as though he were an icon. He’s so touchy. If he were God, he’d never forgive even one candle,” she smiled.

“But how do you know any authors? You don’t read anything.”

“There is one⁠ ⁠…” she said curtly.

He pondered, fixing on the girl his unswerving gaze, too calm in its scrutiny. Living in a turmoil himself, he began vaguely to recognize in the girl a rebellious spirit; and this agitated him and made him try to puzzle out why it was that her wrath had fallen on him. The fact that she had dealings with authors, and probably talked with them, that she could sometimes assume such an air of quiet dignity and yet could speak with such malice⁠—all this gave her interest and endowed her blow with the character of something more earnest and serious than the mere hysterical outburst of a half-drunk, half-naked prostitute. At first he had been only indignant, not offended; but now, in this interval of reflection, he was gradually becoming affronted, and this not only intellectually.

“Why did you hit me, Liuba? When you strike anyone in the face, you should tell them why.”

He repeated his question sullenly and persistently. Obstinacy and stony hardness were expressed in his prominent cheekbones and the heavy brow that overshadowed his eyes.

“I don’t know,” she replied with the same obduracy, but avoiding his gaze.

She did not wish to answer him. He shrugged his shoulders, and again went on, pertinaciously staring at the girl and weaving his fancies. His thought, usually sluggish, once aroused worked forcibly and could not be deterred⁠—worked almost mechanically, turning into something like a hydraulic press which slowly sinking powders up stones and bends iron beams and crushes anyone that falls beneath it⁠—slowly, indifferently, irresistibly. Turning neither to the left nor to the right, unmoved by sophisms, evasions, allusions, his thought would push forward clumsily and heavily until it ground itself down or reached the logical extreme beyond which lay the void and mystery. He did not dissociate his thought from himself; he thought integrally, with the whole of his body; and each logical deduction forthwith became real to him⁠—as happens only with very healthy or direct persons who have not yet turned thought into a pastime.

And now, alarmed, driven out of his course, like a heavy locomotive that has slipped its rails on a pitch dark night and by some miracle continues leaping over hillocks and knolls, he was seeking a road and could not anyhow find it. The girl was still silent and evidently did not wish to talk.

“Liuba, let us have a quiet talk. We must try to.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t want to have a quiet talk.”

Then again:

“Listen, Liuba. You hit me, and I cannot let matters rest at that.”

The girl smiled.

“No? What will you do with me? Go to the police-court?”

“No, but I shall keep coming to you until you explain.”

“You will be welcome. Madame gets her profit.”

“I shall come tomorrow. I shall come.⁠ ⁠…”

And then, suddenly, almost simultaneously with the thought that neither tomorrow nor the day after would he be able to come, there flashed upon him the surmise, almost certainty, why the girl had struck him. His face cleared.

“Oh, that’s it then! That’s why you struck me⁠—because I pitied you?