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

I offended you with my compassion? Yes, it is very stupid⁠ ⁠… but really, I didn’t mean to⁠—though of course it hurts. After all, you are human, just as I am.⁠ ⁠…”

“Just as you are?” she smiled.

“Well, let that pass. Give me your hand. Let’s be friends.”

She turned pale.

“You want me to smack your face again?”

“Give me your hand⁠—as friends⁠—as friends,” he repeated sincerely, but for some reason in a low voice.

But Liuba got up, and moving a little distance away said:

“Do you know⁠ ⁠… either you are a fool or you have been very little beaten!”

She looked at him and laughed aloud.

“My God, yes! My author! A most perfect author! How could one help hitting you, my dear?”

She apparently chose the word author purposely, and with some special and definite meaning. And then, with supreme disdain, taking no more account of him than of a chattel or hopeless imbecile or drunkard, she walked freely up and down, and jeered:

“Or was it that I hit you too hard? What are you whining about?”

He made no reply.

“My author says that I’m a hard fighter. Perhaps he has a finer face. However hard one smacks your cheeks you seem to feel nothing! Oh, I’ve knocked lots of people’s mouths about, but I’ve never been so sorry for anyone as for my author. ‘Hit away’, he says, ‘I deserve it.’ A drunken slobberer! It’s disgusting hitting him. He’s a brute. But I hurt my hand on your face. Here⁠—kiss it where it smarts!”

She thrust her hand to his lips and withdrew it swiftly. Her excitement was increasing. For some minutes it seemed as though she were choking in a fever; she rubbed her breast, breathing deeply through her open mouth, and unconsciously gripped the window curtains. And twice she stopped as she went to and fro to pour out a glass of cognac. The second time he remarked in a surly tone.

“You said you didn’t drink alone.”

“I have no consistency, my dear,” she replied, quite simply. “I’m drugged, and unless I drink at intervals I stifle⁠ ⁠… This revives me.”

Then all at once, as if she had only just noticed him, she raised her eyes in surprise, and laughed.

“Ah! There you are⁠—still there! Not gone yet! Sit down, sit down!” With a savage light in her eyes, she threw off the knitted wrap, again baring her rosy shoulders and thin soft arms. “Why am I all wrapped up like this? It’s hot here and I⁠ ⁠… I must have been saving him! How kind!⁠ ⁠… Look here, you might at least take your trousers off. It’s only good manners here to do without your trousers. If your drawers are dirty I’ll give you mine. Oh, never mind the slit. Here, put them on. Now, my dear boy, you must, you’ll have to.⁠ ⁠…”

She laughed until she choked, begging and putting out her hands. Then she knelt down, clasping his hands, and implored him:⁠—

“Now, my darling, do! And I’ll kiss your hand!”

He moved away, and, with an air of sullen grief, said:

“What are you trying to do with me, Liuba? What have I done to you? My relations with you are quite proper. I’m being perfectly decent to you. What are you doing? What is it? Have I offended you? If I have, forgive me. You know, I am⁠ ⁠… I don’t know about these things.”

With a contemptuous shrug of her naked shoulders, Liuba rose from her knees and sat down, breathing heavily.

“You mean you won’t put them on.”

“I’m sorry, but I should look.⁠ ⁠…”

He began saying something, hesitated and continued irresolutely, drawling his words.

“Listen, Liuba.⁠ ⁠… It’s quite true!⁠ ⁠… It’s all such nonsense! But, if you wish it, then we can put out the light? Yes, put out the light, please, Liuba.”

“What?” The girl’s eyes opened wide in bewilderment.

“I mean,” he continued hurriedly, “that you are a woman and I am⁠ ⁠… certainly I was in the wrong.⁠ ⁠… Don’t think it was compassion, Liuba. No, really it wasn’t. Really not, Liuba. I⁠ ⁠… but turn out the light, Liuba.”

With an agitated smile he put out his hands to her in the clumsy caressing way of a man who has never had to do with women. And this is what he saw: she clenched her fists with a slow effort and raised them to her chin and became, as it were, one immense gasp contained in her swelling bosom, her eyes huge and staring with horror and anguish and inexpressible contempt.

“What is the matter, Liuba?” he asked, shattered. And with a cold horror, without unclasping her fingers, almost inaudibly she exclaimed:

“Oh, you brute! My God, what a brute you are!”

Crimson with the shame of the reproof, and outraged in that he had himself committed outrage, he stamped furiously on the floor and hurled abuse in rough curt words at those wide staring eyes with their unfathomable terror and pain.

“You prostitute, you! You refuse! Silence! Silence!”

But she still quietly shook her head and repeated:

“My God! My God! What a brute you are.”

“Silence, you slut! You’re drunk. You’ve gone mad! Do you think I need your filthy body? Do you think it’s for such as you that I’ve kept myself? Sluts like you ought to be flogged!” And he lifted his hand as though to box her ears, but did not touch her.

“My God! My God!”

“And they even pity you! You ought to be extirpated, all this abomination and vice! Those who go with you, too⁠—all that rabble! And you dare to think me anything of that sort!”

He roughly took her by the hand and flung her on the chair.

“Oh, you fine man! Fine? Fine, are you?” She laughed in a transport of delight.

“Fine? Yes. All my life! Honourable! Pure! But you? What are you, you harlot, you miserable beast?”

“A fine man!” The delight of it was intoxicating her.

“Yes, fine. After tomorrow I shall be going to my death, for mankind, for you⁠ ⁠… and you? You’ll be sleeping with my executioners. Call your officers in here! I’ll fling you at their feet and tell them, ‘Take your carrion!’