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

Liuba slowly rose to her feet, and when, in a tempest of emotion, with proud distended nostrils, he looked at her, he was met by a look as proud and even more disdainful. Even pity shone in the arrogant eyes of the prostitute; she had mounted miraculously a step of the invisible throne and thence, with a cold and stern attention, gazed down on something at her feet⁠—something petty, clamorous, pitiable. She no longer smiled; there was no trace of excitement; her eyes involuntarily seemed to look for the little step on which she was standing, so conscious was she of the new height from which she looked down on all things beneath her.

“What are you?” he repeated, without moving away, as vehement as ever, but already subdued by that calm, haughty gaze.

Then, with an ominous air of conviction, behind which lay a vista of millions of crushed lives and oceans of bitter tears and the unchecked fiery course of rebellion’s cry for justice, she asked sternly:

“What right have you to be fine when I am so common?”

“What?” he did not understand at once, but instantly felt a dread of the gulf that yawned in all its blackness at his very feet.

“I have been waiting for you for a long time.”

“You⁠—waiting for me?”

“Yes, I have been waiting for a fine man. For five years I have been waiting⁠—perhaps longer. All those who came admitted they were brutes⁠—and brutes they were. My author first said he was fine, but then admitted he was a brute, too. I don’t want that sort.”

“What, then⁠—what do you want?”

“I want you, my darling⁠—you. Yes, just such as you.” She scrutinized him carefully and quietly from head to foot and affirmatively nodded her head. “Yes⁠—thank you for coming.”

Then he who feared nothing, trembled.

“What do you want with me?” he asked, stepping back.

“It had to be a fine man, my dear, a really fine man. Those other drivellers⁠—its no good striking them⁠—you only dirty your hands. But now that I have struck you⁠—why, I can kiss my own hand! Little hand, you have hit a fine man!” She smiled, and did in fact three times stroke and kiss her right hand.

He looked at her wildly, and his usually deliberate thoughts coursed with the speed of desperation. There was approaching, like a black cloud, a Thing, terrible and irreparable as death.

“What⁠—what did you say?”

“I said it’s shameful to be fine. Didn’t you know that?”

“I never⁠—” he muttered, and sat down, deeply confused and no longer fully conscious of her.

“Then learn it now.”

She spoke calmly, and only the swelling of her half-bared bosom betrayed how profound the emotion was that lay suppressed behind that myriad cry.

“Do you realise it now?”

“What?” He was recovering himself.

“Do you realise it, I say?”

“Have patience!”

“I am patient, my dear. I have waited five years. Why shouldn’t I be patient for another five minutes?”

She sat back comfortably on the chair, as though in anticipation of a rare pleasure, and crossed her naked arms and closed her eyes.

“You say it’s shameful to be fine?”

“Yes, my pet, shameful.”

“But⁠—what you say is.⁠ ⁠…” He stopped short in terror.

“… is so! Are you afraid? Never mind, never mind⁠—it’s only at first that it’s frightening.”

“But afterwards?”

“You are going to stay with me and learn what comes afterwards.”

He did not understand.

“How can I stay?”

The girl, in her turn, was startled.

“Can you go anywhere now, after this? Look, dear, don’t be deceitful. You’re not a scoundrel like the others. You are really fine, and you will stay. It wasn’t for nothing I waited for you.”

“You’ve gone mad!” he exclaimed sharply.

She looked up at him sternly, and even threatened him with her finger.

“That’s not fine. Don’t speak like that. When a truth comes to you, bow down humbly before it and do not say: ‘You have gone mad.’ That’s what my author says, ‘you’ve gone mad!’ But you be honourable!”

“And what if I don’t stay?” he asked with a wan smile, his lips distorted and pale.

“You will,” she said with conviction. “Where can you go now? You have nowhere to go. You are honourable. I saw it the moment you kissed my hand. A fool, I thought, but honourable. You are not offended that I mistook you for a fool? It was your own fault. Well⁠—why did you offer me your innocence? You thought: I will give her my innocence and she will renounce it. Oh, you fool! You fool! At first I was even offended. Why, I thought, he doesn’t even consider me a human being! And then I saw that this, too, came from this fineness of yours. And this was your calculation: I pay her my innocence, and in return I shall be even purer than before and receive it back like a new shilling that hasn’t been in circulation. I give it to the beggar and it will come back to me.⁠ ⁠… No, my dear, that game is not coming off!”

“N⁠—not coming off?”

“N⁠—no, dear,” she drawled, “for I am not a fool. I’ve seen enough of these tradespeople. They pile up millions and then give a pound to a church and imagine they have righted themselves. No, dear, you must build me an entire church. You must give me the most precious thing you have, your innocence. Perhaps you are only giving up your innocence because it has become useless to you, because it has tarnished. Are you getting married?”

“No.”

“Supposing you had a bride awaiting you tomorrow with flowers and embraces and love, then would you give away your innocence, or not?”

“I don’t know,” he said reflectively.

“This is what I mean. I should have said: Take my life, but leave me my honour. You would give away the cheaper of the two. But, no⁠—you must give me the dearest thing of all, the thing without which you cannot live⁠—that and nothing else!”

“But why should I give it away? Why?”

“Why? Only that it may not be shameful to you.”

“But, Liuba!” he exclaimed in bewilderment. “Listen! You yourself are.⁠ ⁠…”

“Fine, you were