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

The evil-looking woman with the birdlike face was irritably and noisily telling of a guest who took her for a time⁠ ⁠… and then something had happened. There was much interchange of gutterswords and phrases, pronounced not with the indifference of men, but with a peculiar asperity, even acidity; and every object was called by its proper name.

At first they paid little heed to him, and he maintained an obstinate silence, merely looking on. Liuba, full of her happiness, sat quietly beside him on the bed, one arm about his neck, herself drinking little, but constantly plying him, and from time to time whispering in his ear, “Darling!”

He drank heavily, but it did not make him tipsy; what was happening in him was something different, something which strong alcohol often secretly effects. Whilst he drank and sat there silent, the work was going on in him, vast, destructive, swift, and numbing. It was as though all he had known in his past life, all he had loved and meditated⁠—talks with companions, books, perilous and alluring tasks⁠—was noiselessly being burned, annihilated without a trace, and he himself not injured in the process, but rather made stronger and harder. With every glass he drank he seemed to return to some earlier self of his, to some primitive rebel ancestor, for whom rebellion was religion and religion rebellion. Like a colour being washed away in boiling water, his foreign bookish wisdom was fading and was being replaced by something of his very own, wild and dark as the black earth⁠—from whose bleak stretches, from the infinitudes of slumbrous forest and boundless plain, blew the wind that was the life-breath of this ultimate blind wisdom of his; and in this wind could be heard the tumultuous jangling of bells, and through it could be seen the blood-red dawn of great fires, and the clank of iron fetters, and the rapture of prayer, and the Satanic laughter of myriad giant throats; and above his uncovered head the murky dome of the sky.

Thus he sat. Broad cheeked, pallid, already quite at home with these miserable creatures racketing around him. And, in his soul, laid waste by the conflagration of a desolated world, there glowed and gleamed, like a white fire of incandescent steel, one thing alone⁠—his flaming will; blind now and purposeless, it was still greedily reaching out afar, while his body, undisturbed, was secretly being steeled in the feeling of limitless power and ability to create all things or to shatter all things at will.

Suddenly he hammered on the table with his fist.

“Drink, Liubka! Drink!”

And when, radiant and smiling, she had poured herself out a glass, he lifted his, and cried aloud.

“Here’s to our Brotherhood!”

“You mean Them?” whispered Liuba.

“No, these. To our Brotherhood! To the blackguards, brutes and cowards, to those who are crushed by life, to those perishing from syphilis, to.⁠ ⁠…”

The other girls laughed, the fat one indolently objecting:

“Oh, come, that’s going a bit too far, my dear!”

“Hush!” said Liuba, turning very pale, “He is my betrothed.”

“To those who are blind from birth! Ye who can see, pluck out your eyes! For it is shameful”⁠—and he banged on the table⁠—“it is shameful for those who have sight to look upon those who are blind from birth! If with our light we cannot illumine all the darkness, then let us put out the signal fires, let us all crawl in the dark! If there be not paradise for all, then I will have none for myself! And this, girls, this is no part of paradise, but simply and plainly a piggery! A toast, girls! That all the signal fires be extinguished. Drink! To the Dark!”

He staggered a little as he drank off his glass. He spoke rather thickly, but firmly, precisely, with pauses, enunciating every syllable. Nobody understood his wild speech, but they found him pleasing in himself, his pale figure and his peculiar quality of wickedness. Then Liuba suddenly took up the word, stretching out her hands.

“He is my betrothed. He will stay with me. He was virtuous and had comrades, and now he will stay with me!”

“Come and take Màrkusha’s place,” the fat woman drawled.

“Shut up, Manka, or I’ll smash your face! He will stay with me. He was virtuous.⁠ ⁠…”

“We were all virtuous once,” the evil old woman grumbled. And the others joined in: “I was straight four years ago⁠ ⁠… I’m an honourable woman still⁠ ⁠… I swear to God.⁠ ⁠…”

Liuba was nearly weeping.

“Silence, you sluts! You had your honour taken from you; but he gives it me himself. He takes it and gives it for my honour. But I don’t want honour! You’re a lot of⁠ ⁠… and he’s still an innocent boy!”

She broke into sobs. There was a general outburst of laughter. They guffawed as only the drunken can, without any restraint; the little room, saturated with sounds, and unable to absorb any more, threw it all back in a deafening roar. They laughed until the tears fell; they rolled together and groaned with it. The fat woman clucked in a little thin voice and tumbled exhausted from her chair.

And, last of all, he laughed out loud at the sight of them.

It was as though the Satanic world itself had foregathered there to laugh to its grave that little sprig of virtue, the dead innocence itself joining in the laughter.

The only one who did not laugh was Liuba. Trembling with agitation, she wrung her hands and shouted at them, and finally flung herself with her fists on the fat woman, who even with her beam-like arms could hardly ward off her blows.

“So be it!” he shouted in his laughter. But the others could hear nothing.

At last the noise died down a little.

“So be it!” he cried, a second time. “But, peace! Silence!⁠—I have something to show you!”

“Leave them alone,” said Liuba, wiping her tears away with her fist. “We must get rid of them.”

Still shaking with laughter he turned round to face her.

“Are you frightened?” he asked. “Was it honour you wanted after all? You