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

it is unnecessary and impossible to describe.⁠ ⁠…

The last words of the colonel were:

“I give you my blessing for your death, Seryozha. Die bravely, like an officer.”

And they went away. Somehow they went away. They had been there, they had stood, they had spoken⁠—and suddenly they had gone. Here sat his mother, there stood his father⁠—and suddenly somehow they had gone away. Returning to the cell, Sergey lay down on the cot, his face turned toward the wall, in order to hide it from the soldiers, and he wept for a long time. Then, exhausted by his tears, he slept soundly.

To Vasily Kashirin only his mother came. His father, who was a wealthy tradesman, did not want to come. Vasily met the old woman, as he was pacing up and down the room, trembling with cold, although it was warm, even hot. And the conversation was brief, painful.

“It wasn’t worth coming, mother. You’ll only torture yourself and me.”

“Why did you do it, Vasya? Why did you do it? Oh, Lord!” The old woman burst out weeping, wiping her face with the ends of her black, woolen kerchief. And with the habit which he and his brothers had always had of crying at their mother, who did not understand anything, he stopped, and, shuddering as with cold, spoke angrily:

“There! You see! I knew it! You understand nothing, mother! Nothing!”

“Well⁠—well⁠—all right! Do you feel⁠—cold?”

“Cold!” Vasily answered bluntly, and again began to pace the room, looking at his mother askance, as if annoyed.

“Perhaps you have caught cold?”

“Oh, mother what is a cold, when⁠—” and he waved his hand helplessly.

The old woman was about to say: “And your father ordered wheat cakes beginning with Monday,” but she was frightened, and said:

“I told him: ‘It is your son, you should go, give him your blessing.’ No, the old beast persisted⁠—”

“Let him go to the devil! What sort of father has he been to me? He has been a scoundrel all his life, and remains a scoundrel!”

“Vasenka! Do you speak of your father like this?” said the old woman reproachfully, straightening herself.

“About my father!”

“About your own father?”

“He is no father to me!”

It was strange and absurd. Before him was the thought of death, while here something small, empty and trivial arose, and his words cracked like the shells of nuts under foot. And almost crying with sorrow⁠—because of the eternal misunderstanding which all his life long had stood like a wall between him and those nearest to him, and which even now, in the last hour before death, peered at him stupidly and strangely through small, widely opened eyes⁠—Vasily exclaimed:

“Don’t you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you understand it? Hanged!”

“You shouldn’t have harmed anybody and nobody would⁠—” cried the old woman.

“My God! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your son?”

He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner. The old woman also burst out crying in her corner. Powerless, even for an instant, to blend in a feeling of love and to offset by it the horror of impending death, they wept their cold tears of loneliness which did not warm their hearts. The mother said:

“You ask whether I am a mother to you? You reproach me! And I have grown completely gray during these days. I have become an old woman. And yet you say⁠—you reproach me!”

“Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go. Kiss my brothers for me.”

“Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?”

At last she went away. She wept bitterly, wiping her face with the edges of her kerchief, and she did not see the road. And the farther she got from the prison the more bitterly she wept. She retraced her steps to the prison, and then she strangely lost her way in the city in which she had been born, in which she lived to her old age. She strolled into a deserted little garden with a few old, gnarled trees, and she seated herself upon a wet bench, from which the snow had melted.

And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow!

The old woman jumped up, about to run, but suddenly her head began to swim terribly and she fell to the ground. The icy path was wet and slippery, and she could not rise. She turned about, lifted herself on her elbows and knelt, then fell back on her side. The black kerchief had slipped down, baring upon the back of her head a bald spot amid her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it seemed to her that she was feasting at a wedding, that her son was getting married, and she had been drinking wine and had become intoxicated.

“I can’t! My God! I can’t!” she cried, as though declining something. Swaying her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen crust, and all the time it seemed to her that they were pouring out more wine for her, more wine!

And her heart had already begun to pain her from her intoxicated laughter, from the rejoicing, from the wild dancing⁠—and they kept on pouring more wine for her⁠—pouring more wine!

VI The Hours Are Rushing

On the fortress where the condemned terrorists were imprisoned there was a steeple with an old-fashioned clock upon it. At every hour, at every half-hour, and at every quarter-hour the clock rang out in long-drawn, mournful chimes, slowly melting high in the air, like the distant and plaintive call of migrating birds. In the daytime, this strange and sad music was lost in the noise of the city, of the wide and crowded street which passed near the fortress. The cars buzzed along, the hoofs of the horses beat upon the pavements, the rocking automobiles honked in the distance, peasant izvozchiks had come especially from the outskirts of the city for the Shrovetide season and the tinkling of the bells upon the necks of their little