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

took her by the shoulders with his fingers, held her away from himself, then shook her, and, with loud smacks, kissed her on the lips, on the nose, on the eyes.

“Come!”

Suddenly the soldier standing nearest them staggered forward, and opening his hands, let his gun drop. He did not stoop down to regain it, but stood for an instant motionless, turned abruptly and, like a blind man, walked toward the forest over the untouched snow.

“Where are you going?” called out another soldier in fright. “Halt!”

But the man continued walking through the deep snow silently and with difficulty. Then he must have stumbled over something, for he waved his arms and fell face downward. And there he remained lying on the snow.

“Pick up the gun, you sour-faced gray-coat, or I’ll pick it up,” said Tsiganok sternly to the other soldier. “You don’t know your business!”

The little lanterns began to move about busily again. Now it was the turn of Werner and Yanson.

“Goodbye, master!” called Tsiganok loudly. “We’ll meet each other in the other world, you’ll see! Don’t turn away from me. When you see me, bring me some water to drink⁠—it will be hot there for me!”

“Goodbye!”

“I don’t want to be hanged!” said Yanson drowsily.

Werner took him by the hand, and then the Estonian walked a few steps alone. But later they saw him stop and fall down in the snow. Soldiers bent over him, lifted him up and carried him on, and he struggled faintly in their arms. Why did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice.

And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless.

“And I, Musechka,” said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, “must I go alone? We lived together, and now⁠—”

“Tanechka, dearest⁠—”

But Tsiganok took her part heatedly. Holding her by the hand, as though fearing that someone would take her away from him, he said quickly, in a businesslike manner, to Tanya:

“Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You are a pure soul⁠—you can go alone wherever you please! But I⁠—I can’t! A murderer!⁠ ⁠… Understand? I can’t go alone! Where are you going, you murderer? they will ask me. Why, I even stole horses, by God! But with her it is just as if⁠—just as if I were with an infant, understand? Do you understand me?”

“I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once more, Musechka.”

“Kiss! Kiss each other!” urged Tsiganok. “That’s a woman’s job! You must bid each other a hearty goodbye!”

Musya and Tsiganok moved forward. Musya walked cautiously, slipping, and by force of habit raising her skirts slightly. And the man led her to death firmly, holding her arm carefully and feeling the ground with his foot.

The lights stopped moving. It was quiet and lonely around Tanya Kovalchuk. The soldiers were silent, all gray in the soft, colorless light of daybreak.

“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. “Seryozha is dead, Werner is dead⁠—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am alone, alone⁠—”

The sun was rising over the sea.

The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody foam⁠—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had come⁠—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot.

Thus did men greet the rising sun.

A Story Which Will Never Be Finished

Exhausted with the painful uncertainty of the day, I fell asleep, dressed, on my bed. Suddenly my wife aroused me. In her hand a candle was flickering, which appeared to me in the middle of the night as bright as the sun. And behind the candle her chin, too, was trembling, and enormous, unfamiliar dark eyes stared motionlessly.

“Do you know,” she said, “do you know they are building barricades on our street?”

It was quiet. We looked straight into each other’s eyes, and I felt my face turning pale. Life vanished somewhere and then returned again with a loud throbbing of the heart. It was quiet and the flame of the candle was quivering, and it was small, dull, but sharp-pointed, like a crooked sword.

“Are you afraid?” I asked.

The pale chin trembled, but her eyes remained motionless and looked at me, without blinking, and only now I noticed what unfamiliar, what terrible eyes they were. For ten years I had looked into them and had known them better than my own eyes, and now there was something new in them which I am unable to define. I would have called it pride, but there was something different in them, something new, entirely new. I took her hand; it was cold. She grasped my hand firmly and there was something new, something I had not known before, in her handclasp.

She had never before clasped my hand as she did this time.

“How long?” I asked.

“About an hour already. Your brother has gone away. He was apparently afraid that you would not let him go, so he went away quietly. But I saw it.”

It was true then; the time had arrived. I rose, and, for some reason, spent a long time washing myself, as was my wont in the morning before going to work, and my wife held the light. Then we put out the light and walked over to the window overlooking the street. It was spring; it was May, and the air that came in from the open window was such as we had never before felt in that old, large city. For several days the factories and the roads had been idle; and the air, free from smoke, was filled with the fragrance of the fields and the flowering gardens, perhaps with that of the dew. I do not know what it is that smells so wonderfully on spring nights when I go out far beyond the outskirts of