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

the city. Not a lantern, not a carriage, not a single sound of the city over the unconcerned stony surface; if you had closed your eyes you would really have thought that you were in a village. There a dog was barking. I had never before heard a dog barking in the city, and I laughed for happiness.

“Listen, a dog is barking.”

My wife embraced me, and said:

“It is there, on the corner.”

We bent over the windowsill, and there, in the transparent, dark depth, we saw some movement⁠—not people, but movement. Something was moving about like a shadow. Suddenly the blows of a hatchet or a hammer resounded. They sounded so cheerful, so resonant, as in a forest, as on a river when you are mending a boat or building a dam. And in the presentiment of cheerful, harmonious work, I firmly embraced my wife, while she looked above the houses, above the roofs, looked at the young crescent of the moon, which was already setting. The moon was so young, so strange, even as a young girl who is dreaming and is afraid to tell her dreams; and it was shining only for itself.

“When will we have a full moon?⁠ ⁠…”

“You must not! You must not!” my wife interrupted. “You must not speak of that which will be. What for? It is afraid of words. Come here.”

It was dark in the room, and we were silent for a long time, without seeing each other, yet thinking of the same thing. And when I started to speak, it seemed to me that someone else was speaking; I was not afraid, yet the voice of the other one was hoarse, as though suffocating for thirst.

“What shall it be?”

“And⁠—they?”

“You will be with them. It will be enough for them to have a mother. I cannot remain.”

“And I? Can I?”

I know that she did not stir from her place, but I felt distinctly that she was going away, that she was far⁠—far away. I began to feel so cold, I stretched out my hands⁠—but she pushed them aside.

“People have such a holiday once in a hundred years, and you want to deprive me of it. Why?” she said.

“But they may kill you there. And our children will perish.”

“Life will be merciful to me. But even if they should perish⁠—”

And this was said by her, my wife⁠—a woman with whom I had lived for ten years. But yesterday she had known nothing except our children, and had been filled with fear for them; but yesterday she had caught with terror the stern symptoms of the future. What had come over her? Yesterday⁠—but I, too, forgot everything that was yesterday.

“Do you want to go with me?”

“Do not be angry”⁠—she thought that I was afraid, angry⁠—“Don’t be angry. Tonight, when they began to knock here, and you were still sleeping, I suddenly understood that my husband, my children⁠—all these were simply temporary⁠ ⁠… I love you, very much”⁠—she found my hand and shook it with the same new, unfamiliar grasp⁠—“but do you hear how they are knocking there? They are knocking, and something seems to be falling, some kind of walls seem to be falling⁠—and it is so spacious, so wide, so free. It is night now, and yet it seems to me that the sun is shining. I am thirty years of age, and I am old already, and yet it seems to me that I am only seventeen, and that I love someone with my first love⁠—a great, boundless love.”

“What a night!” I said. “It is as if the city were no more. You are right, I have also forgotten how old I am.”

“They are knocking, and it sounds to me like music, like singing of which I have always dreamed⁠—all my life. And I did not know whom it was that I loved with such a boundless love, which made me feel like crying and laughing and singing. There is freedom⁠—do not take my happiness away, let me die with those who are working there, who are calling the future so bravely, and who are rousing the dead past from its grave.”

“There is no such thing as time.”

“What do you say?”

“There is no such thing as time. Who are you? I did not know you. Are you a human being?”

She burst into such ringing laughter as though she were really only seventeen years old.

“I did not know you, either. Are you, too, a human being? How strange and how beautiful it is⁠—a human being!”

That which I am writing happened long ago, and those who are sleeping now in the sleep of grey life and who die without awakening⁠—those will not believe me: in those days there was no such thing as time. The sun was rising and setting, and the hand was moving around the dial⁠—but time did not exist. And many other great and wonderful things happened in those days.⁠ ⁠… And those who are sleeping now the sleep of this grey life and who die without awakening, will not believe me.

“I must go,” said I.

“Wait, I will give you something to eat. You haven’t eaten anything today. See how sensible I am: I shall go tomorrow. I shall give the children away and find you.”

“Comrade,” said I.

“Yes, comrade.”

Through the open windows came the breath of the fields, and silence, and from time to time, the cheerful strokes of the axe, and I sat by the table and looked and listened, and everything was so mysteriously new that I felt like laughing. I looked at the walls and they seemed to me to be transparent. As if embracing all eternity with one glance, I saw how all these walls had been built, I saw how they were being destroyed, and I alone always was and always will be. Everything will pass, but I shall remain. And everything seemed to me strange and queer⁠—so unnatural⁠—the table and the food upon it, and everything outside of me. It all seemed to me transparent and light, existing only temporarily.

“Why