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

hungry? Let me kiss your feet. I know where they will soon be going, your light, swift little feet. And I know that wherever they pass by flowers will spring up⁠—wondrous, sweet-smelling flowers. Ye call. We will come, then.

Hither! my risen Talent⁠—why stand gazing at the fleeting clouds. Hither! my little sportive Hopes.

Stop!

I hear music. Don’t shout so, cherub. Whence these wondrous sounds? Gentle, melodious, madly joyful, and sad, they speak of life eternal⁠—

Nay, be ye not afraid. This will soon pass away. I weep, indeed, for joy!

Ah! how glorious is life for the risen!

The Wall I

I and another leper cautiously drew near to the very wall, and looked up. From where we stood its top was not visible, but it rose straight and smooth, and as it were bisected the sky. Our half of the sky was dark grey, toned gradually into dark blue on the horizon, so that it was impossible to say where the black earth began, and where the sky ended. The dark night sighed and groaned dull and sad, crushed between the earth and the sky, and with each sigh there spluttered out from her bosom sharp hot grains of sand, which intensified the torture of our burning sores.

“Let us try and climb over,” said my companion, and his breath, as he spoke, was loathsome and fœtid, even as my own. He bent his back and I stood on it, but the wall towered as high above us as ever. As it bisected the sky, so it divided the earth, lying on it like a sated boa-constrictor, going down into the abysses and up into the mountains, while its head and its tail stretched beyond the horizon.

“Then, let us pull it down,” the leper proposed.

“Let us pull it down,” I agreed.

So we threw ourselves with our breasts against the wall, and it became red with the blood of our wounds, but remained dull and immovable as before. We fell into despair.

“Kill us! kill us!” we groaned as we crawled along, and people turned their faces from us in disgust, so that we saw only their backs convulsed with profound loathing.

So we dragged ourselves along, until we met with a man dying of starvation. He was sitting leaning against a stone, and it seemed as though the very granite was sore with the sharpness of his pointed shoulder-blades. There was not an ounce of flesh upon him, and as he moved, his bones rattled and his dry skin crackled. His under jaw was dropped, and from the dark aperture of his mouth there issued a dry, rasping voice:

“I am star⁠—ving.”

But we only laughed, and slouched on the faster, till we came upon a quartette who were dancing. They advanced and retired, they took one another by the waist and wheeled round, but their faces were pale, and tortured, and smileless. One of them began to weep, because he was tired of their endless dance, and begged to be allowed to stop; but one of the others, without speaking, gripped him by the waist and whirled him round, and once again he began to advance and retire, and at each step a great troubled tear dropped from his eye.

“I should like to dance,” said my companion with a snuffle. But I dragged him away. And once more the wall rose before us, and by it two persons were squatting on their heels. One of them at regular intervals kept striking his forehead against the wall, and then would fall down insensible. Then the other would regard him seriously, feel with his hand first the man’s head and then the wall, and as soon as the other recovered consciousness would say:

“Try again; there’s not much of it left.”

And the leper laughed.

“They’re fools,” said he cheerfully, puffing out his cheeks. “They think that there is light beyond. But it is dark there also, and there too are lepers dragging themselves along, and entreating ‘Kill us!’ ”

“But what about the old man, eh?” I asked.

“Well! what of him?” retorted the leper. “He was indeed a stupid blind and deaf old man. Who could discover the hole he picked through the wall? Could you? Could I?”

I was enraged at this answer, and beat my companion cruelly on his blistered skull, exclaiming:

“Why, then, do you try to climb over it?”

And he began to weep, and we wept together, and continued on our way, entreating:

“Kill us! kill us!”

But faces were shudderingly turned from us, and none was willing to kill us. And yet, they slay the handsome and the strong; us they are afraid to touch! The bastards!

II

For us time was not; there was neither yesterday, nor today, nor tomorrow. Night never left us, never reposed behind the mountains, so as to return strong, coal-black, and still. Therefore was she always so tired, out of breath, and morose. She was malign. It would come to pass, that she could no longer endure to listen to our sobs and groans, to look upon our sores, our grief and evil case, and then her dark, dully working breast would boil over with a stormy rage. She would roar at us like a mad imprisoned beast, and angrily wink her fearful flaming eyes, which shed a red light on the bottomless pits, on the sombre proudly quiescent wall, and on the miserable group of trembling humanity. They pressed against the wall, as though it were a friend, and entreated it to protect them, but it was ever our enemy⁠—ever. The Night was disgusted at our pusillanimity and cowardice, and burst into angry laughter, which shook her speckled grey paunch, and the bald, ancient mountains caught up that satanic laughter. The wall with grim mirth sonorously reechoed it, playfully showering stones upon us, breaking our heads and flattening out our bodies. So those great ones made merry, and shouted one to the other, while the wind whistled a wild accompaniment, and we lay prone, and listened