Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

denser. The shadows merged. Volodya felt depressed. But here was the lamp. The light poured itself on the green tablecloth, the vague, beloved shadows appeared on the wall.

Volodya suddenly felt glad and animated, and made haste to get the little grey book. The bull began to low⁠ ⁠… the young lady to laugh uproariously.⁠ ⁠… What evil, round eyes the bald-headed gentleman was making!

Then he tried his own. It was the steppe. Here was a wayfarer with his knapsack. Volodya seemed to hear the endless, monotonous song of the road.⁠ ⁠…

Volodya felt both joy and sadness.

X

“Volodya, it’s the third time I’ve seen you with the little book. Do you spend whole evenings admiring your fingers?”

Volodya stood uneasily at the table, like a truant caught, and he turned the pages of the leaflet with hot fingers.

“Give it to me,” said his mother.

Volodya, confused, put out his hand with the leaflet. His mother took it, said nothing, and went out; while Volodya sat down over his copybooks.

He felt ashamed that, by his stubbornness, he had offended his mother, and he felt vexed that she had taken the booklet from him; he was even more vexed at himself for letting the matter go so far. He felt his awkward position, and his vexation with his mother troubled him: he had scruples in being angry with her, yet he couldn’t help it. And because he had scruples he felt even more angry.

“Well, let her take it,” he said to himself at last, “I can get along without it.”

And, in truth, Volodya had the figures in his memory, and used the little book merely for verification.

XI

In the meantime his mother opened the little book with the shadows⁠—and became lost in thought.

“I wonder what’s fascinating about them?” she mused. “It is strange that such a good, clever boy should suddenly, become wrapped up in such nonsense! No, that means it’s not mere nonsense. What, then, is it?” she pursued her questioning of herself.

A strange fear took possession of her; she felt malignant toward these black pictures, yet quailed before them.

She rose and lighted a candle. She approached the wall, the little grey book still in her hand, and paused in her wavering agitation.

“Yes, it is important to get to the bottom of this,” she resolved, and began to reproduce the shadows from the first to the last.

She persisted most patiently with her hands and her fingers, until she succeeded in reproducing the figure she desired. A confused, apprehensive feelings stirred within her. She tried to conquer it. But her fear fascinated her as it grew stronger. Her hands trembled, while her thought, cowed by life’s twilight, ran on to meet the approaching sorrows.

She suddenly heard her son’s footsteps. She trembled, hid the little book, and blew out the candle.

Volodya entered and stopped in the doorway, confused by the stern look of his mother as she stood by the wall in a strange, uneasy attitude.

“What do you want?” asked his mother in a harsh, uneven voice.

A vague conjecture ran across Volodya’s mind, but he quickly repelled it and began to talk to his mother.

XII

Then Volodya left her.

She paced up and down the room a number of times. She noticed that her shadow followed her on the floor, and, strange to say, it was the first time in her life that her own shadow had made her uneasy. The thought that there was a shadow assailed her mind unceasingly⁠—and Eugenia Stepanovna, for some reason, was afraid of this thought, and even tried not to look at her shadow.

But the shadow crept after her and taunted her. Eugenia Stepanovna tried to think of something else⁠—but in vain.

She suddenly paused, pale and agitated.

“Well, it’s a shadow, a shadow!” she exclaimed aloud, stamping her foot with a strange irritation, “what of it?”

Then all at once she reflected that it was stupid to make a fuss and to stamp her feet, and she became quiet.

She approached the mirror. Her face was paler than usual, and her lips quivered with a kind of strange hate.

“It’s nerves,” she thought; “I must take myself in hand.”

XIII

Twilight was falling. Volodya grew pensive.

“Let’s go for a stroll, Volodya,” said his mother.

But in the street there were also shadows everywhere, mysterious, elusive evening shadows; and they whispered in Volodya’s ear something that was familiar and infinitely sad.

In the clouded sky two or three stars looked out, and they seemed equally distant and equally strange to Volodya and to the shadows that surrounded him.

“Mamma,” he said, oblivious of the fact that he had interrupted her as she was telling him something, “what a pity that it is impossible to reach those stars.”

His mother looked up at the sky and answered: “I don’t see that it’s necessary. Our place is on earth. It is better for us here. It’s quite another thing there.”

“How faintly they glimmer! They ought to be glad of it.”

“Why?”

“If they shone more strongly they would cast shadows.”

“Oh, Volodya, why do you think only of shadows?”

“I didn’t mean to, mamma,” said Volodya in a penitent voice.

XIV

Volodya worked harder than ever at his lessons; he was afraid to hurt his mother by being lazy. But he employed all his invention in grouping the objects on his table in a way that would produce new and ever more fantastic shadows. He put this here and that there⁠—anything that came to his hands⁠—and he rejoiced when outlines appeared on the white wall that his mind could grasp. There was an intimacy between him and these shadowy outlines, and they were very dear to him. They were not dumb, they spoke to him, and Volodya understood their inarticulate speech.

He understood why the dejected wayfarer murmured as he wandered upon the long road, the autumn wetness under his feet, a stick in his trembling hand, a knapsack on his bowed back.

He understood why the snow-covered forest, its boughs crackling with frost, complained, as it stood