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

day’s work I am well pleased at the prospect of a peaceful night’s rest!

Petrograd,
Tuesday, 1st September.

This is a great, historic day. The name of St. Petersburgh has been changed to Petrograd. Henceforth I shall be a citizen of Petrograd. It will be difficult to get used to the change, though it sounds so well. The men in our office are delighted, but I am sorry to lose familiar old Petersburgh, St. Petersburgh, into the bargain. Petrograd makes you feel as though you had been stuck in your chief’s waiting-room for a whole day in a new coat. The coat was a good one, no doubt, but you couldn’t help regretting the cast-off jacket, every stain of which reminded you of its lost comfort.

We continue to be victorious. Prussia has been occupied by our troops, and there is a rumour that today or tomorrow, we shall take Königsberg. This is becoming serious, indeed! Today’s staff communique says that Lvov and Halitch have fallen, and that the Austrians are completely routed.

I need not conceal what I am going to say. For all that I am a peace-loving man I can’t help feeling the glory of it. If there must be a war, of course it is better to beat than be beaten.

How quickly the war has spread! How swift are its fiery footsteps! I am reminded of a fire I once saw in the country when a boy. One house caught fire at first, and in less than an hour every thatched roof in the village was ablaze, and there seemed no end to the sea of flame.

It would be an interesting study for a moralist to discover what there was in the human soul that found satisfaction in watching a fire. What is it that produces the festive sensation it gives? Is it the alarm bell, the firemen’s helmets, or the bustling crowd? I went to a school in a provincial town when I was a boy, and I well remember how we used to run to watch a fire, no matter how far away it was. Workmen would throw down their tools and run, paying no heed to dusty clothes and grimy faces. At the cry of “Fire,” men and boys scrambled to the roofs, the iron sheets clanking as they went, and there they stood, arms outstretched, fingers pointing in the direction of the fire, in the attitudes of marshals on monuments. Even at school we did not fail to rush to the windows at sound of the fire brigade, and the masters, too, were not above looking out themselves. And no one thought at all of the poor people whose house was burning.

I confess to a certain feeling of excitement and curiosity at the European conflagration, and wonder how it will change from day to day. I should have preferred peace, of course, and have no sympathy with the continual assertion of the men in our office that we should be proud to be living at a time like the present and going through this war; nevertheless, I cannot help being interested in the war.

Pavel is the only load at my heart. He is treading as a conqueror on Prussian soil so far, but who knows what may happen tomorrow? Where would I have been had I been, say, twenty or thirty, not forty-five? The thought damps your ardour somewhat. It would be as well to remember it when your enthusiasm gets the better of you.

Sunday, 20th September.

It is over a fortnight since we have heard any news of Pavel. From his last letter or two we gathered that he was somewhere in Prussia where the Samsonov Corps was so completely smashed up. Sashenka is horribly uneasy, and added to that, her mother comes to us almost every day, and the sight of the poor old lady’s grief upsets the whole household. She is here now, having come straight from Mass. Sashenka is giving her coffee in the dining-room as I write here. Besides Pavel, Sashenka’s mother has another son, Nikolai, who is married and has a family. The old lady lives with them, having no means of her own, but either because Nikolai is unsympathetic, or by the very nature of things, she is drawn more towards her daughter, and gives us the benefit of every little trouble and worry she has. I am not complaining of the harmless old lady, but I must confess I do find her visits rather trying at times. One day it’s tears and complaints about Nikolai, who doesn’t get on very well with his wife, another it’s Pavel. There is always something to upset Sashenka and bring discord into our otherwise happy family.

I am very fond of Pavel myself, and can’t think without a shudder that at this moment, as I write his name, he may be wounded or even killed. I awoke in the middle of last night and could not go to sleep again for two absurd, conflicting sensations that tormented me. I couldn’t think of Pavel as living, yet I had no ground for thinking him dead. I didn’t know whether to pity him exposed to danger in the trenches, or to mourn for him dead.

At the present moment it seems to me that he is alive, but sooner or later he is bound to be killed in this horrible war that is more like some wholesale butchery than the triumph of justice. I never argue with the men in our office when they declare that the war will be over in November. Their view seems to me too optimistic; we can hardly expect peace before Christmas at least. Another four months are before us, and with two hundred thousand killed every month, what earthly chance can Pavel have?

Being a man I can look the inevitable in the face with fortitude, and will bear the blow with dignity should it befall us, but how about mother and Sashenka? The poor old lady is ready