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

When I lay awake last night I wondered how I would break the news to mother in the event of the calamity happening. What could I say to her? My heart began to beat violently at the very thought. To pronounce the word that is to change completely the aspect of the world for another, to make it something different to what it was a moment ago, is not a pleasant task. To be responsible for the first burst of grief was truly terrifying, particularly as I did not know what form it would take. Would it produce a flood of tears, one heartrending cry, or sudden death?

I watched mother in the dining-room before I came away, as she raised a rusk to her mouth. “I wonder what would happen to that rusk if I were to say that Pavel was killed?” I thought. And a vivid picture rose up in my mind of how that unfortunate rusk would roll to the floor; I even saw the very spot where it would lie, and how Annisia would pick it up when she swept the room, and eat it, little witting how it came there.

The autumn climate of Petrograd is evidently having a bad effect on us all. The children are very fractious. Even my darling Lidotchka so far forgot her usually angelic ways and had a fight with Peter.

The same Evening.

I have just returned from a three hours’ walk along the river and the Nevsky. Our northern capital is indeed a beautiful city, so grand and magnificent! There are many people who compare it unfavourably with Moscow. Even the men in our office are often to be heard in this timeworn dispute, but I hold my tongue according to my usual habit. What is the use of attempting to convince the blind, or men who refuse to see? The man who irritates me most of all in this respect is Zvoliansky, a Pole, who thinks himself competent to judge because he happened to have spent six months studying in Paris. To see the way he turns up his nose! I should like to set the fool to build a city like ours!

I happened to reach the Nevsky at the moment when the lights went up as by magic, and turned the grey twilight into deep blue. It is really wonderful that no matter what the weather, be it raining or snowing, it seems to change with the lighting of the lamps, to some enchanted weather of its own. I mixed with the crowd with a sense of pleasure; it was denser and more animated than usual; I moved along with it and soon found myself at the Admiralty without having noticed the way I had come. We seemed to be treading on air. I admired, as I walked, the numberless lights of green, white and mauve. Tramcars streamed past, so many that one lost count of their green and red lamps. Motors swept over the smooth bridge, their electric lamps looking like enormous shining eyes; electric advertisements flashed in the sky; and the crowd moved along noisily, onward, ever onward; cabs darted in and out among the traffic; a carriage with spirited horses flew past, taking someone to an evening party, no doubt.⁠ ⁠… It is not for me to describe the glories of this scene!

On the embankment huge sombre palaces rose high; the light of a passing steamer twinkled here and there on the dark surface of the water; the Peter-Paul Fortress could just be discernible with its memorials of our Tsars. Its doleful bell sounded like the voice of time.⁠ ⁠… Silent couples sat on the round stone seats as Sashenka and I used to sit together before we were married, when I would put my hand into her warm little muff on pretext of feeling cold. For some time I stood watching the new Palace bridge in course of construction, thinking how that would add to the beauty of our wonderful city.

Wending my way home through the crowd I thought of how remote the horrible war was from us, and how, in spite of its fury, it was powerless to effect human life and all the creations of man. How firm and solid everything seemed! Trams, cabs, even the couples on the seats, and everything connected with our daily life, seemed to be cast in steel. I was more than ever ashamed of my early panic. What had we to fear, indeed!

There are rumours that Berlin is practically in darkness, and that the Germans are starving. As a Russian, I suppose I ought to rejoice in their misfortunes, since they are to blame for this savage war, but⁠ ⁠… again I am going to say something I wouldn’t breathe in our office. I am sorry for the Germans, if Berlin is even a little bit like our Petrograd. How awfully cold those poor, adventurous Teutons must be now, and how they must curse the day that they embarked upon this confounded war. “What is the good of it,” they must think, “if for all our crime and slaughter, we have nothing but darkness and cold?” I can’t understand the sense of people killing each other!

I must go to bed. By the way, I had nearly forgotten⁠—I suppose it’s because I’m not used to keeping a diary that I forget the most essential things⁠—we had a postcard from Pavel. He is alive and well. It came at the moment when mother was wrapping herself up in her shawls in the hall to go home. Both she and Sashenka were very much cheered. I couldn’t help sharing in their happiness. But how frail human happiness is!

25th September.

There is something very low about a crowd, it seems to me. One moment it is ready to curse the war and its cruelties, the next to gloat over it with a morbid pleasure. It may be due to our successes in Galicia,