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

or perhaps to the general excitement over military engagements, but to my mind there is too much noise and rejoicing, both in the papers as well as in our office. No one denies that the Belgians are heroes and that King Albert is an exalted personality, worthy of his crown, but since the throats of these heroes are being cut wholesale, what is there to rejoice about? I hold my tongue in my usual manner, of course, but their attitude is amazing. However, I couldn’t resist the popular enthusiasm, and paid my tribute to it by buying a portrait of King Albert. It doesn’t mean, though, that I am carried away by the war. The sight of staring headlines such as “Yaraslav Ablaze,” “Sandomir in Flames,” sends a sharp pain through my brain as if some foreign matter had got into it. What an imagination a man must have to visualise the picture of “Yaraslav Ablaze,” or “Sandomir in Flames”! Unconsciously you find yourself thanking your stars that Petrograd is so far removed from those horrors.

27th September.

After great deliberation I have decided to let Andrei Vasilevitch read this diary, if he is fortunate enough to return from the war, that is. He was never a man to agree with my views; let him judge in this case whether I am right or wrong. I found it distinctly disagreeable to read my remarks about my age and personal happiness. It seems mean to write about these things frankly merely for one’s own benefit, as though one had something to conceal. I am not mean and have nothing to conceal. I merely did not wish to thrust my opinions on other people. I have nothing to hide; my life is open to any man.

Peter got an attack of quinsy and we had great difficulty in getting a doctor. Our own doctor is at the war; those who have not gone away are so busy at the military hospitals that it is next to impossible to get hold of them. I ought to rejoice, according to some people, that my sick child is deprived of medical aid, and to find some lofty purpose in the fact, but I can’t. I shall always have my own views on the subject.

30th September.

In horror and trepidation have I been following the German siege of Antwerp. Thousands of heavy guns are shelling the town; the ruins are in flames; the people have fled; only detachments of soldiers are to be seen in the deserted streets. “The sky over Antwerp is ablaze,” my paper says, and I try to imagine the significance of the phrase. Zeppelins fly in this flaming sky and drop bombs. What fiends in men’s shapes must they be to fly over this hell, over the fires, explosions, and roofs, and rain down more destruction on this blazing mass of ruins?

Worked on by the horrors I read in the newspapers I flew over blazing Antwerp in the night, and despite my unbounded terror, I could not help being envious of those dauntless, fearless men. Did they belong to a different species that they were not afraid and had no pity? Why did their hands not tremble and their hearts not stop still? What kind of eyes must they have to peer over the sides of their Zeppelins (or whatever it is that they do) at the burning, flaming town beneath, and calculate and take aim?

The whole thing seems so much like a fairy tale that I can hardly believe it is true. If it is true, what use am I in the world⁠—a sheep lagging behind the species? It is only in my sleep that I can fly; in my waking moments I look about for a spot where I can hide my head. A long time before the war, one of our dirigibles flew over the Nevsky, and we all rushed out of the office to admire it. How brilliant it looked beneath the rays of the sun as it soared away in the dizzy heights! The people in the streets, too, craned their necks to have a sight of it, a tipsy civil servant among them, a regulation cap on his head, and the neck of a bottle peeping out of his pocket. He half closed his eyes as he looked, seeming to measure the distance, and said aloud, “It needs a sober man for that job!” He ran away, and the rest of us laughed, but his words come back to me now, when I try to picture the blazing sky over Antwerp. Is a sober or a drunken man needed for that job? I refuse to accept the new type that flies through the clouds dropping inflammable bombs! He is the new despot who despises and oppresses all men alike. We have had enough of his kind⁠—truthless, merciless men who would as soon crack a man’s head as an egg. I would sooner be as I am, a lagging sheep, than like one of them. Let them butcher away if they will, I offer my own throat, if it pleases them!

My thoughts keep on reverting to Antwerp. It must be like our Petrograd, spacious and beautiful; its numerous waters reflect the flames now, and blood flows in the darkness of the night. And the sky is ablaze! God! what appalling things are going on in this world!

11th October.

Antwerp has fallen.

15th October.

I don’t know whether it is due to the bad weather and the darkness, and all this muddle, but of late I have been very depressed. I take no pleasure in anything and have a constant feeling of nausea in the pit of the stomach. You start the day each morning with a horrible scramble for a tramcar⁠—there seem more people than ever, in spite of the war, or fewer cars, perhaps⁠—and you come out of the crush bruised and shaken as though you’d been through some drunken brawl.