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

being and drives me to despair. I am beginning to sleep badly, too: I lie awake straining to catch some sound. Sasha is also uneasy in her sleep; she moans and throws her arms about. I feel quite sorry for her. She is only a woman, after all.

We’ve had news of Pavel. He tells us that he has been moved to some base, so that we can be easy about him for some time. Mother made me quite angry today. She doesn’t seem to know what a base means, and keeps on looking for Pavel’s name in the casualty lists. It’s useless to tell her that the lists are old ones. She won’t believe a word I say. The poor old lady must have lost her senses a bit, I think.

This has been a most unpleasant day. Zvohansky, the Pole in our office, enlarged on the subject of the Turks entering the war. He was stupidly exultant at the prospect of Tsar-Grad8 and the Straits becoming ours! I couldn’t help thinking what a fool he was, and how glad he ought to be that Petrograd still belonged to us without bothering about Tsar-Grad. I got a picture of some harmless little Turk sitting quietly in Constantinople, Ibragim-Bey by name, perhaps, or Ilya Petrovitch, as we should call him, little dreaming as he pats his round belly that tomorrow he will make a target for our smart troops. I wonder what he would say if he were told?

A small hospital of fifteen beds has been opened in our block of flats, to be supported by the different residents. I shall do my share, of course.

Ah, Sasha, Sasha, dear!

29th October.

Turkey has opened hostilities against Russia. Dear, dear, how the war is spreading!

30th October.

I am at a loss to understand how I came to join the demonstration over Turkey, with its flags and banners. To think of my dragging myself about the streets singing and shouting “Hurrah” and making a fool of myself generally! What a hero I felt! My heroism has brought on a bad cold, I am afraid. I have a stiff neck today and feel shivery without my coat. When I got home I found a large company collected there. It consisted of Nikolai and his wife and the inevitable Kindiakov, a lawyer, Sashenka’s friend, Fimotchka, a midwife, and a few others, making seven in all.

To celebrate the occasion I got out four bottles of wine, presented to me by Zvohansky some time back in August. We were more intoxicated by the news than the wine. We shouted and argued and made sport of Turkey; we sang national anthems, Kindiakov accompanying on the piano. It was three in the morning when I got to bed, for I had to see Fimotchka home first. It is well that I have had a snooze today, otherwise I should have been very irritable.

This is the first time in my life that I have taken part in a national demonstration, and I must confess, it was an interesting experience. I shall never forget it as long as I live. This may seem absurd to the more experienced, but what interested me the most was, that no matter where we marched, on pavement or road, the traffic stopped to make way for us. And then the flags, the spontaniety of our singing, the fact that police and soldiers saluted us as we passed, gave us a martial air, and made us feel as though we, too, were part of the war⁠—we were the troops for home defence. There were some retired military and naval men among us, and one old fellow, an admiral, would insist on us marching in time, and when he succeeded in making us do so, now and again, our singing grew more measured and we felt more and more like soldiers on their way to the battlefield. With what a sense of joy did we sing! What faith we had in the invincibility of our strength, and how certain we felt of victory! I don’t know whether it was the strangeness of the procession, or the fact that the streets looked different, but despite my enthusiasm, the sense of panic I had felt on the first day came over me again. Distant Turkey and the war itself seemed to have come closer, so close that we could have touched them; we felt their nearness, and the sense of security was gone. It seemed as though the whole structure of our lives would collapse, and we should go down into the abysses of hell. The Turks, again, played no part in this fear; we despised them too much, and could even afford to pity them for having been duped; our fear was based on some inexplicable cause. Something I saw this morning would perhaps illustrate my meaning. On the way to the office I saw a load of young trees that were meant for planting somewhere, no doubt. Their delicate roots, with the soil clinging to them, were in baskets, but the poor things rocked to and fro on the boards. They must have felt very forlorn and strange, and were wondering where they were going. The new soil may be good for them in time to come, but until they become accustomed to the difference between the old soil and the new, they must feel very insecure.

I don’t know whether it was my enthusiasm or my fear that made me shout “Hurrah,” but while I shouted with all my heart in it, I thought, nevertheless, “My God, my God, when is it going to end?” I looked at the drizzling sky, misty and grey⁠ ⁠… the ways of the world are so enigmatical⁠ ⁠… the sky was the same as of old, the houses, those I had known in my boyhood. Where was the difference then, if houses and sky and people were the same? What had happened? I reduced myself to such a