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

people find it to their advantage that a woman should neglect her family to work for others and help mend the damage that they have caused.

My conscience, however, compels me to say that Sashenka’s devotion to the hospital is selfish and wicked to the extreme. It isn’t right to give yourself up entirely to charity at the expense of your own home! There is not much virtue in a compassion that devotes itself to some people and neglect others equally as helpless.

Some things a man doesn’t like to mention even in a diary. I am unlucky enough to have a bad digestion. It is only by the most careful diet that I can keep well enough to support my family, and Annisia, our cook, gives me such horrible food as to make me quite ill. The digestion of an Ilya Petrovitch is a small matter in face of the horrors of the war, the suffering of the wounded, the destitute and fatherless; it’s hardly decent to mention it. Doctors, I know, look with contempt on such complaints nowadays, yet Ilya Petrovitch is just as much a human being as the rest; he has worked honestly all his life to keep his wife and little ones, and I maintain that his digestion has every claim to attention and care.

I might manage with my scorned digestion somehow or other by starving myself a little, but what can I do with the children? We have three little ones, of whom Lidotchka, the eldest, is only six and a half. (I married late in life.) Our nurse, who acts as housemaid as well, is a most ignorant creature, and is able in good faith to poison or kill a child. She allowed Peter to get his feet wet the other day, and the poor boy had to stay in bed for some time with a high temperature. The youngest child, Jena, too, is not very well; he has lost all appetite and grown pale and thin. I haven’t the remotest idea how to look after children. When I point out their pitiable condition to Sashenka, she tells me to get mother to look after them. As if mother could! She has no more resistance than a feather, and can think of nothing, awake or sleeping, but her Pavel in the trenches. Of course, she could have done it at one time, I admit, but not now; she is too weak. It’s not fair to put so much responsibility on the old lady’s shoulders. Her efforts are pitiful to see. I don’t know whether it was she who started a game with the children the other day, or whether they began it, but they knocked her down (not meaning any harm, of course) and nearly suffocated her like a kitten. When I dragged her out she burst into tears. I, too, was upset at sight of her trembling head and ruffled hair.

Dear, dear! Sashenka is behaving very, very badly! We are not responsible that there is a war. The war has no right to thrust itself among us like a brigand, and lay waste our home. We bear enough trials and sacrifices we have done nothing to deserve. There is no need for us to throw ourselves down for the war to walk over us as the Hindus throw themselves beneath the chariot wheels of their evil god Juggernaut. I refuse to accept evil gods, I refuse to accept the war for all its “significance.” I fail to see the good of it around me, least of all in my own home!

Or must I see good in the fact that the face of my darling Lidotchka is beginning to show signs of sadness? The poor little thing is already trying to exert her little mind in attempts to cheer me when she sees me dull and depressed. Her little hands, too, are trying to be useful by helping to wash up the glasses and to nurse Jena. She herself is badly in need of a nurse.

The cost of living is rising in the most appalling manner. The luxury of a cab or a theatre is not to be thought of. Even a tram fare needs consideration nowadays; one’s legs have to serve one in good stead. I am glad of the extra work from the office in real earnest now, and thankful that there is still such work to take home. We were compelled to give up the piano. And the cursed war is only at its beginning; it is only getting into the way of it, so to speak. What horrible deeds men are perpetrating over there! To leave the lower orders out of the question, men of the higher professions, such as scholars, professors, lawyers, are devouring each other like wild beasts; they have grown so fiendish as to lose every spark of human feeling. What is science and religion worth after that? There was a time when you could rely upon a professor as on a stone wall; you might feel sure that he would not betray nor hurt, nor kill, because he knew and understood things, now he is just as vicious as the rest, and there is no one left to rely on.

I protest against the popular assertion that we are all (myself included) responsible for the war. It’s too absurd for argument. I know that some people think that with my ideas I ought to march continually about the streets, neither eating nor drinking, shouting “Stop the war,” and snatching rifles from the hands of the soldiers. But I wonder who would listen to me, except the policeman, or where I should find myself, if I carried out their wishes, if not in prison or in a lunatic asylum? I deny all responsibility for the war, and my suffering is needless and senseless.

I have a small piece of news. Andrei Vasilevitch, the man who is to read my diary, has been decorated with two St. George Crosses. Being a friend