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

the experience a second time, to gaze into trusting, innocent eyes, I would sooner lay hands on myself. Grieved as I am over Pavel’s death, I can’t help rejoicing that the ordeal is behind me and will never have to be repeated again. Death would be easier.

I need hardly say that we did not go to Finland. Sashenka deserted the hospital during those sad days, and, hiding her own grief, she did all she could to console mother. The old lady is neither dead nor alive. I find it hard to understand her condition. For hours at a time she will cry in some corner, or, with Sashenka, she will go to church to have a Mass said for the dead, or she will wander aimlessly about the rooms, and begin to dust some place where not a speck of dust is to be seen. She brings me my coffee without any sugar, as usual. Yesterday she disappeared. After an hour and a half had gone by we grew anxious and made a search. We found her locked in the lavatory. She couldn’t open the door, and wouldn’t give a sign of life, even though she must have heard us calling her. It was only after we had banged and banged at the door that she made a feeble sound. The numbers and numbers of times we had shown her how to lock and unlock that door, and still she couldn’t do it. In the end I had to fetch a locksmith to get her out.

When Sashenka reproved her for not answering when she was called the old lady burst into tears. She is more sensitive than ever. Now nurse or Lidotchka have to take her to the lavatory; it isn’t safe to let her go alone.

What an awful Christmas this is, to be sure! The days are more or less bearable, but when I go to bed at night I lie in dread of hearing either Sashenka begin to sob in her bed, or mother in the adjoining room. They may lie quiet until daybreak sometimes, and then a bed will begin to shake with sobbing, and so it goes on and on.⁠ ⁠…

The last time we saw Pavel was on the fourth of August when we were in the country. Mother happened to be staying with us at the time, too. His regiment was on its way south to the front from some remote part of Finland, and having to wait about an hour and a half for a change of trains, he rushed over to see us. It was getting dark when he came, and his visit was so unexpected that we completely lost our heads at sight of him. He had on his heavy field kit with a kettle and bag slung over his shoulder, and was grimy and dusty. He had an unfamiliar smell about him, and looked so strange in his uniform with his closely-cropped hair that was just beginning to grow a little. He had been digging and felling timber, and looked more like a peasant than a soldier. “Wish me luck,” he managed to whisper, “we are going to Warsaw.”

We couldn’t talk properly, and said the silliest things that came into our heads. We were so anxious to make him eat, and he was as hungry as only a soldier can be. We sat out on the verandah, I remember. We examined his rifle in turn; it looked pretty and straight; I can’t remember the number of it, though he told us. I can’t remember even the expression of his face. I know only that there was something peculiar about it. I wanted to lead him from room to room. I wanted to say, “Bid goodbye to everything, Pavel, for you may never return, and may never see it again.”

He, too, had the same thought, no doubt, but neither of us dared to give expression to it, and we sat on the verandah like strangers, and made no attempt to go into the house at all. When he was forced to leave us, we accompanied him to to the station, which was quite close, and we gave him a hasty, affectionate kiss and watched him clamber into the goods-wagon filled with his jolly, laughing comrades. Soon the long train started, the soldiers shouted “Hurrah” and then it was over, and all was still. I can still see that receding red lamp at the back of the train. I remember, too, how quiet and dead the house seemed when we got back to it.

And now Pavel is dead, and we do not even know where he is buried. I cannot picture the place, no matter how hard I try. I am dazed; I don’t understand what is happening; I don’t understand the war. I feel only that it crushes us, and there is no salvation for any of us, big or small. My thoughts are all broken; my soul seems like a strange house where I cannot find a comfortable spot to rest in. What was I like before the war? I don’t remember.

A huge pair of hands seem to hold me in their grasp, moulding me into some fantastic shape, hands that are too strong for resistance.

30th January.

What a scare we’ve had today! Mother disappeared from the house. She went out early in the morning and was not back by the evening. I was at the office as usual, and Sashenka was at the hospital. Our fool of a nurse couldn’t tell us anything, as she never noticed when the old lady first went out, and hadn’t the sense to let either of us know when she missed her. I was naturally alarmed; absentminded as mother is, she might have been run over by a tram or a motor.

I fetched Sashenka and we began to hunt for her. I telephoned to every one of our friends, and to nearly all the police stations when she herself appeared on the scene.