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

apart and not submit to the war. I refuse to have my wings clipped and will not be badgered by your noisy drum!

I regret to have been foolish enough to take my difficulties to a man so wrapped up in the war. He no doubt despises us heroes of the rear.

23rd March.

Hurrah! our troops have captured Przemysl! Petrograd is rejoicing. What a gloriously happy day!

The news was telephoned to our office by one of the newspapers, and when I heard it, such a tremendous feeling of joy came over me, that I snatched up my things and hastened out into the street. Our Nevsky had never looked so festive and beautiful before. The snow fell fast in large flakes and settled on the shoulders of the crowd, but beneath this covering of white, flushed cheeks could be seen and sparkling eyes. For once the citizens of Petrograd had good complexions. Immediately the crowd began to organise itself. The National Anthem was struck up, and a procession started to the palace, I could not take part in that, unfortunately, for I had to return to the office.

What a day of joy this has been! At last I begin to realise why the preceding days and months had been so gloomy and hard to bear. We had got so resigned to our hopelessness, that we had come to regard it as a natural condition. It seems strange to look back, to think even of yesterday. What long heavy days and nights those were! One did not seem to live by day, nor to rest by night. And when I think of my confused thoughts, my silly Patience playing, Mother, our dirty, untidy house, the despair, the fear of what tomorrow would bring.

I don’t know how it is, but for the first time during the war I have realised the meaning of the word “Victory.” It is no little thing, it raises a man to heights undreamed of. What a simple word it is! and how many are the times one has heard it spoken! Victory, victory! now I know how wonderful it is. I could rush from room to room shouting it!

I am still excited⁠—with a pleasant excitement, strange to say. When I think that I am a Russian, that there’s a country in the world called Russia, the hot tears come into my eyes. The sight of a soldier’s grey uniform in the street fills me with emotion. I smile and wink at the man and make a fool of myself generally. The word Russia stirs my very being. How sweet and agitating it is, for all that it brings the tears to one’s eyes!

Visions of rye-fields keep floating before my eyes, and when I shut them, I see wheels going round and round as plainly as on a kinematograph film. I hear larks singing too. I love larks; they always sing in the sky, not on the ground or in trees. Other birds must perch themselves comfortably on a tree, smooth down their feathers before they begin to sing, and then they sing in chorus, but a lark sings alone as it soars in the sky. Dear, dear, how I have wandered off! But what does it matter, so long as I keep on about something?

Another curious thing has happened today. For the first time since Pavel’s death Sashenka and I have been able to talk about him, and we talked for quite a long time, too. Our new victory seemed to touch Pavel also, and he had come to take his eternal place at our fireside in invisible form. Sashenka, of course, shed a few tears, but they were not like those terrible, solitary tears that used to shake her bed at nights. We decided to go to church together on the morrow to have a mass said for our dead. Usually I don’t like this ritual, but now it seemed not only proper, but a pleasant thing to do.

There is another gratifying event to relate. I was able to give Sashenka my views, very gently expressed, of course, about her continual absence from home, and to my surprise, she did not flare up, as I had expected her to do, but promised not to be at the hospital so much, and to devote herself more to the children in future. She even complained of feeling tired. The poor thing certainly looks tired; I have only just noticed how thin and pale she has grown. I am quite anxious about her. However, Sashenka looks, if anything, more beautiful than ever. What a blessing beauty must be in the work she is doing! When a dying soldier gazes up at the beautiful face of the nurse bending over him, she must be to him a symbol of love and beauty on earth, and he must carry her image away with him as an eternal dream. There must be many dying soldiers who would have cursed the world that destroyed them, but for the sight of the nurse’s beautiful eyes that made him forgive and forget.

For the first time I do not resent Sashenka’s being at the hospital and leaving me alone. There is something to occupy my mind now. I keep on thinking of victory. What a sense of gladness it gives! How many times have I seen the word in novels and histories, and of late, in the papers, yet only now have I realised what an alluring beast it is! Men have hunted it since the creation of the world; all have desired it; all desire it now, and the wonder of it is ours! Victory, victory! I could rush out into the streets and proclaim it with brass trumpets. Victory! victory!

24th March.

Lidotchka is ill. God help us.

27th March.

She is dead.

23rd March.

It is three months since I have touched this diary; I had forgotten about its very existence. When I took it out today, I sat