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

breast and boast of my righteousness like a Pharisee, and sit in judgment upon those who fought. Had I been a German, Germany too, must have cursed me, for the Germans have their wounded⁠—the blind and maimed, who fought to defend the rest. What have I done for Russia, Sashenka, in her dreadful hour of need? The only thing I have done was not to rob her, but was that enough? I knew the country was in danger; I used to repeat the words like a parrot, but what did I do? Nothing! What damnation is contained in that one word!

Unflinchingly I carry out the sentence of death with my own hand⁠—spies and traitors must die alike, for there is no room for them on earth. Russia’s maternal voice has cursed me, and I cannot, I dare not live. How could I look anyone in the face after that? I am so useless, Sashenka, so superfluous that not a void will remain even in the place where I once was. No one will notice my absence, no one will know that I am gone. One thing only fills me with dread. What if our Lidotchka turns from me when I find her among the heavenly angels? But no, they must surely understand better there than here. Perhaps the cruel suffering with which I paid for my insignificance⁠—vain and inglorious as it was⁠—may be counted in my favour. There are no strong and weak there; all are equal; there may be a refuge in the folds of Christ’s garments even for me. I have settled my accounts on earth, and in heaven there will be new reckonings.

I hope you will be happy, my dear, my wonderful wife. May God bless you for the love you gave me, for your gentleness and patience, for every touch of your beloved hand. Don’t mourn for me. Have the same Mass said for the three of us⁠—Pavel, warrior fallen in the field, Lidotchka and for me. Make no attempt to find my body; it will be carried far out to sea. Goodbye, my dear, goodbye.

22nd September.

Such wonderful, divine things have happened that I must set them down all in order to avoid confusion.

Three days have now passed. The day I decided to kill myself I spent with the children whom I took for a walk in the Alexandrov Garden. I bought them some sweets, and tried to let them have as pleasant a time as I could. I took home some special delicacy for mother’s dinner. I wrote a letter to her son, Nikolai, by the way, but fortunately I didn’t post it.

When the children went to bed I made them say their prayers in my presence, then I settled up all my small cash affairs⁠—it was fortunate that I had no debts⁠—and wrote a letter to the police and another to Sashenka. At about one in the morning I set out for the Troitsky Bridge, from whence I had decided to jump into the river; it was quiet and deserted at that hour. For greater certainty, and to spare myself all the suffering possible, I put two heavy lead weights from the old broken cuckoo clock in the nursery into my greatcoat pockets, hoping to add stones and other heavy objects on the way. I may say with perfect truthfulness that I felt no fear at the prospect of death, nor any particular regrets at parting with life. The few tears I shed when writing to Sashenka were merely formal ones.

I wondered mostly as I went along what my dear ones would do when I was gone, and how they would live. I saw that they might be better off without me, perhaps⁠—fatherless children have more right to expect help. I counted, too, on Sashenka’s brother, Nikolai, to whom I could not have appealed personally. With these thoughts I passed Moshkov Street, and was brought face to face with the dark, lonely river. The night was dark and clouded; the Peter-Paul Fortress, on the other side, was hardly discernible; a faint light glimmered dimly, the lantern at the Fortress gates, no doubt, and near there, in the darkness, the river seemed as broad as the sea. Suspended over the river, to the right, were the steady lights of the Troitsky Bridge, close by; it was still and deserted. “At last!” I thought, hugging the cold weights in my pocket, and my face was bathed by the fresh moistness of the water whirling silently round the stone parapets. “There is no need to hurry; I will stay here for a while.”

It was then that the extraordinary thing happened to me. I can hardly explain it in words. I’m not a fool; on the contrary, I have a good deal of common sense. There are some things I do not see, others I do not know, still others I do not understand; there is so little time for the understanding, busy as one usually is, but never in the whole of my experience, have I ever gone in for prolonged, concentrated thought. At that moment, however, a change took place; I seemed to be transformed, as in a fairy tale; a thousand eyes and ears seemed to have opened in me, and prolonged concentrated thoughts filled my brain. Motion was impossible. I had to sit or stand, but I couldn’t walk. I forgot all words, I forgot the very names of things; thoughts so big and vast took possession of me that each seemed large enough to have embraced the whole world. I cannot describe the condition. My first realisation was the sense of my manhood. I was the inner meaning of the words, people, mankind, man, such as I stood there with my greatcoat, lead weights in my pockets, thinking those thoughts by the flowing river, in the silence of the night. And the other people, where were they? I thought, and a vision of all the people in the world floated