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

with disgust. I only wanted one woman⁠—the others might go to the devil; they only confused me, and with their seeming resemblance to Her gave to my movements an uncertain and jerky indecision.

At 6:55 I felt warm.

At 6:58 I felt cold.

As it struck seven I was convinced that she would not come.

By 8:30 I presented the appearance of the most pitiful creature in the world. My coat was fastened with all its buttons, collar turned up, cap tilted over my nose, which was blue with cold; my hair was over my forehead, my moustache and eyelashes were whitening with rime, and my teeth gently chattered. From my shambling gait, and bowed back, I might have been taken for a fairly hale old man returning from a party at the almshouse.

And She was the cause of all this⁠—She! “Oh, the Dev⁠⸺! No, I won’t. Perhaps she could not get away, or she is ill, or dead. She’s dead!”⁠—and I swore.

II

“Eugenia Nikolaevna will be there tonight,” one of my companions, a student, remarked to me, without the slightest arrière pensée. He could not know how that I had waited for her in the frost from seven to half-past eight.

“Indeed,” I replied, as in deep thought, but within my soul there leapt out: “Oh, the Dev⁠⸺!” “There” meant at the Polozovs’ evening party. Now the Polozovs were people with whom I was not upon visiting terms. But this evening I would be there.

“You fellows!” I shouted cheerfully, “today is Christmas Day, when everybody enjoys himself. Let us do so too.”

“But how?” one of them mournfully replied.

“And where?” continued another.

“We will dress up, and go round to all the evening parties,” I decided.

And these insensate individuals actually became cheerful. They shouted, leapt, and sang. They thanked me for my suggestion, and counted up the amount of “the ready” available. In the course of half an hour we had collected all the lonely, disconsolate students in town; and when we had recruited a cheerful dozen or so of leaping devils, we repaired to a hairdresser’s⁠—he was also a costumier⁠—and let in there the cold, and youth, and laughter.

I wanted something sombre and handsome, with a shade of elegant sadness; so I requested:

“Give me the dress of a Spanish grandee.”

Apparently this grandee had been very tall, for I was altogether swallowed up in his dress, and felt there as absolutely alone as though I had been in a wide, empty hall. Getting out of this costume, I asked for something else.

“Would you like to be a clown? Motley with bells.”

“A clown, indeed!” I exclaimed with contempt.

“Well, then, a bandit. Such a hat and dagger!”

Oh! dagger! Yes, that would suit my purpose. But unfortunately the bandit whose clothes they gave me had scarcely grown to full stature. Most probably he had been a corrupt youth of eight years. His little hat would not cover the back of my head, and I had to be dragged out of his velvet breeks as out of a trap. A page’s dress was no go: it was all spotted like the pard. The monk’s cowl was all in holes.

“Look sharp; it’s late,” said my companions, who were already dressed, trying to hurry me up.

There was but one costume left⁠—that of a distinguished Chinaman. “Give me the Chinaman’s,” said I with a wave of my hand. And they gave it me. It was the devil knows what! I am not speaking of the costume itself. I pass over in silence those idiotic flowered boots, which were too short for me, and reached only halfway to my knees; but in the remaining, by far the most essential part, stuck out like two incomprehensible adjuncts on either side of my feet. I say nothing of the pink rag which covered my head like a wig, and was tied by threads to my ears, so that they protruded and stood up like a bat’s. But the mask!

It was, if one may use the expression, a face in the abstract. It had nose, eyes, and mouth all right enough, and all in the proper places; but there was nothing human about it. A human being could not look so placid⁠—even in his coffin. It was expressive neither of sorrow, nor cheerfulness, nor surprise⁠—it expressed absolutely nothing! It looked at you squarely, and placidly⁠—and an uncontrollable laughter overwhelmed you. My companions rolled about on the sofas, sank impotently down on the chairs, and gesticulated.

“It will be the most original mask of the evening,” they declared.

I was ready to weep; but no sooner did I glance in the mirror than I too was convulsed with laughter. Yes, it will be a most original mask!

“In no circumstances are we to take off our masks,” said my companions on the way. “We will give our word.”

“Honour bright!”

III

Positively it was the most original mask. People followed me in crowds, turned me about, jostled me, pinched me. But when, harried, I turned on my persecutors in anger⁠—uncontrollable laughter seized them. Wherever I went, a roaring cloud of laughter encompassed and pressed on me; it moved together with me, and I could not escape from this circle of mad mirth. Sometimes it seized even myself, and I shouted, sang, and danced till everything seemed to go round before me, as if I was drunk. But how remote everything was from me! And how solitary was I under that mask! At last they left me in peace. With anger and fear, with malice and tenderness intermingling, I looked at her.

“ ’Tis I.”

Her long eyelashes were lifted slowly in surprise, and a whole sheaf of black rays flashed upon me, and a laugh, resonant, joyous, bright as the spring sunshine⁠—a laugh answered me.

“Yes, it is I; I, I say,” I insisted with a smile. “Why did you not come this evening?”

But she only laughed, laughed joyously.

“I suffered so much; I felt so hurt,” said I, imploring an answer.

But she only laughed. The black sheen of her