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

paddled quietly in the shadows of the large barges that crept along the bank, playing their evening games; blue lights began to appear on the bank opposite. My soul was as innocent as though I had turned into a little child. It was Fedia who talked; I was silent. He talked about the Germans for a while, then he, too, grew quiet and pensive. Some soldiers passed over the Ochta Bridge, and above the din of the traffic we caught fragments of their song.

“The soldiers are singing,” Fedia started. “Where are they?”

“On the bridge. Listen, listen!”

How nice it is that our soldiers sing in their natural voices, unspoiled by training! Their voices speak of their youth, their country, their people, of Russia herself. The song died away; it began to get dark; on the bank opposite lights appeared in windows and streets, and still I thought of our soldiers and Russia. Russia! Wondrous word! As in a dream I could see an Autumn country road, lights twinkling in the peasant cottages, a peasant standing at his cart. The very horse was dear to me. I thought of its eternal toil with gratitude; I thought of other horses, other villages, other towns.⁠ ⁠… I had dozed off, it turned out, and Fedia had fallen fast asleep. It was a good thing the nights were still warm. I picked up his cap that had slipped from his head, and had great difficulty in rousing him; I simply had to force him to open his eyes.

“I can’t go on!” he muttered.

“I would carry you if I had the strength. Let’s go as far as the steamer, and then we can take a tram.”

“Very well,” Fedia agreed. My little chum had a great partiality for steamers.

Thus we worked together for two days. It rained yesterday, unfortunately, and we were obliged to stop our collecting, but the feeling of gladness remains as before. Brightly does man illumine the Autumn mud and bad weather.

I am going to get a place at the front, it seems.

7th October.

Mother is dead. For a long time she has only feigned to live, and now she has gone to join her Pavel. Will she find him? But I know that they are in the same place, and that my Lidotchka is there, too, and that I will be there when my time comes.

So many people are dying! They seem hewn down as by a woodcutter’s axe; each day the familiar forest grows thinner.

There is a stubborn rumour which the newspapers support, that the German advance is over. They have been advancing steadily since the spring, and now they have stopped by Riga and Dvinsk. Nevertheless, as though divided from us by no more than a low wall, we seem to see their ruthless eyes peeping out at us, and the days dwindle in dark incertitude.

13th October.

How sad and pitiful human beings are! How difficult their lot in this world, how trying for their enigmatical souls! What does the human soul grope for? To what end is it striving through blood and tears?

Each day I hear tales about the sad procession of refugees from Poland and Volhinia along every road. We have grown so used to the word “refugee,” meeting it in print and counting it in figures, that we do not realise its meaning. What woeful pictures they must make along the roads, even now at this moment, with their rumbling carts, their ailing children, crying and coughing, their hungry bellowing cattle! What large numbers of them there are! Whole nations moving from place to place, and, like Lot’s wife, looking back at the smoke and the flames of the burning towns and villages behind them! There are not enough carts or horses, and one hears that bullocks and big dogs are harnessed, and sometimes men, too, and they drag their own loads as man must have dragged his belongings in ancient days when he was first pursued.⁠ ⁠…

How difficult it is to imagine the sights that are to be seen along our roads! The refugees stream down the usually deserted, muddy country roads, making them crowded as the Nevsky on a holiday. How long will this unknown force pursue us?

Another sad piece of news came today. The Bulgarians have attacked the Serbians in some place called Kniajevetz. Even this we were not spared. Brothers are to kill brothers. The soul shrinks at the thought that this race is to perish, that this sparsely-grown meadow is not to be spared the mower’s scythe. With what feelings of anguish must they be waiting and listening for the advance! “They are coming!” It would not take much to wipe out the Serbs. Didn’t the Turks massacre eight hundred thousand Armenians, as the papers tell us? But why speak of it? I weep and weep; I pity them all; each moment the heart is torn by some fresh disaster. I don’t know whether to pray for the chastisement of the Bulgarian traitors or to bow down to the incomprehensible mysteries of the human soul.

An article I happened to come across about the poor Armenians, brought me nearer to cursing than to pity and tears. It took me the whole of a sleepless night to get over it. This is what was seen by an eyewitness: I set it down word for word. “The most awful sights were seen by our unique eyewitness in Bitlis. He had scarcely reached Bitlis when in a wood he came upon a group of newly massacred men, and near them, completely naked, and hanging feet upwards, were three women. Close to one of the women, with arms outstretched to its mother, was a year-old child. The mother was still alive, her face bloodshot; she, too, stretched out her arms to the child, but they could not reach each other.”

How could I sleep with that awful image before my eyes? It was as much as I could do to breathe. The blood rushed to my head