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

heart of the much-suffering earth were beating wildly in the agony of death.

“Boom! boom! boom!” the red-hot conflagration ejaculated. And it was difficult to realize that the church belfry, so small and slight, so peaceful and still, like a maiden in a pink dress, could be giving forth those loud, despairing cries.

I kept falling down on my hands against clods of dry earth, which scattered beneath them, and again I would rise and run on, and the fire and the summoning sound of the bell ran to meet me. One could already hear the wood crackling as it caught fire, and the many-voiced cry of human beings with the dominating notes of despair and terror. And when the serpent-like hissing of the fire ceased for a moment, a prolonged groaning became clearly differentiated: it was the wailing of women, and the bellowing of cattle in a panic of terror.

A swamp intercepted my path. A wide, weed-grown swamp, which ran far to right and left. I went into the water up to my knees, then to the breast, but the swamp began to suck me down, and I returned to the bank. Opposite, quite close, raged the fire, throwing up into the sky golden sparks like the burning leaves of a gigantic tree: while the water of the swamp stood out like a mirror sparkling with fire in a black frame of reed and sedge. The tocsin called, despairingly in deadly agony:

“Come! do come!”

III

I flung along the strand, and my dark shadow flung after me, and when I stooped down to the water to find a bottom, the spectre of a fire-red form gazed at me from the black abyss, and in the distorted lineaments of its face, and in its dishevelled hair, which seemed as though it were lifted up upon the head by some terrific force, I failed to recognize myself.

“Ah! what is it? O Lord!” I prayed with outstretched hands.

But the tocsin kept calling. The bell no longer entreated, it shouted like a human being, and groaned and choked. The strokes had lost their regularity, and piled themselves one on the top of the other, rapidly and without echo; they died down, were reproduced and again died down. Once more I bent down to the water, and alongside of my own reflection I perceived another fiery spectre, tall and erect, and to my horror just like a human being.

“What’s that?” I screamed, looking round. Close to my shoulder stood a man looking at the conflagration in silence. His face was pale, his cheeks were covered with still moist blood, which gleamed as it reflected the fire. He was dressed simply, like a peasant. Possibly he had been already here when I ran up, and had been stopped like myself by the swamp, or possibly he may have arrived after me; but at all events I had not heard his approach, nor did I know who he was.

“It burns,” said he, without removing his eyes from the fire. The reflected fire leapt in them, and they seemed large and glassy.

“Who are you? Where do you come from?” I asked; “you are all bloody.” With long, thin fingers he touched my cheeks, looked at them, and again fixed his gaze upon the fire.

“It burns,” he repeated, without paying any attention to me. “Everything is burning.”

“Do you know how to get there?” I asked, drawing back. I guessed that this was one of the many maniacs, which this ill-omened summer had produced.

“It burns!” he replied; “ho! ho! don’t it burn!” he cried, laughing, and looked at me kindly, wagging his head. The hurried strokes of the tocsin suddenly stopped, and the flame crackled louder. It moved like a living thing, and with long arms, as though weary, dragged itself to the silent belfry, which now seemed near and tall, and clothed no longer in pink but in red. Above the dark loophole, where the bells were hung, there appeared a timid quiet tongue of fire, like the flame of a candle, and was reflected in pale rays on their metal surface. Once more the bell began to tremble, sending forth its last madly-despairing cries, and once more I flung myself along the shore, and my black shadow flung after me.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I cried, as though in reply to someone calling me. But the tall man was quietly seated behind me, embracing his knees, and kept singing a loud secondo to the bell: “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Are you mad?” I shouted to him. But he only sang the louder and the merrier, “Boom! boom! boom!”

“Be quiet!” I entreated. But he smiled and sang on, wagging his head, and the fire flared up in his glassy eyes. He was more terrible than the fire, this maniac, and I turned round and took to flight along the shore. But I had scarcely gone a few steps, when his lanky figure appeared silently alongside of me, his shirt fluttering in the wind. He ran in silence, even as I did, with long untiring strides, and in silence our black shadows ran along the upturned field.

The bell was suffocating in its last death-struggle and cried out like a human being who, despairing of assistance, has lost all hope. And we ran on in silence aimlessly into the darkness, and close to us our black shadows leapt mockingly.

A Present I

“So you’ll come, won’t you?” Senista repeated this for the third time, and for the third time Sazonka answered hastily:

“Sure I’ll come, sure I’ll come. Why shouldn’t I? Sure I’ll come.”

And again they were silent. Senista was lying on his back, covered up to the chin with a gray hospital blanket, and was looking steadily at Sazonka. He did not want Sazonka to go away, wanted him to say again that he would come to see him, and not leave him a prey to loneliness, disease, and fear. Sazonka, on the other hand, was anxious