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

had made for themselves in the soft ground. On the opposite side of the street, children were playing “knuckle-bones,” and their loud, joyous voices, mixed with the sounds of small iron boards hitting the bones, rang with vigor and freshness. There was very little traffic in this street, situated on the outskirts of the city of Orel, and only occasionally a peasant cart would rattle by slowly, jumping from one deep rut still filled with mud, to another. The parts of the cart, loosely made, constantly struck against each other, producing dull sounds that reminded one of the coming summer and the vast expanses of fields.

When Sazonka’s back bones would begin to ache, and his tired fingers would be able to hold the needle no longer, he would jump out into the street, barefooted as he was, make a couple of gigantic leaps over the pools of water, and join the playing children.

“Come on, let me try it,” he would say, and a dozen dirty hands would extend the boards towards him, and a dozen eager voices would beg him:

“Do it for me, Sazonka! For me!”

Sazonka would choose a heavy board, roll up his sleeve and, assuming the posture of the athlete hurling the disk, he would begin measuring the distance with his eyes. Then the heavy board would leave his hand with a soft “swish,” and, bounding up and down on the ground, would cut its way into the very center of the long cone, scattering the bones all around. The feat would be applauded by the enthusiastic shouts of the children. After a couple of throws, Sazonka would sit down to rest and say to the children:

“And Senista is still in the hospital, boys.”

But the children, busy with their own affairs, would take this piece of news coolly and indifferently.

“I ought to take him some present. Well, just wait, I’ll do it.”

The word “present” aroused the interest of several of the boys. Little Mishka, nicknamed the Suckling Pig, holding his breeches with one hand, and with the other his upturned shirt in which lay the sheep-bones, advised him:

“You give ’im a dime.”

A dime was the sum that Mishka’s grandfather had promised him for Easter, and the boy’s conception of human happiness did not go beyond this. But there was no time for discussing the question of the present. A couple of gigantic leaps brought Sazonka back to the other side of the street, and to his work.

His eyelids were still swollen, but his face became pale-yellow and the freckles on his nose and around the eyes became even more numerous and darker than before. Only his carefully combed hair still had the appearance of a fine cap, and whenever his employer, Gabriel Ivanovich, loked at Sazonka’s head, he was, for some reason or other, reminded of a small saloon and of whiskey⁠—which recollection would cause him to spit, and curse furiously.

Sazonka’s head was heavy. Sometimes the same thought would roll over in his mind for hours; and it would be either about his new boots, or his new harmonica. But he often thought of Senista and the present he was going to take over to him. The sewing machine was running monotonously, the proprietor cursed everybody, but Sazonka’s tired brain could only conceive of the picture of how he would come to the hospital and give Senista a present, wrapped up in a red handkerchief. Sometimes a heavy drowsiness would come over him and then he would not be able to recall even Senista’s face. He only saw clearly the red handkerchief, and it seemed to him all the time that the knots were not well tied. He told everybody that he would go to see Senista on the first day of Easter.

“Got to do it,” he would repeat. “I’ll comb my hair and run straight over. ‘Here you are, kid, that’s for you!’ ” But as he would be saying this, another scene would come before him. He would see the open doors of the saloon, with the counter wet with spilled whiskey, inside. A bitter realization of his own weakness, against which he could not struggle, would overwhelm him, and an irresistible desire would come over him to shout out:

“I’ll go to Senista! To Senista!”

And his brain would again become heavy and irresponsive to everything, except the red handkerchief. But there was no joy in this one thought that persisted in his brain; rather a stern lesson, a terrible warning.

III

On the first day of Easter, Sazonka was drunk. On the second day, he was still more drunk, got into a fight, and had to spend the night in jail. It was only on the fourth day that he finally decided to visit Senista.

The sunlit street was bright with red shirts and the brilliant glitter of white teeth shelling the sunflower seeds. Harmonicas were heard here and there; iron boards struck piles of knuckle-bones, scattering them in all directions; a rooster was crowing bravely, challenging another rooster to combat. But Sazonka paid attention to none of these things. His face, with one eye blackened, and the lip cut, was gloomy and serious, and his hair was dishevelled, no longer having the appearance of a fine cap. He was ashamed of his debauch, ashamed because he had broken his word, because he could not go to see Senista in the holiday array he had planned⁠—wearing a red woolen shirt and a vest⁠—ashamed because he was going, dirty, unkempt, his breath reeking with liquor. But the nearer he came to the hospital, the calmer he grew. More and more his eyes sought the bundle containing the present which he was carrying carefully in his left hand. And Senista’s face, with its appealing look and parched lips seemed to be constantly before him, as clear and as lifelike as though the boy himself were there.

“Ain’t we human, kid? Oh, Lord!” Sazonka kept on saying to himself, as he hurried along. Now he is in front of the