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

large yellow hospital-building, with its black-framed windows, which look like gloomy eyes. Now he is in the long corridor, in the midst of the medicine odors and an atmosphere of indistinct fear and unpleasantness. Now he is in the ward, right by Senista’s bed⁠ ⁠…

But where is Senista?

“Whom are you looking for,” asked the nurse, following him into the ward.

“There was a boy here, Semyon. Semyon Erofeyev. Right in this place.” And Sazonka pointed to the empty bed.

“You ought to ask first, and not break in like this,” said the nurse rudely. “It wasn’t Semyon Erofeyev, either, but Semyon Pustoshkin.”

“Erofeyev, that’s according to his father. His father’s name was Erofey, so he is Erofeyich,” explained Sazonka, slowly turning paler and paler.

“Oh, he’s dead, your Erofeyich. And we don’t care for his father’s name. For us, he’s Semyon Pustoshkin. He’s dead, I say.”

“Is that so?” There was reverent astonishment in Sazonka’s voice, as he stood there, so pale that the freckles on his face appeared almost like ink stains. “When did he die?”

“Last night.”

“And may I⁠ ⁠…” Sazonka did not finish his stammered request.

“Why not?” answered the nurse indifferently. “Just ask where the morgue is, they’ll show you. If I were you, I wouldn’t be so upset about it. He was sickly anyhow; couldn’t live long.”

Sazonka’s tongue inquired about his way, very politely. His legs bore him in the direction indicated, but his eyes saw nothing. Only when the face of the dead Senista was directly in front of him did his eyes begin to see. Then, too, he began to feel the coldness of the morgue. The walls of the dreary room were bespotted with moisture, the single window was covered with a thick layer of spiders’ webs. No matter how brightly the sun shone outside, its rays never penetrated through this window, and the sky always appeared gray and gloomy, as in autumn. A fly was buzzing somewhere. Drops of water were falling from the ceiling. After each drop, the air would reverberate with a pitiful, ringing noise.

Sazonka stepped back and said aloud:

“Goodbye, Semyon Erofeyich.”

Then he knelt down, touched the wet floor with his forehead, and rose up again.

“Forgive me, Semyon Erofeyich,” said he, just as loudly and distinctly, and then knelt down again, and pressed his head against the floor.

The fly stopped buzzing, and everything was still, with that peculiar stillness which sets in when a dead man is in the room. At regular intervals drops of water fell into a metal basin, striking the bottom gently and softly.

IV

The hospital stood on the outskirts of the city, and immediately beyond it began a large field. Sazonka went there. The level field, uninterrupted by a single tree or building, stretched in all directions, and the light breeze seemed to be its warm, even breath. Sazonka followed a dry road at first, but after a while he turned to the left and began to walk across the field itself, towards the river. In some places the ground was still wet and his boots left deep marks in it.

Reaching the river, Sazonka lay down on its bank in a spot where the air was warm and perfectly still, as in a greenhouse. He closed his eyes. The rays of the sun passed through his lowered eyelids in red waves. A lark was pouring forth its song in the blue sky, and it was so pleasant to lie there without a single thought in his head. The spring waters had already subsided, leaving the marks of their recent activity in the form of large pieces of ice, stranded on the opposite shore. The white triangular pieces of ice were steadily disappearing under the merciless, hot rays of the sun. Sazonka lay there half asleep, and, accidentally, threw out one arm. His hand came in contact with a hard object, covered with cloth.

The present!

Jumping up to a sitting position, Sazonka exclaimed:

“God! What is this?”

He had forgotten his bundle entirely and now looked at it with frightened eyes. It seemed to him that the bundle had come there by its own will, and he was afraid to touch it. Sazonka gazed at it, without lifting his eyes, and a stormy, rumbling pity, a furious wrath was rising in him. He looked at the bundle, and he seemed to see how on the first day, and the second, and the third, Senista was waiting for him, turning his head towards the door, expecting him in vain. And he died lonely, forsaken, like a puppy thrown out into the backyard. Only one day sooner, and the boy’s closing eyes might have seen the present, and his childish heart might have been filled with joy, and his soul might have soared to Heaven without suffering the torment of loneliness.

Sazonka began to sob, tearing his fine hair, and rolling on the ground. He cried aloud, lifting his hands to Heaven in pitiful justification:

“O God! Ain’t we human?”

And then he fell on the ground, his cut lip touching the earth. And there he remained, overwhelmed with dumb grief. The new grass tickled his face gently; a sweet, quieting odor came from the ground, and the earth seemed to exhale a feeling of mighty power, of a passionate appeal for life. The eternal mother earth was enfolding a sinning son in her embrace, and was filling his suffering heart with warmth, love, and hope.

And far away, in the city, the joyful holiday bells were ringing their discordant melody.

A Dilemma A Story of Mental Perplexity

On the 11th of December of the year 1900 Anton Ignatyeff Kerzhentseff, a physician by profession, perpetrated a murder. The evidence presented in connection with the act itself, as well as certain circumstances which preceded the crime, gave cause to suspect the abnormality of Kerzhentseff’s mental faculties.

Placed for purposes of investigation in the Elizavetinsk Psychiatric Hospital, Kerzhentseff was subjected to a severe and attentive surveillance of several capable alienists, the recently deceased Prof. Derzhembitzky being among the number. Here are the