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

gestures that it some times occurred to me that this was not a human being, but an image flashed by a cinematograph, combined with a gramaphone. He did not comprehend that he was a human being, that today he lived and that tomorrow he might die, and he sought nothing. And when he went to bed he ceased to move and fell into a slumber; to all appearances he had no dreams and ceased to exist. With his tongue⁠—he was an attorney⁠—he earned his thirty thousand a year, and not once was he astonished or thoughtful over this circumstance. I recall having visited with him a newly-purchased estate, and pointing at the trees in the grounds I remarked:

“Clients?”

He smiled indulgently and replied:

“Yes, my boy, talent is a big thing.”

He drank much, and his intoxication found expression in more rapid movements, which finally would cease altogether, and he would end invariably by falling into a deep slumber. Everyone considered him extraordinarily endowed, and he often asserted that had he not become a famous attorney he would have been equally distinguished as an artist or as an author. Unfortunately, this is true.

Least of all he understood me. Once we were threatened with the loss of all our property. The thought gave me anguish. Nowadays, when only wealth gives freedom, I do not know what I should have become if fate had placed me in the ranks of the proletariat. I cannot picture to myself without anger anyone daring to place his hand upon me, compelling me to do that which I do not wish, purchasing for money my labor, my blood, my nerves, my life. This horror, however, I experienced only for one minute, as it immediately dawned upon me that such as I never remain poor. But father did not understand that. He sincerely considered me a dull youth and viewed with apprehension my supposed helplessness.

“Oh, Anton, Anton, what will become of you?” he would say. He himself seemed weary; his long, unkempt hair descended over the forehead; his face was yellow. I replied:

“Don’t worry about me, papa. As I am not talented, I will kill Rothschild or rob a bank.”

My father became angry, as he accepted my answer as an untimely and flat jest. He saw my face, he heard my voice and nevertheless accepted it as a jest. Wretched pasteboard clown, through misapprehension thou art called a man!

He did not know my soul, although the outward order of my life perturbed him, as he did not enter into its understanding. I was an apt pupil at the gymnasia, and this distressed him. Once when we had visitors⁠—lawyers, litterateurs and artists⁠—he directed his finger at me and said:

“I have a son; he is the first in his class. What have I done that God should punish me so?”

And they all laughed at me, and I laughed at them all. Even more than by my successes he was distressed by my conduct and attire. He would enter my room purposely to rearrange, unnoticed by me, the books on the table, and to create even a little bit of disorder. My neat way of combing my hair robbed him of his appetite.

“The superintendent has ordered a close hair cut,” I would say seriously and respectfully.

He scolded vehemently, but my entire inner being throbbed with contemptuous laughter.

Nothing, however, aroused my father’s ire so much as my copybooks. Once, when drunk, he looked through them, seeming very hopeless and comical in his despondency.

“Haven’t you ever made a blot?” he asked.

“Yes, papa, it happened once. It was when I was doing my trigonometry.”

“Did you lick it up?”

“What do you mean by ‘lick it up?’ ”

“Just what I said⁠—did you lick up the blot of ink?”

“No, papa, I applied blotting paper.”

My father waved his hand with a drunken gesture and growled as he arose:

“No, you are no son of mine.⁠ ⁠… No! No!”

Among my despised copybooks, however, was one which afforded him gratification⁠—notwithstanding the fact that it contained not a single crooked line, not a blot or erasure. It contained, however, approximately the following: My father is a drunkard, a thief and a coward.

This was followed by some details, which, out of respect to my father’s memory and to the law, I consider unnecessary to state.

I now recall one forgotten fact, which I think should prove of interest to you, gentlemen experts. I am very happy to have recalled it, very happy. How could it have slipped my memory?

We had in our house a maidservant named Katia, who was the mistress of my father, and simultaneously my mistress. She loved father because he gave her money, and me because I was young, had beautiful dark eyes and did not give her money. The night that my father’s corpse lay in the parlor I entered Katia’s room. It was not far from the parlor, whence could be heard clearly the voice of the chanter.

I think that the immortal spirit of my father must have experienced complete gratification!

This is really an interesting fact, and I don’t understand how I could have forgotten it. To you, gentlemen experts, it may seem a small matter, a childish prank, having no serious significance, but that isn’t so. It was a hard struggle, gentlemen experts, and the victory was not bought cheaply. My life was at stake. Had I trembled, turned back, proved thyself a fainthearted lover, I should have killed myself. I recall, that was decided.

What I did was not an easy matter for a youth of my years. Now I know that I fought with a windmill, but at that time it appeared to me in a different light. It is difficult for me to relate now all that I had lived through, but I can recall the feeling⁠—it seemed as if with one act I had demolished all laws, divine and human. And I trembled terribly, to the point of the ridiculous; nevertheless I nerved myself, and when I entered Katia’s room I was prepared for her kisses like a Romeo.

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