Short Fiction, Leo Tolstoy [general ebook reader .txt] 📗

“Don’t you want to write to anybody?⁠ ⁠… You can,” said the inspector.

“Yes, yes! Send what is necessary. I will write.”

The inspector went away.

“That means tomorrow morning,” thought Svetlogoúb. “They always behave like that. Tomorrow morning I shall not be⁠ ⁠… no, it is impossible! It’s a dream!”

But the watchman came in⁠—the real, familiar watchman⁠—and brought two pens, an inkstand, a packet of notepaper, and some blue envelopes, and moved the stool to the table. All this was reality, and not a dream.

“I must not think⁠ ⁠… only not think. Yes, I will write to Mother,” thought Svetlogoúb, and sat down on the stool and at once began.

“My own dear!” he wrote, and burst into tears. “Forgive me⁠—forgive me all the grief I have caused you. Whether I was deluded or not, I could not act otherwise. I only ask you to forgive me!”⁠—“But I have already written this.⁠ ⁠… Well, anyhow, there is no time to alter it now.”⁠—“Do not sorrow on my account,” he continued. “A little sooner or a little later, is it not all the same? I am not frightened, nor do I repent of what I have done. I could not act otherwise. Only do you forgive me! And do not be angry with them⁠—neither with those with whom I worked nor with those who are executing me. Neither the former nor the latter could act otherwise. Forgive them, for they know not what they do! I dare not say these words about myself, but they are in my soul, and lift me up and calm me. Forgive me! I kiss your dear, wrinkled, old hands!”

Two tears fell one after another and spread on the paper.

“I am crying, not with grief or fear, but with deep emotion before the most solemn moment of my life, and because I love you. Do not reproach my friends, but love them⁠—especially Próhorof, because he was the cause of my death. It is so joyful to love one who is not exactly guilty, but whom one might reproach and hate! To learn to love a man of that kind⁠—an enemy⁠—is such happiness! Tell Natásha that her love was my comfort and joy. I did not fully realize it, but was conscious of it in the depths of my soul. It was easier for me to live, knowing that she existed and loved me. Now I have said everything. Goodbye!”

He folded the letter, sealed it, and sat down on his bed, folding his hands on his knees and swallowing his tears.

He could still not believe he was about to die. He asked himself several times whether he was not asleep, and vainly tried to wake up. And this thought gave rise to another: Whether life in this world is not all a dream, out of which the awaking is death? And if this be so, whether consciousness in this life is not merely an awakening out of the sleep of a former, unremembered life? So that this existence does not begin here, but is only a new form of life. “I shall die and enter into a new form.” He liked this idea, but when he tried to use it as a support, he felt that neither it, nor any kind of idea whatever, could remove the fear of death. At last he grew tired of thinking; his brain would no longer work. He shut his eyes and long sat without thinking.

He read his letter over again, and, seeing the name of Próhorof at the end, he remembered that his letter might be read by the officials⁠—would in all probability be read⁠—and would lead to Próhorof’s destruction.

“O God, what have I done?” he suddenly exclaimed; and, tearing the letter into strips, he began carefully burning them over the lamp.

He was in despair when he sat down to write; but now he felt calm⁠—almost happy. He took another sheet of paper, and again began writing. Thoughts came thronging one after another into his head.

“Dear, darling mother,” he wrote, and his eyes were again misty with tears so that he had to wipe them with the sleeve of his prison coat in order to see what he was writing. “How little I knew myself and all the strength of love and gratitude to you which always dwelt in my heart! Now I know and feel it, and always when I recall our differences, and the unkind words I have said to you, I am pained and ashamed, and can hardly understand it. Forgive me, and remember only the good, if there was any in me! I am not afraid of death. To speak frankly, I do not understand it or believe in it. After all, if death⁠—annihilation⁠—exists, is it not all the same whether we die thirty years or thirty minutes sooner or later? And if there is no death, then it is quite indifferent whether it happens sooner or later.”

“But why am I philosophizing?” he thought. “I must say what I said in the other letter⁠—something good at the end. Yes.⁠ ⁠… ‘Do not reproach my friends, but love them⁠—especially the one who was the involuntary cause of my death. Kiss Natásha for me, and tell her that I have always loved her.’ ”

“What is it? What is going to happen?” he thought again, remembering. “Nothing? No, not nothing.⁠ ⁠… What, then?”

And suddenly it grew quite clear to him that for a living man there were, and could be, no answers to these questions.

“Then why am I putting these questions to myself? Why? Yes, why? I must not question, but live⁠—live, as I was living just now while writing this letter. Have we not all been sentenced to death long ago, and yet we go on living? We live happily⁠ ⁠… joyfully⁠ ⁠… when we love. Yes, when we love.⁠ ⁠… While I was writing, I loved and felt happy, and I must go on living so. That is possible everywhere and always⁠—when free and when in prison, today and tomorrow, till the end.”

He longed to speak to