Short Fiction, Fyodor Sologub [most popular novels of all time .txt] 📗

often seemed to put his soft, warm little arms about her neck and press his tender lips to her cheek⁠—at those times when she sat quietly alone and closed her eyes. But never once had he kissed her on the lips.

“When he grows up he will understand,” she thought. “He will be sorry, and he will go away and never come back any more. And then I shall die.”

And now as she sat in the noisy, crowded tramcar, in the company of strangers, pushing and jostling one another, Nadezhda Alexevna closed her eyes and remembered her own little child. Once more she looked into his clear eyes, once more she heard the tender lispings of his unuttered words⁠ ⁠… all the way to the end of her journey, when the time came for her to get out of the car.

III

When the tram stopped Nadezhda Alexevna made her way along the snow-covered streets, past the low wooden and stone houses, past the gardens and enclosed spaces of the remote suburb. She was alone. Many of the other passengers had been met, but for her there was no companion. And she thought to herself as she walked along:

“My sin will always remain with me; I can never get away from it. How is it that I go on living? Even little Serezha is dead.”

A dull pain gnawed at her heart; she could not answer her own question:

“Why do I go on living? Yet why should I die?”

And again she thought:

“He is always with me, my dear little one. But he is growing up now; he is eight years old, and he must be beginning to understand. Why isn’t he angry with me? Doesn’t he want to be able to go and play with the other children; to ride on the frozen snow in his little sledge? Doesn’t all this winter beauty attract him? I feel it all so delightful; even in spite of its illusions the world is so beautiful and so enchanting. Is it possible for him not to want to live here in reality?”

Then, as she went on and on, all alone, through the monotonous streets, she began to think of those to whom she had come: her hard-worked brother-in-law, her tired sister, the crowd of fretful children always asking for something or other, the poverty-stricken home, the lack of money. She remembered her favourite nephews and nieces⁠—and little Serezha who had shot himself.

Who could have expected him to die? He had been so gay, so lively.

And then she remembered her talk with the boy last week. Serezha had been sad and upset then. He had been reading some incident recorded in the newspapers and had said:

“Things are bad at home, and if you take up a newspaper you only read about horrors and shameful happenings.”

She had said something which she herself did not believe, in order to divert the boy’s attention. Serezha had smiled grimly and then continued:

“But, Auntie Nadia, how bad it all is! Just think what is going on all around us. Don’t you think it dreadful that one of the best of people, an old, old man, went away from his home to find a place in which to die? It must have been because he saw more plainly than we do the horrors around us, and he couldn’t endure to live any longer. So he went away and died. Terrible!”

And after a little silence he went on:

“Auntie Nadia, I tell you just what I think, because you’re always kind to me and you understand⁠—I don’t want to live at all in a world where such things happen. I know I’m just as weak as everybody else, and what is there for me to do? Only by degrees to begin to get used to it all. Auntie, Nekrasof was right when he said, ‘It is good to die young.’ ”

Nadezhda Alexevna remembered that she had felt anxious about the child and had had a long talk with him. It seemed as if he were convinced at last. He had smiled again in his old way, and had said in his usual careless tone:

“Ah, well, we shall live, and we shall see. Progress is still going forward, and we do not yet understand its aim.”

And now Serezha no longer lived⁠—he had killed himself. So he hadn’t wanted to live and look on at the majestic march of Progress. And what was his mother doing just now? Perhaps kissing his little waxen hand, or perhaps getting supper for the hungry little ones who were doubtless frightened and crying, looking pitiful in their worn-out and untidy clothes. Perhaps she had thrown herself down upon her bed and was weeping⁠—weeping endlessly. Happy woman, happy, if she could weep. What in this world is sweeter than the comfort of tears!

IV

At length Nadezhda Alexevna reached her sister’s home, and went up the staircase to the fourth floor. It was a narrow stone staircase with very steep flights of stairs, and she went up so quickly, almost running, that she lost her breath, and stopped outside the door to rest before going in. She breathed heavily, holding on to the balustrade with her woollen-gloved hand.

The door was covered with felt, over which oilcloth had been stretched, and on this oilcloth was a cross of narrow black strips, partly, perhaps, for ornament, partly for strength. One of the strips was half torn off and hanging down, and behind it, through a hole in the oilcloth, protruded the grey felt. For some reason or other this suddenly seemed pitiful and painful to Nadezhda Alexevna. Her shoulders heaved quickly. Covering her face with her hands she burst into loud sobbing. She felt suddenly weak, and sitting down hastily on the top step she wept. For a long time she sat there hiding her face in her hands. A warm rain of tears flowed over her woollen gloves.

It was nearly dark, and very cold and silent on the staircase⁠—the doors on