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Best Russian Short Stories written by Various

V >> Various >> Best Russian Short Stories




"Come here, sit down, and dictate!"

She came, sat down very gingerly on a chair, and looked at me with a
guilty look.

"Well, to whom do you want to write?"

"To Boleslav Kashput, at the town of Svieptziana, on the Warsaw
Road..."

"Well, fire away!"

"My dear Boles ... my darling ... my faithful lover. May the Mother of
God protect thee! Thou heart of gold, why hast thou not written for
such a long time to thy sorrowing little dove, Teresa?"

I very nearly burst out laughing. "A sorrowing little dove!" more than
five feet high, with fists a stone and more in weight, and as black a
face as if the little dove had lived all its life in a chimney, and
had never once washed itself! Restraining myself somehow, I asked:

"Who is this Bolest?"

"Boles, Mr. Student," she said, as if offended with me for blundering
over the name, "he is Boles--my young man."

"Young man!"

"Why are you so surprised, sir? Cannot I, a girl, have a young man?"

She? A girl? Well!

"Oh, why not?" I said. "All things are possible. And has he been your
young man long?"

"Six years."

"Oh, ho!" I thought. "Well, let us write your letter..."

And I tell you plainly that I would willingly have changed places with
this Boles if his fair correspondent had been not Teresa but something
less than she.

"I thank you most heartily, sir, for your kind services," said Teresa
to me, with a curtsey. "Perhaps _I_ can show _you_ some service, eh?"

"No, I most humbly thank you all the same."

"Perhaps, sir, your shirts or your trousers may want a little
mending?"

I felt that this mastodon in petticoats had made me grow quite red
with shame, and I told her pretty sharply that I had no need whatever
of her services.

She departed.

A week or two passed away. It was evening. I was sitting at my window
whistling and thinking of some expedient for enabling me to get away
from myself. I was bored; the weather was dirty. I didn't want to go
out, and out of sheer ennui I began a course of self-analysis and
reflection. This also was dull enough work, but I didn't care about
doing anything else. Then the door opened. Heaven be praised! Some one
came in.

"Oh, Mr. Student, you have no pressing business, I hope?"

It was Teresa. Humph!

"No. What is it?"

"I was going to ask you, sir, to write me another letter."

"Very well! To Boles, eh?"

"No, this time it is from him."

"Wha-at?"

"Stupid that I am! It is not for me, Mr. Student, I beg your pardon.
It is for a friend of mine, that is to say, not a friend but an
acquaintance--a man acquaintance. He has a sweetheart just like me
here, Teresa. That's how it is. Will you, sir, write a letter to this
Teresa?"

I looked at her--her face was troubled, her fingers were trembling. I
was a bit fogged at first--and then I guessed how it was.

"Look here, my lady," I said, "there are no Boleses or Teresas at all,
and you've been telling me a pack of lies. Don't you come sneaking
about me any longer. I have no wish whatever to cultivate your
acquaintance. Do you understand?"

And suddenly she grew strangely terrified and distraught; she began to
shift from foot to foot without moving from the place, and spluttered
comically, as if she wanted to say something and couldn't. I waited to
see what would come of all this, and I saw and felt that, apparently,
I had made a great mistake in suspecting her of wishing to draw me
from the path of righteousness. It was evidently something very
different.

"Mr. Student!" she began, and suddenly, waving her hand, she turned
abruptly towards the door and went out. I remained with a very
unpleasant feeling in my mind. I listened. Her door was flung
violently to--plainly the poor wench was very angry... I thought it
over, and resolved to go to her, and, inviting her to come in here,
write everything she wanted.

I entered her apartment. I looked round. She was sitting at the table,
leaning on her elbows, with her head in her hands.

"Listen to me," I said.

Now, whenever I come to this point in my story, I always feel horribly
awkward and idiotic. Well, well!

"Listen to me," I said.

She leaped from her seat, came towards me with flashing eyes, and
laying her hands on my shoulders, began to whisper, or rather to hum
in her peculiar bass voice:

"Look you, now! It's like this. There's no Boles at all, and there's
no Teresa either. But what's that to you? Is it a hard thing for you
to draw your pen over paper? Eh? Ah, and _you_, too! Still such a
little fair-haired boy! There's nobody at all, neither Boles, nor
Teresa, only me. There you have it, and much good may it do you!"

"Pardon me!" said I, altogether flabbergasted by such a reception,
"what is it all about? There's no Boles, you say?"

"No. So it is."

"And no Teresa either?"

"And no Teresa. I'm Teresa."

I didn't understand it at all. I fixed my eyes upon her, and tried to
make out which of us was taking leave of his or her senses. But she
went again to the table, searched about for something, came back to
me, and said in an offended tone:

"If it was so hard for you to write to Boles, look, there's your
letter, take it! Others will write for me."

I looked. In her hand was my letter to Boles. Phew!

"Listen, Teresa! What is the meaning of all this? Why must you get
others to write for you when I have already written it, and you
haven't sent it?"

"Sent it where?"

"Why, to this--Boles."

"There's no such person."

I absolutely did not understand it. There was nothing for me but to
spit and go. Then she explained.

"What is it?" she said, still offended. "There's no such person, I
tell you," and she extended her arms as if she herself did not
understand why there should be no such person. "But I wanted him to
be... Am I then not a human creature like the rest of them? Yes, yes,
I know, I know, of course... Yet no harm was done to any one by my
writing to him that I can see..."

"Pardon me--to whom?"

"To Boles, of course."

"But he doesn't exist."

"Alas! alas! But what if he doesn't? He doesn't exist, but he _might!_
I write to him, and it looks as if he did exist. And Teresa--that's
me, and he replies to me, and then I write to him again..."

I understood at last. And I felt so sick, so miserable, so ashamed,
somehow. Alongside of me, not three yards away, lived a human creature
who had nobody in the world to treat her kindly, affectionately, and
this human being had invented a friend for herself!

"Look, now! you wrote me a letter to Boles, and I gave it to some one
else to read it to me; and when they read it to me I listened and
fancied that Boles was there. And I asked you to write me a letter
from Boles to Teresa--that is to me. When they write such a letter for
me, and read it to me, I feel quite sure that Boles is there. And life
grows easier for me in consequence."

"Deuce take you for a blockhead!" said I to myself when I heard this.

And from thenceforth, regularly, twice a week, I wrote a letter to
Boles, and an answer from Boles to Teresa. I wrote those answers
well... She, of course, listened to them, and wept like anything,
roared, I should say, with her bass voice. And in return for my thus
moving her to tears by real letters from the imaginary Boles, she
began to mend the holes I had in my socks, shirts, and other articles
of clothing. Subsequently, about three months after this history
began, they put her in prison for something or other. No doubt by this
time she is dead.

My acquaintance shook the ash from his cigarette, looked pensively up
at the sky, and thus concluded:

Well, well, the more a human creature has tasted of bitter things the
more it hungers after the sweet things of life. And we, wrapped round
in the rags of our virtues, and regarding others through the mist of
our self-sufficiency, and persuaded of our universal impeccability, do
not understand this.

And the whole thing turns out pretty stupidly--and very cruelly. The
fallen classes, we say. And who are the fallen classes, I should like
to know? They are, first of all, people with the same bones, flesh,
and blood and nerves as ourselves. We have been told this day after
day for ages. And we actually listen--and the devil only knows how
hideous the whole thing is. Or are we completely depraved by the loud
sermonising of humanism? In reality, we also are fallen folks, and, so
far as I can see, very deeply fallen into the abyss of
self-sufficiency and the conviction of our own superiority. But enough
of this. It is all as old as the hills--so old that it is a shame to
speak of it. Very old indeed--yes, that's what it is!




LAZARUS



BY LEONID ANDREYEV



I


When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the
mysterious thraldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a
long time before any one noticed the evil peculiarities in him that
were later to make his very name terrible. His friends and relatives
were jubilant that he had come back to life. They surrounded him with
tenderness, they were lavish of their eager attentions, spending the
greatest care upon his food and drink and the new garments they made
for him. They clad him gorgeously in the glowing colours of hope and
laughter, and when, arrayed like a bridegroom, he sat at table with
them again, ate again, and drank again, they wept fondly and summoned
the neighbours to look upon the man miraculously raised from the dead.

The neighbours came and were moved with joy. Strangers arrived from
distant cities and villages to worship the miracle. They burst into
stormy exclamations, and buzzed around the house of Mary and Martha,
like so many bees.

That which was new in Lazarus' face and gestures they explained
naturally, as the traces of his severe illness and the shock he had
passed through. It was evident that the disintegration of the body had
been halted by a miraculous power, but that the restoration had not
been complete; that death had left upon his face and body the effect
of an artist's unfinished sketch seen through a thin glass. On his
temples, under his eyes, and in the hollow of his cheek lay a thick,
earthy blue. His fingers were blue, too, and under his nails, which
had grown long in the grave, the blue had turned livid. Here and there
on his lips and body, the skin, blistered in the grave, had burst open
and left reddish glistening cracks, as if covered with a thin, glassy
slime. And he had grown exceedingly stout. His body was horribly
bloated and suggested the fetid, damp smell of putrefaction. But the
cadaverous, heavy odour that clung to his burial garments and, as it
seemed, to his very body, soon wore off, and after some time the blue
of his hands and face softened, and the reddish cracks of his skin
smoothed out, though they never disappeared completely. Such was the
aspect of Lazarus in his second life. It looked natural only to those
who had seen him buried.

Not merely Lazarus' face, but his very character, it seemed, had
changed; though it astonished no one and did not attract the attention
it deserved. Before his death Lazarus had been cheerful and careless,
a lover of laughter and harmless jest. It was because of his good
humour, pleasant and equable, his freedom from meanness and gloom,
that he had been so beloved by the Master. Now he was grave and
silent; neither he himself jested nor did he laugh at the jests of
others; and the words he spoke occasionally were simple, ordinary and
necessary words--words as much devoid of sense and depth as are the
sounds with which an animal expresses pain and pleasure, thirst and
hunger. Such words a man may speak all his life and no one would ever
know the sorrows and joys that dwelt within him.

Thus it was that Lazarus sat at the festive table among his friends
and relatives--his face the face of a corpse over which, for three
days, death had reigned in darkness, his garments gorgeous and
festive, glittering with gold, bloody-red and purple; his mien heavy
and silent. He was horribly changed and strange, but as yet
undiscovered. In high waves, now mild, now stormy, the festivities
went on around him. Warm glances of love caressed his face, still cold
with the touch of the grave; and a friend's warm hand patted his
bluish, heavy hand. And the music played joyous tunes mingled of the
sounds of the tympanum, the pipe, the zither and the dulcimer. It was
as if bees were humming, locusts buzzing and birds singing over the
happy home of Mary and Martha.



II


Some one recklessly lifted the veil. By one breath of an uttered word
he destroyed the serene charm, and uncovered the truth in its ugly
nakedness. No thought was clearly defined in his mind, when his lips
smilingly asked: "Why do you not tell us, Lazarus, what was There?"
And all became silent, struck with the question. Only now it seemed to
have occurred to them that for three days Lazarus had been dead; and
they looked with curiosity, awaiting an answer. But Lazarus remained
silent.

"You will not tell us?" wondered the inquirer. "Is it so terrible
There?"

Again his thought lagged behind his words. Had it preceded them, he
would not have asked the question, for, at the very moment he uttered
it, his heart sank with a dread fear. All grew restless; they awaited
the words of Lazarus anxiously. But he was silent, cold and severe,
and his eyes were cast down. And now, as if for the first time, they
perceived the horrible bluishness of his face and the loathsome
corpulence of his body. On the table, as if forgotten by Lazarus, lay
his livid blue hand, and all eyes were riveted upon it, as though
expecting the desired answer from that hand. The musicians still
played; then silence fell upon them, too, and the gay sounds died
down, as scattered coals are extinguished by water. The pipe became
mute, and the ringing tympanum and the murmuring dulcimer; and as
though a chord were broken, as though song itself were dying, the
zither echoed a trembling broken sound. Then all was quiet.

"You will not?" repeated the inquirer, unable to restrain his babbling
tongue. Silence reigned, and the livid blue hand lay motionless. It
moved slightly, and the company sighed with relief and raised their
eyes. Lazarus, risen from the dead, was looking straight at them,
embracing all with one glance, heavy and terrible.

This was on the third day after Lazarus had arisen from the grave.
Since then many had felt that his gaze was the gaze of destruction,
but neither those who had been forever crushed by it, nor those who in
the prime of life (mysterious even as death) had found the will to
resist his glance, could ever explain the terror that lay immovable in
the depths of his black pupils. He looked quiet and simple. One felt
that he had no intention to hide anything, but also no intention to
tell anything. His look was cold, as of one who is entirely
indifferent to all that is alive. And many careless people who pressed
around him, and did not notice him, later learned with wonder and fear
the name of this stout, quiet man who brushed against them with his
sumptuous, gaudy garments. The sun did not stop shining when he
looked, neither did the fountain cease playing, and the Eastern sky
remained cloudless and blue as always; but the man who fell under his
inscrutable gaze could no longer feel the sun, nor hear the fountain,
nor recognise his native sky. Sometimes he would cry bitterly,
sometimes tear his hair in despair and madly call for help; but
generally it happened that the men thus stricken by the gaze of
Lazarus began to fade away listlessly and quietly and pass into a slow
death lasting many long years. They died in the presence of everybody,
colourless, haggard and gloomy, like trees withering on rocky ground.
Those who screamed in madness sometimes came back to life; but the
others, never.

"So you will not tell us, Lazarus, what you saw There?" the inquirer
repeated for the third time. But now his voice was dull, and a dead,
grey weariness looked stupidly from out his eyes. The faces of all
present were also covered by the same dead grey weariness like a mist.
The guests stared at one another stupidly, not knowing why they had
come together or why they sat around this rich table. They stopped
talking, and vaguely felt it was time to leave; but they could not
overcome the lassitude that spread through their muscles. So they
continued to sit there, each one isolated, like little dim lights
scattered in the darkness of night.

The musicians were paid to play, and they again took up the
instruments, and again played gay or mournful airs. But it was music
made to order, always the same tunes, and the guests listened
wonderingly. Why was this music necessary, they thought, why was it
necessary and what good did it do for people to pull at strings and
blow their cheeks into thin pipes, and produce varied and
strange-sounding noises?

"How badly they play!" said some one.

The musicians were insulted and left. Then the guests departed one by
one, for it was nearing night. And when the quiet darkness enveloped
them, and it became easier to breathe, the image of Lazarus suddenly
arose before each one in stern splendour. There he stood, with the
blue face of a corpse and the raiment of a bridegroom, sumptuous and
resplendent, in his eyes that cold stare in the depths of which lurked
_The Horrible!_ They stood still as if turned into stone. The darkness
surrounded them, and in the midst of this darkness flamed up the
horrible apparition, the supernatural vision, of the one who for three
days had lain under the measureless power of death. Three days he had
been dead. Thrice had the sun risen and set--and he had lain dead. The
children had played, the water had murmured as it streamed over the
rocks, the hot dust had clouded the highway--and he had been dead. And
now he was among men again--touched them--looked at them--_looked at
them!_ And through the black rings of his pupils, as through dark
glasses, the unfathomable _There_ gazed upon humanity.



III


No one took care of Lazarus, and no friends or kindred remained with
him. Only the great desert, enfolding the Holy City, came close to the
threshold of his abode. It entered his home, and lay down on his couch
like a spouse, and put out all the fires. No one cared for Lazarus.
One after the other went away, even his sisters, Mary and Martha. For
a long while Martha did not want to leave him, for she knew not who
would nurse him or take care of him; and she cried and prayed. But one
night, when the wind was roaming about the desert, and the rustling
cypress trees were bending over the roof, she dressed herself quietly,
and quietly went away. Lazarus probably heard how the door was
slammed--it had not shut properly and the wind kept knocking it
continually against the post--but he did not rise, did not go out, did
not try to find out the reason. And the whole night until the morning
the cypress trees hissed over his head, and the door swung to and fro,
allowing the cold, greedily prowling desert to enter his dwelling.
Everybody shunned him as though he were a leper. They wanted to put a
bell on his neck to avoid meeting him. But some one, turning pale,
remarked it would be terrible if at night, under the windows, one
should happen to hear Lazarus' bell, and all grew pale and assented.

Since he did nothing for himself, he would probably have starved had
not his neighbours, in trepidation, saved some food for him. Children
brought it to him. They did not fear him, neither did they laugh at
him in the innocent cruelty in which children often laugh at
unfortunates. They were indifferent to him, and Lazarus showed the
same indifference to them. He showed no desire to thank them for their
services; he did not try to pat the dark hands and look into the
simple shining little eyes. Abandoned to the ravages of time and the
desert, his house was falling to ruins, and his hungry, bleating goats
had long been scattered among his neighbours. His wedding garments had
grown old. He wore them without changing them, as he had donned them
on that happy day when the musicians played. He did not see the
difference between old and new, between torn and whole. The brilliant
colours were burnt and faded; the vicious dogs of the city and the
sharp thorns of the desert had rent the fine clothes to shreds.

During the day, when the sun beat down mercilessly upon all living
things, and even the scorpions hid under the stones, convulsed with a
mad desire to sting, he sat motionless in the burning rays, lifting
high his blue face and shaggy wild beard.

While yet the people were unafraid to speak to him, same one had asked
him: "Poor Lazarus! Do you find it pleasant to sit so, and look at the
sun?" And he answered: "Yes, it is pleasant."

The thought suggested itself to people that the cold of the three days
in the grave had been so intense, its darkness so deep, that there was
not in all the earth enough heat or light to warm Lazarus and lighten
the gloom of his eyes; and inquirers turned away with a sigh.

And when the setting sun, flat and purple-red, descended to earth,
Lazarus went into the desert and walked straight toward it, as though
intending to reach it. Always he walked directly toward the sun, and
those who tried to follow him and find out what he did at night in the
desert had indelibly imprinted upon their mind's vision the black
silhouette of a tall, stout man against the red background of an
immense disk. The horrors of the night drove them away, and so they
never found out what Lazarus did in the desert; but the image of the
black form against the red was burned forever into their brains. Like
an animal with a cinder in its eye which furiously rubs its muzzle
against its paws, they foolishly rubbed their eyes; but the impression
left by Lazarus was ineffaceable, forgotten only in death.

There were people living far away who never saw Lazarus and only heard
of him. With an audacious curiosity which is stronger than fear and
feeds on fear, with a secret sneer in their hearts, some of them came
to him one day as he basked in the sun, and entered into conversation
with him. At that time his appearance had changed for the better and
was not so frightful. At first the visitors snapped their fingers and
thought disapprovingly of the foolish inhabitants of the Holy City.
But when the short talk came to an end and they went home, their
expression was such that the inhabitants of the Holy City at once knew
their errand and said: "Here go some more madmen at whom Lazarus has
looked." The speakers raised their hands in silent pity.

Other visitors came, among them brave warriors in clinking armour, who
knew not fear, and happy youths who made merry with laughter and song.
Busy merchants, jingling their coins, ran in for awhile, and proud
attendants at the Temple placed their staffs at Lazarus' door. But no
one returned the same as he came. A frightful shadow fell upon their
souls, and gave a new appearance to the old familiar world.

Those who felt any desire to speak, after they had been stricken by
the gaze of Lazarus, described the change that had come over them
somewhat like this:

_All objects seen by the eye and palpable to the hand became empty,
light and transparent, as though they were light shadows in the
darkness; and this darkness enveloped the whole universe. It was
dispelled neither by the sun, nor by the moon, nor by the stars, but
embraced the earth like a mother, and clothed it in a boundless black
veil_.

_Into all bodies it penetrated, even into iron and stone; and the
particles of the body lost their unity and became lonely. Even to the
heart of the particles it penetrated, and the particles of the
particles became lonely_.

_The vast emptiness which surrounds the universe, was not filled with
things seen, with sun or moon or stars; it stretched boundless,
penetrating everywhere, disuniting everything, body from body,
particle from particle_.

_In emptiness the trees spread their roots, themselves empty; in
emptiness rose phantom temples, palaces and houses--all empty; and in
the emptiness moved restless Man, himself empty and light, like a
shadow_.

_There was no more a sense of time; the beginning of all things and
their end merged into one. In the very moment when a building was
being erected and one could hear the builders striking with their
hammers, one seemed already to see its ruins, and then emptiness where
the ruins were_.

_A man was just born, and funeral candles were already lighted at his
head, and then were extinguished; and soon there was emptiness where
before had been the man and the candles._

_And surrounded by Darkness and Empty Waste, Man trembled hopelessly
before the dread of the Infinite_.

So spoke those who had a desire to speak. But much more could probably
have been told by those who did not want to talk, and who died in
silence.



IV


At that time there lived in Rome a celebrated sculptor by the name of
Aurelius. Out of clay, marble and bronze he created forms of gods and
men of such beauty that this beauty was proclaimed immortal. But he
himself was not satisfied, and said there was a supreme beauty that he
had never succeeded in expressing in marble or bronze. "I have not yet
gathered the radiance of the moon," he said; "I have not yet caught
the glare of the sun. There is no soul in my marble, there is no life
in my beautiful bronze." And when by moonlight he would slowly wander
along the roads, crossing the black shadows of the cypress-trees, his
white tunic flashing in the moonlight, those he met used to laugh
good-naturedly and say: "Is it moonlight that you are gathering,
Aurelius? Why did you not bring some baskets along?"