Five Great Short Stories Read online

  “Yes. You are one of the few who are justly called the chosen of God. You serve the eternal truth. Your thoughts, your intentions, your extraordinary science and your whole life bear the godlike, the heavenly stamp, as they are devoted to the reasonable and the beautiful, that is to say, to that which is eternal.”

  “You said the eternal truth. . . . But can people attain to the eternal truth, and is it necessary for them if there is no eternal life?”

  “There is eternal life,” the monk answered.

  “Do you believe in the immortality of man?”

  “Yes, of course. A great brilliant future awaits you men. And the more men like you there are on earth, the sooner this future will be realized. Without you, the servants of the first cause, you who live with discernment and in freedom, the human race would, indeed, be insignificant. Developing in a natural way it would long have waited for the end of its earthly history. You are leading it to the kingdom of eternal truth several thousand years sooner—and in this lies your great service. . . . You incarnate in yourselves the blessing with which God has honoured mankind.”

  “But what is the object of eternal life?” Kovrin asked.

  “The same as of all life—enjoyment. True enjoyment is knowledge, and eternal life offers numberless and inexhaustible sources of knowledge; this is the meaning of: ‘in my Father’s House are many mansions.’”

  “If you only knew how pleasant it is to listen to you,” Kovrin said, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

  “I’m very pleased.”

  “But I know that when you go away I will be troubled about your reality. You are a vision, a hallucination. Consequently I am physically ill, I am not normal.”

  “And what of that! Why are you troubled? You are ill because you have worked beyond your strength and you are exhausted, which means that you have sacrificed your health to an idea, and the time is near when you will sacrifice your life to it too. What could be better? It is the object to which all noble natures, gifted from above, constantly aspire.”

  “If I know that I am mentally diseased, can I believe in myself?”

  “How do you know that the men of genius, who are believed in by the whole world, have not also seen visions? Scholars say now that genius is allied to insanity. My friend, only the ordinary people—the herd—are quite well and normal. All this consideration about the nervous century, overwork, degeneration, etc., can only seriously alarm those whose object in life is the present—that is the people of the herd.”

  “The Romans said: ‘mens sana in corpore sano.’”

  “Not all that the Romans and Greeks said is true. Overstrain, excitement, ecstasy, all that distinguishes the prophets, the poets, the martyrs for ideas, from ordinary people, is opposed to the animal side of man’s nature, that is, to his physical health. I repeat, if you wish to be healthy and normal go to the herd.”

  “It is strange, you say what often comes into my mind,” Kovrin said. “You appear to have looked into my soul and listened to my most secret thoughts. But let us not speak of me. What do you mean by the eternal truth?”

  The monk did not reply. Kovrin glanced at him and could not distinguish his face. The features became misty and melted away. The monk’s head and hands gradually disappeared, his body seemed to be blended with the bench and with the evening twilight and then he vanished entirely.

  “The hallucination is over,” Kovrin said, and he laughed. “What a pity!”

  He returned towards the house gay and happy. What little the black monk had said to him flattered not only his self-love, but his whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve the eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who will render mankind worthy of the Kingdom of God a few thousand years sooner than it would otherwise have been, that is, will save mankind from an extra thousand years of struggle, sin and suffering, to sacrifice everything—youth, strength, health, to the idea—to be ready to die for the general good—what a high, what a happy fate! His clean, chaste life, so full of work, passed through his memory; he remembered what he himself had learned, what he had taught others, and he arrived at the conclusion that there was no exaggeration in the words the monk had spoken.

  Tania came to meet him through the park. She was dressed in another frock.

  “Here you are at last!” she said. “We are looking for you everywhere. But what has happened to you?” she said with astonishment, gazing at his enraptured, beaming countenance and his eyes that were brimming over with tears. “How strange you look, Andryusha.”

  “I am satisfied, Tania,” Kovrin said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I am more than satisfied, I am happy! Tania, dear Tania, you are a most congenial creature! Dear Tania, I am so glad, so glad!”

  He kissed both her hands passionately and continued:

  “I have just passed through bright, beautiful, unearthly moments. But I cannot tell you all because you would call me mad, or you would not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, charming Tania! I love you, and I have become used to love you. Your nearness, our meetings, ten times daily have become a necessity for my soul. I don’t know how I shall be able to exist without you, when I go home.”

  Well!” and Tania laughed, “you will forget us in two days. We are little people, and you are a great man.”

  “No, let us talk seriously,” he said. “I will take you with me. Yes? Won’t you come with me? You want to be mine?”

  “Well, well!” Tania said and again she wanted to laugh, but laughter would not come, and red spots came out on her face.

  She began to breathe fast, and she walked on very quickly, not towards the house, but deeper into the park.

  “I never thought of this . . . never!” she said, clasping her hands as if in despair.

  Kovrin followed her and continued to speak with the same brilliant, excited face.

  “I want love that would conquer me entirely, and that love, Tania, you alone can give me. I am happy, happy!”

  She was stupefied, she bent, she shrivelled, she seemed suddenly to grow ten years older, and he thought her beautiful and he expressed his thoughts aloud:

  “How beautiful she is!”

  CHAPTER VI

  The Black Guest

  WHEN EGOR SEMENYCH heard from Kovrin that the romance had not only begun, but that there was to be a wedding, he walked about the rooms for a long time trying to hide his agitation. His hands began to tremble, his neck seemed to grow thicker and became purple; he ordered his racing droshky2 to be put to and drove off somewhere. Tania, seeing how he whipped the horse and how low down, almost over his ears, he had pressed his cap, understood his mood, shut herself up in her room and cried all day.

  The peaches and plums were already ripening in the hot-houses; the packing and sending off to Moscow of these delicate and tender goods required much attention, trouble and work. Owing to the summer having been very hot and dry, it was necessary to water every tree; this took up much time and labour; besides multitudes of caterpillars appeared on the trees, which the work-people, as well as Egor Semenych and Tania, crushed with their fingers, to Kovrin’s great disgust. Besides all this work it was necessary to accept orders for fruit and trees for the autumn deliveries, and to carry on a large correspondence. While at the busiest time, when it seemed that nobody had a moment to spare, the season for field work came on and took away more than half the hands from the garden. Egor Semenych, very much sunburnt, exhausted and irritated, rushed about now in the gardens, now in the fields, crying that he was torn to pieces, and that he would send a bullet through his head.

  There was also all the bustle caused by the preparation of the trousseau, on which the Pesotskis set great store; everybody in the house was made quite dizzy by the click of scissors, the noise of sewing machines, the fumes of hot irons and the caprices of the milliner, a nervous lady, who was easily offended. And, as if on purpose, every day saw the arrival of guests, who had to be entertained and fed, and who often even stayed the night. Howe
ver, all this drudgery passed by almost unperceived as if in a mist. Tania felt that love and happiness had come upon her unawares, although for some reason from the age of fourteen she had been convinced that Kovrin would be sure to marry her. She was amazed, she was perplexed, she could not believe it herself. . . . At times she was suddenly overpowered by such joy, that she wanted to fly above the clouds, and pray to God there; at others, equally suddenly, she would remember that in August she would have to take leave of her paternal home and her father, or—God knows from where the thought would come—that she was insignificant, small and unworthy of such a great man as Kovrin—then she went to her own room, locked herself in and wept bitterly during several hours. When they had company it would suddenly appear to her that Kovrin was uncommonly handsome, and that all the women were in love with him, and were envious of her; then her soul was filled with pride and delight as if she had conquered the whole world, but he had only to smile affably at one of the girls to cause her to tremble with jealousy and retire to her own room; then there were tears again. These new sensations quite took possession of her; she helped her father mechanically, and never noticed the peaches nor the caterpillars, nor the labourers, nor even how quickly the time flew.

  Much the same happened to Egor Semenych. He worked from morning to night, he was always hurrying somewhere, he constantly lost his temper, he was irritable, but all this took place in a sort of enchanted state of semi-sleep. It was as if there were two men in him: one was the real Egor Semenych who, listening to his gardener, Ivan Karlych, making his report about the disorders in the gardens, would be indignant, and put his hands to his head in despair; and the other, not the real one, who, as if in a half-tipsy state, would suddenly break into the business report in the middle of a word and placing his hand on the gardener’s shoulder would begin to murmur:

  “Whatever one may say there is much in blood. His mother was a wonderful, a most noble, a most clever woman. It was a delight to look at her good, bright, pure face, like an angel’s. She painted beautifully, she wrote verses, she could speak five foreign languages, she sang. . . . Poor thing, may the heavenly kingdom be hers, she died of consumption.”

  The unreal Egor Semenych sighed, and after a pause continued:

  “When he was a boy growing up in my house, he had the same angelic, bright and good face. He has the same look, the same movements and the same soft, elegant manner of speaking that his mother had. And his intellect! He always astonished us by his intellect. By the way, it is not for nothing that he is a Master of Arts! . . . No, not for nothing! But wait a little, Ivan Karlych, you’ll see what he’ll be in ten years! He’ll be quite unapproachable!”

  But here the real Egor Semenych, checking himself, made a serious face, caught hold of his head and shouted:

  “Devils! They’ve dirtied, destroyed, devastated everything! The garden is lost! The garden is ruined!”

  Kovrin worked with the same zeal as before, and did not notice the hurly-burly around him. Love only added oil to the fire. After each meeting with Tania he returned to his room happy, enraptured, and with the same passion with which he had just kissed Tania and had told her of his love, he seized a book or set to work at his manuscript. All that the black monk had said about the chosen of God, eternal truth, the brilliant future of the human race, etc., only gave his work a special, an uncommon meaning and filled his soul with pride, and the consciousness of his own eminence. Once or twice a week either in the park or in the house he met the black monk and conversed with him for a long time; but this did not frighten him; on the contrary, it delighted him, as he was firmly convinced that such an apparition only visited the chosen, the eminent people, who had devoted themselves to the service of the idea.

  One day the monk appeared during dinner and sat down in the dining-room near the window. Kovrin was delighted, and he very adroitly turned the conversation with Egor Semenych and Tania upon subjects that might interest the monk. The black guest listened and nodded his head affably; Egor Semenych and Tania also listened and smiled gaily, never suspecting that Kovrin was not talking to them, but to his vision.

  Unperceived the fast of the Assumption was there, and soon after it the wedding-day arrived. The marriage was celebrated according to Egor Semenych’s persistent desire “with racket,” that is, with senseless festivities that lasted two days. They ate and drank far more than three thousand roubles, but owing to the bad hired band, the shrill toasts, the hurrying to and fro of the lackeys, the noise and the overcrowding, nobody could appreciate the bouquet of the expensive wines nor the taste of the wonderful delicacies that had been ordered from Moscow.

  CHAPTER VII

  Don’t Be Afraid!

  IT HAPPENED on one of the long winter nights that Kovrin was lying in bed reading a French novel. Poor little Tania, who was not yet accustomed to live in a town, had a bad headache, as she often had by the evening, and was long since asleep, but from time to time she was uttering disconnected phrases in her sleep.

  It had struck three. Kovrin blew out his candle and lay down. He lay long with closed eyes, but could not get to sleep, because (so it seemed to him) it was very hot in the bedroom and Tania was talking in her sleep. At half-past four he again lit the candle, and at that moment he saw the black monk sitting on the arm-chair that stood near the bed.

  “How do you do?” the monk said, and after a short pause he asked: “Of what are you thinking now?”

  “Of fame,” Kovrin answered. “In the French novel I have just been reading there is a man, a young scientist, who did stupid things, and who pined away from longing for fame. These longings are incomprehensible to me.”

  “Because you are wise. You look upon fame with indifference, like a plaything that does not interest you.”

  “Yes, that is true.”

  “Fame has no attraction for you. What is there flattering, interesting or instructive in the fact that your name will be carved on your gravestone, and then time will efface this inscription together with its gilding? Besides, happily you are too many for man’s weak memory to be able to remember all your names.”

  “Naturally,” Kovrin agreed. “Why should they be remembered? But let us speak of something else. For example, of happiness. What is happiness?”

  When the clock struck five he was sitting on his bed with his feet resting on the rug and turning to the monk he was saying:

  “In ancient times one happy man was at last frightened at his own happiness—it was so great! And in order to propitiate the gods he sacrificed to them his most precious ring. You know that story? Like Polycrates, I am beginning to be alarmed at my own happiness. It appears to me strange that from morning to night I only experience joy; I am filled with joy and it smothers all other feelings. I do not know what sadness, grief or dullness is. Here am I not asleep. I suffer from sleeplessness, but I am not dull. Quite seriously, I’m beginning to be perplexed.”

  “Why?” the monk asked in astonishment. “Is joy a superhuman feeling? Ought it not to be the normal condition of man? The higher a man is in his intellectual and moral development, the more free he is, the greater are the pleasures that life offers him. Socrates, Diogenes and Marcus Aurelius knew joy, and not grief. The apostle says: ‘Rejoice always.’ Therefore rejoice and be happy.”

  “What if suddenly the gods were angered?” Kovrin said jokingly, and he laughed. “What if they take from me my comfort and make me suffer cold and hunger, it will scarcely be to my taste.”

  In the meantime Tania had awaked and looked at her husband with amazement and terror. He was talking, addressing himself to the armchair, gesticulating and laughing; his eyes glistened and there was something strange in his laughter.

  “Andryusha, with whom are you talking?” she asked, catching hold of the hand he was stretching out to the monk. “Andryusha, with whom? . . .”

  “Eh? With whom?” Kovrin became confused. “With him. There he sits,” he answered, pointing to the black monk.

  “There’s no
body here . . . nobody! Andryusha, you’re ill!”

  Tania put her arms round her husband and pressed close to him, and as if to protect him from visions she put her hand over his eyes. “You are ill!” She sobbed and her whole body trembled. “Forgive me, darling, my dear one; I have long noticed that your soul is troubled about something. You are mentally ill, Andryusha. . . .”

  Her shivering fit was communicated to him. He looked again at the armchair, which was now empty; he suddenly felt a weakness in the arms and legs, he was alarmed and began to dress.

  “It’s nothing, Tania, nothing . . .” he mumbled, shivering. “I really feel a little out of sorts . . . it’s time to admit it.”

  “I have long noticed it—and papa has noticed it too,” she said, trying to restrain her sobs. “You talk to yourself, you smile in a strange way . . . you don’t sleep. Oh, my God, my God, save us!” she said in terror. “But you must not be afraid, Andryusha, don’t be afraid, for God’s sake, don’t be afraid. . . ”

  She also began to dress. Only now, when he looked at her, Kovrin understood all the danger of his position, he understood what the black monk and his talks with him meant. It was now quite clear to him that he was a madman.

  They both dressed, without knowing why, and went into the drawing-room. She went first, he followed her. Here Egor Semenych, who was staying with them, was already standing in his dressing-gown with a candle in his hand.

  “Don’t be afraid, Andryusha,” Tania said again, trembling like one with a fever. “Don’t be afraid. Papa, it will soon pass, it will soon pass.”

  Kovrin was too excited to be able to speak. He wanted to say to his father-in-law in a playful tone:

  “Congratulate me, I think I’m out of my mind,” but his lips only moved, and he smiled bitterly.