Short Fiction Vsevolod Garshin (best e reader for epub .txt) 📖

“I have thoroughly overhauled my memory, and it seems to me that I am right⁠—there is nothing to stand on, no footing whence to make the first step forward. Forward!⁠—whither? I do not know, only out of this vicious circle.

“There is no support in the past, because all is false, all is deception. I have lied, and deceived, and deluded even myself. Just as a swindler borrows money right and left, deceiving people with fictitious stories of his wealth⁠—of wealth he has never received, but nevertheless declares to exist⁠—so I all my life have lied to myself. Now the day of reckoning has arrived, and I am bankrupt⁠—a fraudulent bankrupt.”

He dwelt on these words with a perverted sense of enjoyment. He appeared to be almost proud of them. He did not perceive that in designating his whole life a fraud, and in besmearing himself, he was telling lies at that very moment⁠—the worst possible description of lie⁠—a self-lie, because he did not in reality place anything like so low an estimate on himself. Had anyone charged him with even a tenth part of what he had accused himself of during that long evening, his face would have flushed, but not with the flush of shame and recognition of the truth of such reproaches, but with the flush of anger. He would have known how to answer the offender who had touched the pride which he was himself now apparently trampling on so pitilessly.

Was he himself?

He had arrived at such a state that he could not even say of himself, “I am myself.” In his soul voices were speaking. They were speaking differently, and which of these voices was his own, his “ego,” he himself could not tell. The first voice, full and clear, flayed him with well-defined, even eloquent, phrases. The second voice, vague but quarrelsome and persistent, sometimes drowned the first: “Why condemn yourself?” it said. “Better deceive yourself to the end; deceive all. Make yourself out to others what you are not, and all will be well.” There was yet a third voice⁠—that voice which had said: “Enough; did it really never exist?” But this voice spoke timidly, and was scarcely audible. Moreover, he did not attempt to hear it.

“Deceive all.⁠ ⁠… Make yourself out what you are not.⁠ ⁠…”

“But, surely, have I not endeavoured to do this all my life? Have I not deceived others? Have I not played this farcical role? And has it really turned out well? It has resulted in my failure as an actor. Even now I am not what I am in reality. But do I really know what I actually am? I am too much confused to know. But never mind, I have felt for some hours that I have broken down, and am uttering words which I do not myself believe, even now, when on the threshhold of death.”

“Surely I am not really face to face with death?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” he shouted, viciously driving each word home with his fist against the table. “It is necessary once and for all to get out of this tangle. The knot is tied. It cannot be unloosed; it must be cut. Only why prolong matters and lacerate my soul already torn to tatters? Why, when once I have decided, do I sit like a statue from eight o’clock in the evening until now?”

And he hastily commenced to pull a revolver from out of a side-pocket of his shuba.

He had, indeed, sat in one place from eight in the evening until 3 a.m.

At seven o’clock of this last evening of his life he had left his flat, hired an izvoschik, and had driven, sitting huddled up in the sleigh, to the far end of the town, where an old friend of his lived, a doctor, who that evening, as he knew, was going with his wife to the theatre. He knew that he would not find his friends at home, and was not going for the sake of seeing them. He would be sure to gain admittance as an intimate friend, and that was all that was necessary.

“Yes, they are sure to let me in. I will say that I must write a note. If only Dunyasha won’t think of standing by me in the room.⁠ ⁠… Hey, old man, get along faster!” he called out to the izvoschik.

The izvoschik⁠—a little old man, his back bent with age, with a very thin neck enveloped in a coloured muffler, which stuck out above the wide collar of his coat, and with yellowish-tinged grey curls breaking out from under an enormous round cap, clicked his tongue⁠—gave the reins a tug, again gave a click, and hurriedly murmured in a wheezy voice:

“We will get there. Your Excellency, never fear. Now, now!⁠ ⁠… Get on, you spoiled⁠ ⁠… Eh, but what a horse, may the Lord pardon!⁠ ⁠… Now, now!” He struck the horse with his whip, but the only response was a slight swish of its tail. “And I should be glad to please Your Excellency, but the master has given me such a horse⁠—simply it is⁠ ⁠… The gentlemen are insulted, but what is to be done? And the master says, ‘Thou,’ he says, ‘Grandad, art an old man, and so here is an old beast for thee; you will be a pair,’ he says, and the young ones laugh. Glad to laugh. What is it to them? They can scarcely understand. They do not understand.”

“What do they not understand?” inquired the passenger, occupied at this moment in thinking how not to let Dunyasha into the room.

“They do not understand. Your Excellency. They do not understand. How can they? They are silly⁠—young. I am the only old man in the yard. Is it permissible to insult an old man? I have been eighty years in this world, and they are just showing their teeth. Twenty-three years I served as a soldier.⁠ ⁠… It is well known that they are stupid.⁠ ⁠… Well,