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

Then the visitor got up, and on tiptoe hurriedly went to the sofa, above which hung the revolver and sword the Doctor had used in the Russo-Turkish campaign, deftly unfastened the flap of the holster, pulled out the revolver, and slipped it into the side-pocket of his shuba; then he took some cartridges out of the pouch fastened on to the holster, and slipped them also into his pocket. Within three minutes Alexei Petrovich had drunk the glass of water which Dunyasha brought him, had sealed up the unwritten letter, and had started home. “It must be finished, it must be finished,” kept ringing in his brain. But he did not finish it immediately following his arrival home. Going into his room and locking the door, he threw himself, without taking off his shuba, into an armchair, and, lost in thought, gazed vacantly, first at a photograph, then at a book, or at the pattern of the wallpaper, and listened to the ticking of his watch, which he had forgotten, and was lying on the table. He sat thus, without moving so much as a muscle, until far into the night, until that moment when we found him.

The revolver refused to come out of the narrow pocket; then, when it lay on the table, he discovered that all the cartridges except one had fallen through a small hole in the pocket into the lining of the shuba. Alexei Petrovich took off his shuba, and was about to take a knife to rip up the lining of the pocket and get out the cartridges, when he stopped, and a wry smile hovered at one corner of his parched lips.

“Why bother? One is enough. Oh yes, one of these little things is quite sufficient to make everything disappear once and for all. The whole world will disappear; there will be no regrets, no wounded self-esteem, no self-reproaches, no hateful people pretending to be kind and simple⁠—people whom one sees through and despises, but before whom, nevertheless, one also dissembles, pretending to like them, and to be well-disposed towards them. There will be no deceit of self and others; there will be truth, the eternal truth of nonexistence.”

He heard his voice. He was no longer thinking but speaking aloud, and what he said was hateful to him.

“Again.⁠ ⁠… You are dying, killing yourself⁠—and even cannot do that without apostrophizing. For whom, and before whom, are you posing?⁠ ⁠… Before yourself! Ah, enough, enough, enough,” he repeated in a tormented, despairing voice, and with trembling hands he tried to open the refractory breech of the revolver. At length the breech submitted and opened; the cartridge, smeared with fat, slipped into the chamber of the drum, and the hammer cocked apparently of its own accord. There was nothing to interfere with death! The revolver was a regulation officer’s revolver; the door was locked, and no one could enter.

“Now then, Alexei Petrovich!” he said, firmly grasping the handle.

“But the letter?” suddenly flashed into his brain.

“Can I die without leaving behind me one line?”

“Why? For whom? All will disappear, there will be nothing. What concern is it of mine?”

“That may be, but all the same I shall write. May I not for once at least express myself absolutely freely, not embarrassed by anything? or, what is most important, by myself? This surely is a rare, very rare, the sole chance.”

He laid down the revolver, took some writing-paper out of a box, and having tried several pens which would not write, but broke and spoilt the paper, he at length began, but not before he had spoilt several sheets: “Petersburg. 28 November, 187-.” Afterwards his hand ran of its own accord along the paper, reeling off sentence after sentence, barely intelligible to himse.

He wrote that he was dying calmly because regrets were useless. Life was one vast lie. People whom he loved⁠—that is, if he had ever really loved anybody, and had not pretended to himself that he loved⁠—were not able to make him live, because he had drawn all there was to be drawn out of them⁠—no, no, not that⁠—because there was nothing to draw out of them, but simply because they had lost all interest for him once he understood them. He wrote that he understood himself, and understood that in himself there was nothing but falsehood; that if he had done anything in his life, it was not from a wish to do good, but from vanity; that if he had done nothing wrong or dishonourable, it was not due to absence of evil qualities, but from cowardly fright of people. He wrote that, nevertheless, he did not think himself worse than those persons remaining to lie until the end of their days, and did not beg their pardon, but was dying with a contempt for people not less than his contempt for himself. A malicious, senseless phrase slipped in at the end of the letter: “Farewell, people! Farewell, you bloodthirsty grimacing apes!”

It only remained to sign the letter. But when he had finished writing he felt hot; the blood had surged to his head, and was beating against his perspiring temples. And forgetting about the revolver and the fact that by ridding himself of life he could avoid the heat, he got up, went to the window, and opened the fortochka.7 A steaming current of frosty air blew in on him. It had stopped snowing, and the sky was clear. On the opposite side of the street a dazzling white garden, wrapped in icicles, glistened in the moonlight. A few stars were gazing from out of a distant heaven, one of which was brighter than the remainder, and shone with a reddish tint.

“Arcturus,” whispered Alexei Petrovich. “What years since I have seen Arcturus. Not since I was at school!”

He was unwilling to take his eyes off the star. Somebody shivering in a light overcoat, and stamping with his half-frozen feet on the pavement,