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

passed hurriedly along the street. Then a carriage, the wheels of which rang on the frozen snow, and then an izvoschik went past, driving a fat man⁠—and still Alexei Petrovich stood there as if carved.

“It must be done!” he said at last.

He went to the table. It was only a few paces from the window to the table, but it seemed to him as if he had been walking ages. He had already taken up the revolver, when through the opened window there came the distant but clear, vibrating sound of a bell.

“A bell!” exclaimed Alexei Petrovich, astonished, and replacing the revolver once more on the table, he threw himself into the armchair.

IV

“A bell!” he repeated. Why a bell?⁠ ⁠… Was it a service? Prayers⁠ ⁠… church⁠ ⁠… suffocating heat. Wax candles. The decrepit priest, Father Michael, performing the service in a plaintive, cracked voice, and the deacon with his bass. A longing to sleep. Dawn just breaking through the window. His father standing next him with bowed head, making hurried little crosses. Behind them, in the crowd of muzhiks and babas, constant prostrations.⁠ ⁠… How long ago it all was!⁠ ⁠… So long ago that it was hard to believe it had ever happened, that he had himself once seen it, and had not read of it somewhere, or heard of it from somebody. No, no, it all happened, and it was better then. Yes, not only better but well. If only it was like that now, there would be no need to leave by aid of a revolver.

“Finish it!” something whispered to him. He glanced at the revolver, and stretched out his hand towards it, but immediately drew it back.

“Afraid?” it whispered again.

“No, not afraid. There is nothing frightening in it. But the bell! Why the bell?”

He glanced at the watch.

“It must be early morning service. People will go to church. Many of them will feel easier for it. So they say, at all events. Besides, I remember I used to feel better for it. I was a boy then. Afterwards this passed off, perished, and I no longer felt easier for it. That’s the truth⁠ ⁠… truth! The truth has been found at last at this moment!”

And the moment seemed inevitable. He slowly turned his head and again looked at the revolver. It was a big Government regulation pattern revolver, a Smith and Wesson. It had been “browned” once, but had now become lighter in colour, owing to its long rest in the doctor’s holsters. It lay on the table with the butt towards Alexei Petrovich, who could see the worn wood of the handle with its ring for the cord, a part of the drum, with the cocked trigger and the muzzle of the barrel, which looked towards the wall. “There lies death! It must be seized.” It was quiet in the street; no one was either driving or walking past. And from out of this stillness there again sounded the distant stroke of a bell. The waves of sound floated through the open window, and reached Alexei Petrovich. They spoke to him in a foreign tongue, but spoke something great, important, and solemn, stroke after stroke, and when the bell resounded for the last time, and the sound tremblingly died away into space, Alexei Petrovich experienced a real loss. The bell had delivered its message. It had recalled to a perplexed man that there is something besides his own narrow little world which had tormented him, and brought him to suicide. Recollections, fragmentary, disjointed, and all as if something entirely new for him, came flooding on him in an irresistible wave. This night he had already pondered over many things, had recalled much, and imagined that he had recalled all his life, that he had clearly seen himself. Now he felt that there was another side in him, that side of which the timid voice of his soul had spoken.

V

Do you remember yourself as a little child when you lived with your father in a faraway forgotten village? He was an unhappy man, your father, but he loved you more than all else in the world. Do you remember how you would sit together in the long winter evenings, he busy with accounts, you with your books, the tallow-dipped candle with its reddish flame burning more and more dimly, until, arming yourself with snuffers, you trimmed it? That was your duty, and you performed it with such importance that your father each time would raise his eyes from the big ledger, and with customary pathetic and caressing smile, look at you. Your eyes would meet.

“Look, papa, how much I have already read,” you would say, and show the pages you had read, holding them together with your fingers.

“Read, read, my little friend,” your father would say approvingly, and again bury himself in accounts.

He allowed you to read anything, because only good could remain in the mind of his adored little boy. And you read and read, understanding nothing of the arguments, but, nevertheless, taking it all in accordance with childish ideas.

Yes, red was red then, and not the reflection of red rays. Then everything was as it appeared. Then there were not ready-made receptacles for impressions, for ideas into which a man poured forth all that he felt, not troubling whether the receptacle was a fit one or sound. And if he loved someone, he knew without a doubt that he loved.

A pretty, laughing face rose before his eyes and vanished.

And she? You also loved her? I must acknowledge that, at all events, we played sufficiently with feeling. And it would seem that at least I spoke and thought sincerely at that time.⁠ ⁠… What torture it was! And when happiness came it did not seem at all like happiness, and if I had been able then actually to say to time. Stop! wait a little! here it is good⁠—I should have still thought⁠—Shall I order it to stop or not? And