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

as a mortuary with tens and hundreds of persons long since dead, and fixedly gazed into the little window of its cellar, which looked into the garden, seeing in the uneven reflection of light on the old rainbow-tinted and dirty glass familiar features encountered by him at some period in life or seen in portraits.

In the meanwhile there came a period of bright fine weather. The patients spent the whole day out of doors in the garden. Their part of the garden, small and thickly overgrown with trees, was, wherever possible, planted with flowers. The Superintendent insisted that all who were capable of so doing should work in the garden. Every day they swept and sprinkled the paths with sand, weeded and watered the flowerbeds, vegetables, and fruit which they themselves had planted. In a corner of the garden was an overgrown cherry orchard. Alongside it stretched an avenue of elms, in the centre of which, on a small artificial mound, there was laid out the prettiest flowerbed in the garden. Bright-coloured flowers grew along the edges of the upper space, whilst the centre was adorned by a large full and rare yellow dahlia with red spots. It formed the centre of the whole garden, rising above it, and it was noticeable that many of the patients invested it with some secret significance. To the new patient it also appeared to be something out of the common, some palladium of the garden and building. All around the paths had also been planted by the patients. Here there was every possible flower met with in the gardens of “Little” Russia: high-growing roses, bright petunias, groups of tall tobacco-plants with small rose-coloured bloom, mint, nasturtiums, pinks, and poppies. Here, too, not far from a flight of steps, grew three small clusters of a particular kind of poppy. It was much smaller than the ordinary variety, and differed in its extraordinarily brilliant blood-red blossom.

It was this blossom which had astonished the patient when, on the first day after his admission into the Asylum, he had seen it through the glass door. Going out for the first time into the garden, he first of all, without leaving the steps which led from the corridor, looked at the brilliant blossoms. There were only two of them. By chance they had grown apart from the other flowers and in an unweeded spot, so that they were surrounded by a thick growth of weeds and grass.

The patients filed, one by one, out of the glass door, at which stood a warder, who gave to each as he passed a thick white cotton cap having a red cross in front. These caps had been intended for hospital use during the war, and had been bought at an auction. But the patients, of course, attributed a special hidden meaning to the cross. The newcomer took off his cap, and looked first at the cross, then at the poppy-blossoms. The latter were the brighter.

“It wins,” said he; “but we will see;” and he went down the steps. Having hastily glanced around, and having failed to notice the warder standing behind him, the patient stepped on to the flowerbed and stretched out his hand towards the flower, but could not decide to pluck it. He experienced a warm and stinging sensation at first in his outstretched hand, and then throughout his whole body, as if some powerful shock from a force unknown to him was emanating from the red petals and was penetrating through him. He moved closer, and put out his hand towards the actual blossom, but it seemed to him that it was defending itself and giving out a poisonous deadly exhalation. His head was reeling, but nevertheless he made one last desperate effort, and had already seized the stalk, when a heavy hand was laid suddenly on his shoulder. It was the old warder.

“It is forbidden to pluck the flowers,” said he, “and you must not go on to the flowerbeds. If each of you is going to pick the flower which attracts you, the whole garden will be spoilt,” continued he with conviction, still holding the culprit by the shoulder.

The patient looked him in the face, without saying a word freed himself, and, in a state of excitement, passed on along the path. “Oh, unhappy ones!” he thought; “you do not see. You are so blind that you defend it! But at all costs I will put an end to it. If not today, then tomorrow we will measure forces. And if I perish, is it not all the same?”

He walked about in the garden until the evening, making acquaintances and carrying on strange conversations first with one and then with another of his companions, and at the end of the day was still more convinced that “all was ready,” as he said to himself. “Soon, soon the iron bars will fall asunder; all these prisoners will issue hence, and will flash to all ends of the earth. The whole world will tremble, will divest itself of its ancient covering, and will appear in new and wondrous beauty.” He had almost forgotten the blossoms, but, on leaving the garden and mounting the flight of steps, he again saw them in the thick grass which had already become covered with dew, whereupon, keeping back from the rest of the patients, he awaited a favourable opportunity. No one saw him as he jumped across the flowerbed, grasped the flower, and hurriedly hid it against his chest under his shirt. When the fresh dew-covered leaves touched his body he became deathly pale, and, in an agony of fear, opened his eyes widely. A cold perspiration broke out on his forehead.

Inside the Asylum they had lit the lamps, and the majority of the patients, whilst waiting supper, were lying on their beds. A few restless ones were pacing the corridor and halls. Amongst these was the patient with the flower. He walked with his hands crossed on his chest. It seemed