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

“Power⁠ ⁠… power.⁠ ⁠… A few words will be sufficient. I will remind her what she is. I will tell her what sort of person you are; I will tell her of your cousin, Sophy Michailovna.⁠ ⁠…”

“I will not allow you to make mention of my cousin.⁠ ⁠… If you have any right to this woman⁠—even if it is true what you have told me of her; even if she has fallen; if tens of others have the same right as you to her⁠—you may have a right to her, but you have no right to my cousin. I forbid you to mention anything about my cousin to her! Do you hear me?”

I felt that there was a threatening ring in my voice. He was beginning to exasperate me.

“Oho! you are showing your claws! I did not know you had any. Very well; you are right. I have no rights whatever to Sophy Michailovna. I will not dare to take her name in vain. But this other⁠ ⁠… this⁠ ⁠…”

In his excitement he several times paced from corner to corner of the room. I saw that he was seriously upset. I did not know what was to be done with him. In our last conversation he had in words and tone expressed such undisguised contempt for this woman, and now⁠ ⁠… surely?⁠ ⁠…

“Serge Vassilivich,” I said, “you love her!”

He stopped short, looked at me in a strange manner, and abruptly said:

“No.”

“Well, then, what’s the matter with you? Why have you raised this storm? I cannot believe that you are consumed with the rescuing of my soul from the claws of this imaginary devil?”

“That’s my business,” said he. “But, remember, by hook or by crook I shall stop you.⁠ ⁠… I shall not allow it. Do you hear?” he cried out hotly.

I felt the blood rush to my head. In the corner where I was standing at this moment there was a heap of odds and ends⁠—canvases, brushes, a broken easel, and there was also a stick with a sharp iron tip, on to which a large umbrella was screwed for summer work. By chance I had taken this lance into my hand, and when Bezsonow said, “I will not allow,” I drove the sharp end with all my might into the floor. The piece of iron went a vershok12 into the wood.

I did not say a word, but Bezsonow looked at me with puzzled and, it seemed to me, even frightened eyes.

“Goodbye,” said he; “I am going. You are over-irritated.”

I had already succeeded in cooling down.

“Wait a moment,” said I; “stop.”

“No, I cannot. Au revoir.”

He went. With an effort I pulled the lance out of the floor, and I remember I felt with my finger the slightly warm, bright piece of iron. For the first time it entered my head that this was an awful weapon, with which it would be easy to kill a man outright.

Helfreich went off to the Academy, and I waited calmly for my model. I put on an entirely new canvas, and made all the necessary preparations.

I cannot say that I thought then only of my picture. I recalled the evening before, with its strange setting, such as I had never previously seen, and the unexpected and, for me, happy meeting with this strange woman⁠—this fallen woman, who at once attracted all my sympathy⁠—and the strange behaviour of Bezsonow.⁠ ⁠… What does he want from me? Is he really not in love with her? If not, why this contemptuous attitude towards her? Could he not surely save her?

I thought of all this as my hand travelled over the canvas with the charcoal. Again and again I made sketches of the pose in which I wanted to place Nadejda Nicolaievna, only to wipe them out one after another.

Punctually at eleven o’clock the bell rang. A minute later she appeared for the first time on the threshold of my room. Oh, how well I remember her pale face when, in agitation and shamefacedly (yes, shame had replaced her yesterday’s expression), she stood silently at the door! She literally did not dare to come into this room where she afterwards found happiness, the sole bright ray in her life, and⁠ ⁠… destruction⁠—but not that destruction of which Bezsonow spoke.⁠ ⁠… I cannot write about this. I will wait a little and get calm.