Short Fiction - Vsevolod Garshin (my miracle luna book free read .TXT) 📗

For a long time I wondered whether I would write it here or not. And I have decided to say nothing of it. Who knows into what hands this diary may fall? If I could know for certain that only Sonia and Helfreich would read it, I should not talk of Nadejda Nicolaievna’s past. They both know it well. I, as of old, have hid nothing from my cousin, and in my letters have written her the whole of Nadejda Nicolaievna’s long and bitter story. Helfreich heard it all from her herself. Consequently her history in my diary is not necessary for him. As for others⁠ ⁠… I do not want others to judge her. She told me her whole life. I was her judge, and forgave her all which, in the opinion of men, required forgiveness. I listened to her painful confession and narrative of her misfortunes, the most dreadful misfortunes, such as only a woman can experience, and it was not accusation which stirred in my soul, but the shame and humiliating feeling of a man who feels himself guilty of the evil about which they are speaking to him. The last episode in her history filled me with horror and pity. Her words the evening that Helfreich found her were no empty ones. She really had killed a man unintentionally. He had wished to save her, but could not. His weak hands were not strong enough to restrain her from the brink of the abyss, and, unable to restrain her, he had hurled himself instead into the pit. He shot himself. Dry-eyed and with a kind of set determination, she related to me the whole of this awful history, and I long thought over it. Can her crushed heart come once more to life? Can such terrible wounds heal? They did apparently heal. She became gradually calmer and calmer, and a smile was no longer a rarity. She used to come to me every day, and stayed to dinner. After dinner we three used to sit together for hours, and whatever the subject of conversation between Helfreich and myself, Nadejda Nicolaievna only occasionally put in a word.

I well remember one of these talks. Helfreich, without giving up his cats, had begun seriously to paint studies. Once he confessed that he was working so hard only because he had thought out a picture which he intended to paint, “perhaps in five, perhaps in ten years’ time.”

“Why so far ahead, Senichka?” I asked, with an involuntary smile at the important way in which he had announced his intention.

“Because it is a serious subject⁠—a matter of life, Andrei. Do you think that only tall people with straight backs and chests can think out serious subjects? Oh, you conceited hop-poles! Believe me,” continued he, with an air of assumed importance, “that between these humps of mine great ideas can reside, and in this long box (he struck himself on the head) great ideas are born.”

“This great idea⁠—is it a secret?” inquired Nadejda Nicolaievna.

He looked at us both, and after a moment’s pause said:

“No, it is not a secret. I will tell you. I have had this idea for a long time. Listen. Once upon a time Vladimir (Krasnoe Solnishko) became angry at the bold words of Ilia Murometz. He ordered him to be seized, taken away, and locked up in a deep vault, which was to be covered up with earth. They led the old Cossack away to death. But, as always happens, the Princess Evprakseiushka at that moment became ‘wise.’ She found out a way to Ilia, and used to send him bread each day, and water, and wax candles by the light of which to read the Gospel. And she sent him the Gospels.”

Senichka stopped and thought, and was silent for so long that at length I said:

“Well, Simon Ivanovich?”

“Well, that’s all. Of course, the Prince soon wanted the old Cossack. The Tatars came, and there was no one to save Kieff. Then Vladimir was sorry, bitterly regretted. Then Evprakseiushka sent people straightway to the deep vaults, and led out Ilia by the hand. Ilia did not bear malice, sat on a steed, and so on, routed the Tatars⁠—and that’s all.”

“But where’s the picture, Simon Ivanovich?”

Simon looked at me with an expression of exaggerated astonishment, and threw up his arms.

“Artist! Oh, artist! Oh, Lopatin, Andrei Lopatin! There are thirty, three hundred, three thousand pictures, if you want them, but I shall choose one only, and shall paint it. I shall die, but I shall paint it first! Cannot you see him sitting in the vault? Can you not see it as if real? Listen! the cave, vault, generally a burrow of some kind like the Kieff caves. The narrow approaches and the small niche in the wall. The dust and mildew, frightening and fantastic in the light of the wax candle. And Ilia sits on the steps, before him a desk, and on the desk there lies an old sacred book with thick, warped, yellowing leaves of parchment, inscribed with letters of black and red. The old Cossack is sitting in a shirt only, and is reading attentively, turning over the rebellious leaves of the book with his big, uncouth peasant’s hands, accustomed to the campaign and lance, to the sword and to the cudgel. These hands have laboured much, and, from the hard work which they have performed all his life, they are tremulous, and with difficulty turn over the leaves of the sacred book.⁠ ⁠… Eh, my friend,” suddenly said Helfreich in the middle of all this, “only one calamity: there were no such things as spectacles at that time. If there had been, Evprakseiushka would undoubtedly have sent him spectacles⁠—huge round ones with silver rims. Perhaps he was long-sighted from life on the steppe? What do you think?”

We both laughed. Helfreich looked at us, surprised, and then, as if understanding why we laughed, himself smiled. But the solemn spirit of his narrative again took hold of him, and