Sanine Part 49

"Get a revolver, rush at him, and put a couple of bullets through his head ... and then, as he lies there, stamp on his face, on his eyes, on his teeth!..."

The compress fell to the floor with a dull thud. Sarudine, startled, opened his eyes and, in the dimly-lighted room, saw a basin with water, a towel, and the dark window, that like an awful eye, stared at him mysteriously.

"No, no, there's no help for it now," he thought, in dull despair.

"They all saw it; saw how I was struck in the face, and how I crawled along on all fours. Oh! the shame of it! Struck like that, in the face!

No, it's too much! I shall never be free or happy again!"

And again through his mind there flashed a new, keen thought.

"After all, have I ever been free? No. That's just why I've come to grief now, because my life has never been free; because I've never lived it in my own way. Of my own free will should I ever have wanted to fight a duel, or to hit him with the whip? n.o.body would have struck me, and everything would have been all right. Who first imagined, and when, that an insult could only be wiped out with blood? Not I, certainly. Well, I've wiped it out, or rather, it's been wiped out with my blood, hasn't it? I don't know what it all means, but I know this, that I shall have to leave the regiment!"

His thoughts would fain have taken another direction, yet, like birds with clipped wings, they always fell back again, back to the one central fact that he had been grossly insulted, and would be obliged to leave the regiment.

He remembered having once seen a fly that had fallen into syrup crawling over the floor, dragging its sticky legs and wings along with the utmost difficulty. It was plain that the wretched insect must die, though it still struggled, and made frantic efforts to regain its feet.

At the time he had turned away from it in disgust, and now he saw it again, as in a feverish dream. Then he suddenly thought of a fight that he had once witnessed between two peasants, when one, with a terrific blow in the face, felled the other, an elderly, grey-haired man. He got up, wiped his b.l.o.o.d.y nose on his sleeve, exclaiming with emphasis, "What a fool!"

"Yes, I remember seeing that," thought Sarudine, "and then they had drinks together at the 'Crown.'"

The night drew near to its end. In silence so strange, so oppressive, it seemed as if Sarudine were the one living, suffering soul left on earth. On the table the guttering candle was still burning with a faint, steady, flame. Lost in the gloom of his disordered thoughts Sarudine stared at it with glittering, feverish eyes.

Amid the wild chaos of impressions and recollections there was one thing which stood out clearly from all others. It was the sense of his utter solitude that stabbed his heart like a dagger. Millions of men at that moment were merrily enjoying life, laughing and joking; some, it might be, were even talking about him. But he, only he, was alone.

Vainly he sought to recall familiar faces. Yet pale, and strange, and cold, they appeared to him, and their eyes had a look of curiosity and malevolent glee. Then, in his dejection, he thought of Lida.

He pictured her as he had seen her last; her large, sad eyes; the thin blouse that lightly veiled her soft bosom; her hair in a single loose plait. In her face Sarudine saw neither malice nor contempt. Those dark eyes gazed at him in sorrowful reproach. He remembered how he had repulsed her at the moment of her supreme distress. The sense of having lost her wounded him like a knife.

"She suffered then far more than I do now.... I thrust her from me....

I almost wanted her to drown herself; wanted her to die."

As to a last anchor that should save him, his whole soul turned to her.

He yearned for her caresses, her sympathy. For an instant it seemed to him as if all his actual sufferings would efface the past; yet he knew, alas! that Lida would never, never come back to him, and that all was at an end. Before him lay nothing but the blank, abysmal void!

Raising his arm, Sarudine pressed his hand against his brow. He lay there, motionless, with eyes closed and teeth clenched, striving to see nothing, to hear nothing, to feel nothing. But after a little while his hand dropped, and he sat up. His head ached terribly, his tongue seemed on fire, and he trembled from head to foot. Then he rose and staggered to the table.

"I have lost everything; my life, Lida, everything!"

It flashed across him that this life of his, after all, had not been either good, or glad, or sane, but foolish, perverted and base.

Sarudine, the handsome Sarudine, ent.i.tled to all that was best and most enjoyable in life, no longer existed. There was only a feeble, emasculated body left to bear all this pain and dishonour.

"To live on is impossible," he thought, "for that would mean the entire effacement of the past. I should have to begin a new life, to become quite a different man, and that I cannot do!"

His head fell forward on the table, and in the weird, flickering candlelight he lay there, motionless.

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

On that same evening Sanine went to see Soloveitchik. The little Jew was sitting alone on the steps of his house, gazing at the bare, deserted s.p.a.ce in front of it where several disused pathways crossed the withered gra.s.s. Depressing indeed was the sight of the vacant sheds, with their huge, rusty locks, and of the black windows of the mill. The whole scene spoke mournfully of life and activity that long had ceased.

Sanine instantly noticed the changed expression of Soloveitchik's face.

He no longer smiled, but seemed anxious and worried. His dark eyes had a questioning look.

"Ah! good evening," he said, as in apathetic fas.h.i.+on he took the other's hand. Then he continued gazing at the calm evening sky, against which the black roofs of the sheds stood out in ever sharper relief.

Sanine sat down on the opposite side of the steps, lighted a cigarette, and silently watched Soloveitchik, whose strange demeanour interested him.

"What do you do with yourself here?" he asked, after a while.

Languidly the other turned to him his large, sad eyes.

"I just live here, that's all. When the mill was at work, I used to be in the office. But now it's closed, and everybody's gone away except myself."

"Don't you find it lonely, to be all by yourself, like this?"

Soloveitchik was silent.

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he said: "It's all the same to me."

They remained silent. There was no sound but the rattling of the dog's chain.

"It's not the place that's lonely," exclaimed Soloveitchik with sudden vehemence. "But it's here I feel it, and here," He touched his forehead and his breast.

"What's the matter with you?" asked Sanine calmly.

"Look here," continued Soloveitchik, becoming more excited, "you struck a man to-day, and smashed his face in. Perhaps you have ruined his whole life. Pray don't be offended at my speaking to you like this. I have thought a great deal about it all, sitting here, as you see, and wondering, wondering. Now, if I ask you something, will you answer me?"

For a moment his features were contorted by his usual set smile.

"Ask me whatever you like," replied Sanine, kindly. "You're afraid of offending me, eh? That won't offend me, I a.s.sure you. What's done is done; and, if I thought that I had done wrong, I should be the first to say so."

"I wanted to ask you this," said Soloveitchik, quivering with excitement. "Do you realize that perhaps you might have killed that man?"

"There's not much doubt about that," replied Sanine. "It would have been difficult for a man like Sarudine to get out of the mess unless he killed me, or I killed him. But, as regards killing me, he missed the psychological moment, so to speak; and at present he's not in a fit condition to do me harm. Later on he won't have the pluck. He's played his part."

"And you calmly tell me all this?"

"What do you mean by 'calmly?'" asked Sanine. "I couldn't look on calmly and see a chicken killed, much less a man. It was painful to me to hit him. To be conscious of one's own strength is pleasant, of course, but it was nevertheless a horrible experience--horrible, because such an act in itself was brutal. Yet my conscience is calm. I was but the instrument of fate. Sarudine has come to grief because the whole bent of his life was bound to bring about a catastrophe; and the marvel is that others of his sort do not share his fate. These are the men who learn to kill their fellow-creatures and to pamper their own bodies, not knowing why or wherefore. They are lunatics, idiots! Let them loose, and they would cut their own throats and those of other folk as well. Am I to blame because I protected myself from a madman of this type?"

"Yes, but you have killed him," was Soloveitchik's obstinate reply.

"In that case you had better appeal to the good G.o.d who made us meet."

"You could have stopped him by seizing hold of his hands."

Sanine raised his head.

"In a moment like that one doesn't reflect. And how would that have helped matters? His code of honour demanded revenge at any price. I could not have held his hands for ever. It would only have been an additional insult, nothing more."