After we had crossed the Russian frontier another thought--a thought that
filled me with unspeakable happiness--put all others to flight: my child!
I should see my child again! All our relations would certainly be
assembled at the Tarnowskys' house, so I should find my parents and my
little Tioka there too. The image of the living child soon displaced the
tragic memory of the dead youth. As the train sped towards Kieff my
fever of gladness and impatience increased. Yes, to-morrow would be poor
Peter's funeral, but this very evening I should clasp little Tioka in my
arms!
Raising my eyes, I saw that Vassili was looking at me with a scowl. "I
have been watching you for some time," he said. "Heartless creature that
you are, to laugh--to laugh in the face of death."
"I was thinking of Tioka," I stammered. Vassili did not reply. But in
the depths of my heart joy sang and whispered like a hidden fountain.
Thus, inwardly rejoicing, did I enter the house of death and hasten to
the dark-red room--the very scene of Peter's suicide--in which they had
placed my baby's cradle; thus, while others mourned with prayers and
tears in the gloomy death-chamber, I ran across the sun-filled garden
holding my infant to my breast. I hid myself with him in the orchard and
laughed and laughed aloud, as I kissed his starry eyes and his tiny,
flower-like mouth.
But Death, the Black Visitor, had entered my life. Little Peter had
shown him the way, had opened the door to him.
From that day forward the dread Intruder never forsook my threshold.
Death, lurking at my door in terrifying silence, stretched out his hand
at intervals and clutched some one belonging to me. Generally it was
with a swift gesture--a fell disease or a pistol-shot--that he struck down
and flung into the darkness those I loved.
But towards me Death comes with a slower, more deliberate tread. For
years, ever since the birth of my little daughter Tania,--my white
rosebud born midst the snows of a dreary winter in Kieff--I have felt
Death creeping towards me, slow, insidious, inexorable, holding in his
hand a knot of serpents, each of which will fasten its poisoned fangs
upon me. Disease, the venomous snake, will hide in my bosom and thrust
its way through my veins. The heavy snake of Grief will coil round my
heart and crush me in its spirals. Insanity will glide into my brain and
nest there. Then--last but not least horrible--the little glass viper, the
syringe of Pravaz, whose fang is a hollow needle, will draw me into the
thraldom of its virulent grip. It will spurt its venom into my blood.
The bland balm of coca, the milky juice of the poppy, will flow into my
veins, soothing, assuaging, lulling me into sleep and forgetfulness--only
to waken me in renewed agony of suffering to a renewed bite of the
envenomed fang. For the only antidote to the poison of narcotics is the
narcotic itself, the only alleviation to the tearing agony of the poison
generated by morphia is morphia again. And so the fatal sequence swings
on forever, in ever-widening circles of torment....
X
_From Alexis Bozevsky to Stepan Nebrasoff._
KIEFF, _Thursday_.