His mother was asleep worn out with a whole day’s work and
vodka-drinking. In the little room behind the partition there stood a
small cooking-lamp burning on the table. Its feeble yellow light, with
difficulty penetrating the sooty glass, threw a strange shadow over the
faces of Sashka and his father.
“Is it not pretty?” asked Sashka in a whisper, holding the little angel
at a distance from his father, so as not to allow him to touch it.
“Yes, there’s something most remarkable about him,” whispered the
father, gazing thoughtfully at the toy. And his face expressed the same
concentrated attention and delight, as did Sashka’s.
“Look, he is going to fly.”
“I see it too,” replied Sashka in an ecstasy. “Think I’m blind? But
look at his little wings! Ah! don’t touch!”
The father withdrew his hand, and with troubled eyes studied the
details of the little angel, while Sashka whispered with the air of a
pedagogue:
“Father, what a bad habit you have of touching everything! You might
break it.”
There fell upon the wall the shadows of two grotesque, motionless heads
bending towards one another, one big and shaggy, the other small and
round.
Within the big head strange torturing thoughts, though at the same time
full of delight, were seething. His eyes unblinkingly regarded the
little angel, and under his steadfast gaze it seemed to grow larger and
brighter, and its wings to tremble with a noiseless trepidation, and
all the surroundings—the timber-built, soot-stained wall, the dirty
table, Sashka—everything became fused into one level grey mass without
light or shade. It seemed to the broken man that he heard a pitying
voice from the world of wonders, wherein once he had dwelt, and whence
he had been cast out forever. There they knew nothing of dirt, of weary
quarrelling, of the blindly-cruel strife of egotism, there they knew
nothing of the tortures of a man arrested in the streets with callous
laughter, and beaten by the rough hand of the night-watchman. There
everything is pure, joyful, bright. And all this purity found an asylum
in the soul of her whom he loved more than life, and had lost—when he
had kept his hold upon his own useless life. With the smell of wax,
which emanated from the toy, was mingled a subtle aroma, and it seemed
to the broken man that her dear fingers touched the angel, those
fingers which he would fain have caressed in one long kiss, till death
should close his lips forever. This was why the little toy was so
beautiful, this was why there was in it something specially attractive,
which defied description. The little angel had descended from that
heaven which her soul was to him, and had brought a ray of light into
the damp room, steeped in sulphurous fumes, and to the dark soul of the
man from whom had been taken all: love, and happiness, and life.
On a level with the eyes of the man, who had lived his life, sparkled
the eyes of the boy, who was beginning his life, and embraced the
little angel in their caress. For them present and future had
disappeared: the ever-sorrowful, piteous father, the rough, unendurable
mother, the black darkness of insults, of cruelty, of humiliations, and
of spiteful grief. The thoughts of Sashka were formless, nebulous, but
all the more deeply for that did they move his agitated soul.
Everything that is good and bright in the world, all profound grief,
and the hope of a soul that sighs for God—the little angel absorbed
them all into himself, and that was why he glowed with such a soft
divine radiance, that was why his little dragonfly wings trembled with
a noiseless trepidation.
The father and son did not look at one another: their sick hearts
grieved, wept, and rejoiced apart. But there was a something in their
thoughts which fused their hearts in one, and annihilated that
bottomless abyss which separates man from man and makes him so lonely,
unhappy, and weak. The father with an unconscious motion put his arm
around the neck of his son, and the son’s head rested equally without
conscious volition upon his father’s consumptive chest.
“_She_ it was who gave it to thee, was it not?” whispered the father,
without taking his eyes off the little angel.
At another time Sashka would have replied with a rude negation, but now
the only reply possible resounded of itself within his soul, and he
calmly pronounced the pious fraud: “Who else? of course she did.”
The father made no reply, and Sashka relapsed into silence.
Something grated in the adjoining room, then clicked, and then was
silent for a moment, and then noisily and hurriedly the clock struck
“One, two, three.”
“Sashka, do you ever dream?” asked the father in a meditative tone.
“No! Oh, yes,” he admitted, “once I had one, in which I fell down from
the roof. We were climbing after the pigeons, and I fell down.”
“But I dream always. Strange things are dreams. One sees the whole
past, one loves and suffers as though it were reality.”
Again he was silent, and Sashka felt his arm tremble as it lay upon his
neck. The trembling and pressure of his father’s arm became stronger
and stronger, and the sensitive silence of the night was all at once
broken by the pitiful sobbing sound of suppressed weeping. Sashka
sternly puckered his brow, and cautiously—so as not to disturb the
heavy trembling arm—wiped away a tear from his eyes. So strange was it
to see a big old man crying.
“Ah! Sashka, Sashka,” sobbed the father, “what is the meaning of
everything?”
“Why, what’s the matter?” sternly whispered Sashka. “You’re crying just
like a little boy.”
“Well, I won’t, then,” said the father with, a piteous smile of excuse.
“What’s the good?”
Feoktista Petrovna turned on her bed. She sighed, cleared her throat,
and mumbled incoherent sounds in a loud and strangely persistent
manner.
It was time to go to bed. But before doing so the little angel must be
disposed of for the night. He could not be left on the floor, so he was
hung up by his string, which was fastened to the flue of the stove.
There it stood out accurately delineated against the white Dutch-tiles.
And so they could both see him, Sashka and his father.
Hurriedly throwing into a corner the various rags on which he was in
the habit of sleeping, Sashka lay down on his back, in order as quickly
as possible to look again at the little angel.
“Why don’t you undress?” asked his father as he shivered and wrapped
himself up in his tattered blanket, and arranged his clothes, which he
had thrown over his feet.
“What’s the good? I shall soon be up again.”
Sashka wished to add that he did not care to go to sleep at all, but he
had no time to do so, since he fell to sleep as suddenly as though he
had sunk to the bottom of a deep swift river.
His father presently fell asleep also. And gentle sleep and restfulness
lay upon the weary face of the man who had lived his life, and upon the
brave face of the little man who was just beginning his life.
But the little angel hanging by the hot stove began to melt. The lamp,
which had been left burning at the entreaty of Sashka, filled the room
with the smell of kerosene, and through its smoked glass threw a
melancholy light upon a scene of gradual dissolution. The little angel
seemed to stir. Over his rosy fingers there rolled thick drops which
fell upon the bench. To the smell of kerosene was added the stifling
scent of melting wax. The little angel gave a tremble as though on the
point of flight, and—fell with a soft thud upon the hot flags.
An inquisitive cockroach singed its wings as it ran round the formless
lump of melted wax, climbed up the dragon-fly wings, and twitching its
feelers went on its way.
Through the curtained window the grey-blue light of coming day crept
in, and the frozen water-carrier was already making a noise in the
courtyard with his iron scoop.