[Illustration]
_Leonid Andreiev is a talented member of the youngest school of
Russian literature. He was born at Oriol in 1871. He studied law at
the universities of St. Petersburg and Moscow and graduated in 1897.
He wrote some stories while still a student, but did not meet with
recognition until 1898, when he wholly abandoned his unsuccessful
career as a lawyer and devoted himself to literature._
_Andreiev, like some of the other young Russian writers, Gorki
included, is groping his way--his talent has not yet adopted a
permanent manner. He has two distinctly different styles, one symbolic
and elusive, the other clear and sane, though melancholy. It may
interest some readers to compare his “Valia” with Frapié’s story in the
volume of French short stories in this series._
[Illustration]
VALIA
BY LEONID ANDREIEV
Translated by Lizzie B. Gorin. Copyright, 1907,
by P. F. Collier & Son.
Valia was reading a huge, very huge book, almost half as large as
himself, with very black letters and pictures occupying the entire
page. To see the top line Valia had to stretch out his neck, lean far
over the table, kneeling in his chair, and putting his short chubby
finger on the letters for fear they would be lost among the other ones
like it, in which case it was a difficult task to find them again.
Owing to these circumstances, unforeseen by the publishers, the reading
advanced very slowly, notwithstanding the breath-catching interest of
the book.
It was a story about a very strong boy whose name was Prince Bova, and
who could, by merely grasping the legs or arms of other boys, wrench
them away from the body.
But Valia was suddenly interrupted in his reading; his mother entered
with some other woman.
“Here he is,” said his mother, her eyes red with weeping. The tears had
evidently been shed very recently as she was still crushing a white
lace handkerchief in her hand.
“Valichka, darling!” exclaimed the other woman, and putting her arms
about his head, she began to kiss his face and eyes, pressing her thin,
hard lips to them. She did not fondle him as did his mother, whose
kisses were soft and melting; this one seemed loath to let go of him.
Valia accepted her pricking caresses with a frown and silence; he was
very much displeased at being interrupted, and he did not at all like
this strange woman, tall, with bony, long fingers upon which there was
not even one ring. And she smelled so bad: a damp, moldy smell, while
his mother always exhaled a fresh, exquisite perfume.
At last the woman left him in peace, and while he was wiping his
lips she looked him over with that quick sort of glance which seemed
to photograph one. His short nose with its indication of a future
little hump, his thick, unchildish brows over dark eyes, and the
general appearance of stern seriousness, recalled some one to her,
and she began to cry. Even her weeping was unlike mama’s: the face
remained immovable while the tears quickly rolled down one after the
other--before one had time to fall another was already chasing after
it. Her tears ceased as suddenly as they had commenced, and she asked:
“Valichka, do you know me?”--“No.”
“I called to see you. Twice I called to see you.”
Perhaps she had called upon him, perhaps she had called twice, but how
should Valia know of it? With her questions she only hindered him from
reading.
“I am your mama, Valia!” said the woman.
Valia looked around in astonishment to find his mama, but she was no
longer in the room.
“Why, can there be two mamas?” he asked. “What nonsense you are telling
me.”
The woman laughed, but this laugh did not please Valia; it was evident
that the woman did not wish to laugh at all, and did it purposely to
fool him. For some moments they were both silent.
“And what book is it you are reading?”
“About Prince Bova,” Valia informed her with serious self-esteem and an
evident respect for the big book.
“Ach, it must be very interesting! Tell me, please!” the woman asked
with an ingratiating smile.
And once more something unnatural and false sounded in this voice,
which tried to be soft and round like the voice of his mother, but
remained sharp and prickly. The same insincerity appeared also in all
the movements of the woman; she turned on her chair and even stretched
out her neck with a manner as if preparing for a long and attentive
listening; and when Valia reluctantly began the story, she immediately
retired within herself, like a dark-lantern on which the cover is
suddenly thrown. Valia felt the offense toward himself and Prince Bova,
but, wishing to be polite, he quickly finished the story and added:
“That is all.”
“Well, good-by, my dear, my dove!” said the strange woman, and once
more pressed her lips to Valia’s face. “I shall soon call again. Will
you be glad?”
“Yes, come please,” politely replied Valia, and to get rid of her more
quickly he added: “I will be very glad.”
The visitor left him, but hardly had Valia found in the book again the
word at which he had been interrupted, when mama entered, looked at
him, and she also began to weep. He could easily understand why the
other woman should have wept; she must have been sorry that she was so
unpleasant and tiresome--but why should his mama weep?
“Listen, mama,” he said musingly, “how that woman bored me! She says
that she is my mama. Why, could there be two mamas to one boy?”
“No, baby, there could not; but she speaks the truth; she is your
mother.”
“And what are you, then?”
“I am your auntie.”
This was a very unexpected discovery, but Valia received it with
unshakable indifference; auntie, well, let it be auntie--was it not
just the same? A word did not, as yet, have the same meaning for him as
it would for a grown person. But his former mother did not understand
it, and began to explain why it had so happened that she had been a
mother and had become an aunt. Once, very long ago, when Valia was
very, very little--
“How little? So?” Valia raised his hand about a quarter of a yard from
the table. “Like Kiska?” Valia exclaimed, joyfully surprised, with
mouth half opened and brow lifted. He spoke of his white kitten that
had been presented to him.
“Yes.”
Valia broke into a happy laugh, but immediately resumed his usual
earnestness, and with the condescension of a grown person recalling the
mistakes of his youth, he remarked: “How funny I must have been!”
When he was so very little and funny, like Kiska, he had been brought
by that woman and given away forever, also like Kiska. And now, when he
had become so big and clever, the woman wanted him.
“Do you wish to go to her?” asked his former mother and reddened with
joy when Valia resolutely and sternly said: “No, she does not please
me!” and once more took up his book.
Valia considered the affair closed, but he was mistaken. This strange
woman, with a face as devoid of life as if all the blood had been
drained out of it, who had appeared from no one knew where, and
vanished without leaving a trace, seemed to have set the whole house in
turmoil and filled it with a dull alarm. Mama-auntie often cried and
repeatedly asked Valia if he wished to leave her; uncle-papa grumbled,
patted his bald pate so that the sparse, gray hair on it stood up, and
when auntie-mama was absent from the room he also asked Valia if he
would like to go to that woman. Once, in the evening, when Valia was
already in his little bed but was not yet sleeping, he heard his uncle
and auntie speaking of him and the woman. The uncle spoke in an angry
basso at which the crystal pendants of the chandelier gently trembled
and sparkled with bluish and reddish lights.
“You speak nonsense, Nastasia Philippovna. We have no right to give the
child away.”
“She loves him, Grisha.”
“And we! Do we not love him? You are arguing very strangely, Nastasia
Philippovna. It seems as if you would be glad to get rid of the
child--”
“Are you not ashamed of yourself?”
“Well, well, how quick you are to take offense. Just consider this
matter cold-bloodedly and reasonably. Some frivolous thing or other
gives birth to children, light-heartedly disposes of them by placing
them on your threshold, and afterward says: ‘Kindly give me my child,
because, on account of my lover having abandoned me, I feel lonesome.
For theatres and concerts I have no money, so give me the child to
serve as a toy to play with.’ No, madam, be easy, we shall see who wins
in this case!”
“You are unjust to her, Grisha. You know well how ill and lonely she
is--”
“You, Nastasia Philippovna, can make even a saint lose patience, by
God! And the child you seem to have forgotten? For you is it wholly
immaterial whether he is brought up an honest man or a scoundrel? And
I could bet my head that he would be brought up by her a scoundrel,
rascal, and--scoundrel.”
“Grisha!”
“I ask you, for God’s sake, not to irritate me! And where did you get
this devilish habit of contradicting? ‘She is so lonely.’ And are _we_
not lonely? The heartless woman that you are, Nastasia Philippovna! And
why the devil did I marry you!”
The heartless woman broke into tears, and her husband immediately
begged her pardon, declaring that only a born fool could pay any
attention to the words of such an old ass as he was. Gradually she
became calmer and asked: “What does Talonsky say?”
“And what makes you think that he is such a clever fellow?” Gregory
Aristarchovich again flew into a passion. “He says that everything
depends on how the court will look at it.... Something new, is it not,
as if we did not know without his telling that everything depends on
how the court will look at it! Of course it matters little to him--what
does he care?--he will have his bark and then safely go his way. If I
had _my_ way, it would go ill with all these empty talkers--”
But here Nastasia Philippovna shut the dining-room door and Valia did
not hear the end of the conversation. But he lay for a long time with
open eyes, trying to understand what sort of woman it was who wished to
take him away from his home and ruin him.
On the next day he waited from early morning expecting his auntie to
ask him if he wished to go to his mother; but auntie did not ask.
Neither did his uncle. Instead of this, they both gazed at Valia as
if he were dangerously ill and would soon die; they caressed him and
brought him large books with colored pictures. The woman did not call
any more, but it seemed to Valia that she must be lurking outside the
door watching for him, and that as soon as he would pass the threshold
she would seize him and carry him out into a black and dismal distance
where cruel monsters were wriggling and breathing fire.
In the evenings while his uncle Gregory Aristarchovich was occupied in
his study and Nastasia Philippovna was knitting something, or playing
a game of solitaire, Valia read his books, in which the lines would
grow gradually thicker and the letters smaller. Everything in the room
was quiet, so quiet that the only thing to be heard was the rustling
of the pages he turned, and occasionally the uncle’s loud cough from
the study, or the striking of the abacus counters. The lamp, with
its blue shade, threw a bright light on the blue plush table-cover,
but the corners of the room were full of a quiet, mysterious gloom.
There stood large plants with curious leaves and roots crawling out
upon the surface and looking very much like fighting serpents, and it
seemed as if something large and dark was moving amidst them. Valia
read, and before his wide-open eyes passed terrible, beautiful and
sad images which awakened in him pity and love, but more often fear.
Valia was sorry for the poor water-nymph who so dearly loved the
handsome prince that for him she had given up her sisters and the deep,
peaceful ocean; and the prince knew nothing of this love, because the
poor water-nymph was dumb, and so he married a gay princess; and while
great festivities in honor of the wedding were in full swing on board
the ship, and music was playing and all were enjoying themselves, the
poor water-nymph threw herself into the dark waves to die. Poor, sweet
little water-nymph, so quiet and sad, and modest! But often terrible,
cruel, human monsters appeared before Valia. In the dark nights they
flew somewhere on their prickly wings, and the air whistled over their
heads, and their eyes burned like red-hot coals. And afterward, they
were surrounded by other monsters like themselves while a mysterious
and terrible something was happening there. Laughter as sharp as a
knife, long and pitiful wailing; strange weird dances in the purplish
light of torches, their slanty, fiery tongues wrapped in the red clouds
of smoke; and dead men with long, black beards.--All this was the
manifestation of a single enigmatic and cruel power, wishing to destroy
man. Angry and mysterious spectres filled the air, hid among the
plants, whispered something, and pointed their bony fingers at Valia;
they gazed at him from behind the door of the adjoining unlit room,
giggled and waited till he would go to bed, when they would silently
dart around over his head; they peeped at him from out of the garden
through the large, dark windows, and wailed sorrowfully with the wind.
In and out among all this vicious and terrible throng appeared the
image of that woman who had come for Valia. Many people came and went
in the house of Gregory Aristarchovich, and Valia did not remember
their faces, but this face lived in his memory. It was such an
elongated, thin, yellow face, and smiled with a sly, dissembling smile,
from which two deep lines appeared at the two corners of the mouth. If
this woman took Valia he would die.
“Listen,” Valia once said to his aunt, tearing himself away from his
book for a moment. “Listen,” he repeated with his usual earnestness,
and with a glance that gazed straight into the eyes of the person with
whom he spoke: “I shall call you mama, not auntie. You talk nonsense
when you say that the woman--is mama. You are mama, not she.”
“Why?” asked Nastasia Philippovna, blushing like a young girl who had
just received a compliment. But along with her joy there could also
be heard in her voice the sound of fear for Valia. He had become so
strange of late, and timid; feared to sleep alone, as he used to do,
raved in his sleep and cried.
“But, Valichka, it is true, she is your mother.”
“I really wonder where you get this habit of contradicting!” Valia said
after some musing, imitating the tone of Gregory Aristarchovich.
Nastasia Philippovna laughed, but while preparing for bed that night
she spoke for a considerable time with her husband, who boomed like a
Turkish drum, abused the empty talkers, and frivolous, hair-brained
women, and afterward went with his wife to see Valia.
They gazed long and silently into the face of the sleeping child.
The flame of the candle swayed in the trembling hand of Gregory
Aristarchovich and lent a fantastic, death-like coloring to the face
of the boy, which was as white as the pillows on which it rested. It
seemed as if a pair of stern, black eyes looked at them from the dark
hollows, demanding a reply and threatening them with misfortune and
unknown sorrow, and the lips twitched into a strange, ironic smile as
if upon his helpless child-head lay a vague reflection of those cruel
and mysterious spectre monsters that silently hovered over it.
“Valia!” whispered the frightened Nastasia. The boy sighed deeply but
did not move, as if enchained in the sleep of death.
“Valia! Valia!” the deep, trembling voice of her husband was added to
that of Nastasia Philippovna.
Valia opened his eyes, shaded by thick eyelashes; the light of the
candle made him wink, and he sprang to his knees, pale and frightened.
His uncovered, thin little arms, like a pearl necklace encircled his
auntie’s full, rosy neck, and hiding his little head upon her breast
and screwing up his eyes tight as if fearing that they would open of
themselves, he whispered: “I am afraid, mama, I am afraid! Do not go!”
That was a bad night for the whole household; when Valia at last fell
asleep, Gregory Aristarchovich got an attack of asthma. He choked,
and his full, white breast rose and fell spasmodically under the ice
compresses. Toward morning he grew more tranquil, and the worn Nastasia
fell asleep with the thought that her husband would not survive the
loss of the child.
After a family council at which it was decided that Valia ought to
read less and to see more of children of his own age, little girls and
boys were brought to the house to play with him. But Valia from the
first conceived a dislike for these foolish children who, in his eyes,
were too noisy, loud and indecorous. They pulled flowers, tore books,
jumped over chairs, and fought like little monkeys; and he, serious and
thoughtful, looked on at their pranks with amazement and displeasure,
and, going up to Nastasia Philippovna, said: “They tire me! I would
rather sit by you.”
And in the evenings he once more took up his book, and when Gregory
Aristarchovich, grumbling at all the deviltry the child read about,
and by which he was losing his senses, gently tried to take the book
from Valia’s hands, the child silently and irresolutely pressed it
to himself. And the improvised pedagogue beat a confused retreat and
angrily scolded his wife:
“Is this what you call bringing up! No, Nastasia Philippovna, I see you
are more fit to take care of kittens than to bring up children. The boy
is so spoiled that one can not even take a book away from him.”
One morning while Valia was sitting at breakfast with Nastasia
Philippovna, Gregory Aristarchovich suddenly came rushing into the
dining-room. His hat was tilted on the back of his head, his face was
covered with perspiration; while still at the other side of the door he
shouted joyfully into the room:
“Refused! The court has refused!”
The diamond earrings in Nastasia Philippovna’s ears began to sparkle,
and the little knife she held in her hand dropped to the plate with a
clatter.
“Is it true?” she asked, breathlessly.
Gregory Aristarchovich made a serious face, just to show that he had
spoken the truth, but immediately forgetting his intention, his face
became covered with a whole network of merry wrinkles. Then once more
remembering that he lacked that earnestness of demeanor with which
important news is usually imparted, he frowned, pushed a chair up to
the table, placed his hat upon it, forgot that it was his hat, and
thinking the chair to be already occupied by some one, threw a stern
look at Nastasia Philippovna, then on Valia, winked his eye at Valia;
and only after all these solemn preliminaries did he declare:
“I always said that Talonsky was a devilish clever fellow; can’t fool
him easily, Nastasia Philippovna.”
“So it is true?”
“You are always ready with your eternal doubts. I said the case of Mme.
Akimova is dismissed. Clever, is it not, little brother?” he turned to
Valia and added in a stern, official tone: “And that said Akimova is to
pay the costs.”
“That woman will not take me, then?”
“I guess she won’t, brother mine! Ach, I have entirely forgotten, I
brought you some books!”
Gregory Aristarchovich rushed into the corridor, but halted on hearing
Nastasia Philippovna’s scream. Valia had fallen back on his chair in a
faint.
A happy time began for the family. It was as if some one who had lain
dangerously ill in the house had suddenly recovered and all began to
breathe more easily and freely. Valia lost his fear of the terrible
monsters and no longer suffered from nightmares. When the little
monkeys, as he called the children, came to see him again, he was the
most inventive of the lot. But even into the most fantastic plays he
introduced his habitual earnestness and staidness, and when they played
Indians, he found it indispensable to divest himself of almost all his
clothing and cover his body with red paint.
In view of the businesslike manner in which these games were conducted,
Gregory Aristarchovich now found it possible to participate in them, as
far as his abilities allowed. In the rôle of a bear he did not appear
to great advantage, but he had a great and well deserved success in his
rôle of elephant. And when Valia, silent and earnest as a true son of
the Goddess Cali, sat upon his father’s shoulders and gently tapped
upon his rosy bald pate with a tiny toy hammer, he really reminded one
of a little Eastern prince who despotically reigns over people and
animals.
The lawyer Talonsky tried to convey a hint to Gregory Aristarchovich
that all was not safe yet, but the former could not comprehend how
three judges could reverse the decision of three other judges, when the
laws are the same here and everywhere. And when the lawyer insisted,
Gregory Aristarchovich grew angry, and to prove that there was nothing
to be feared from the higher court, he brought forward that same
Talonsky on whom he now implicitly relied:
“Why, are you not going to be present when the case is brought before
the court? Well, then what is there to be talked about. I wish you,
Nastasia Philippovna, would make him ashamed of himself.”
Talonsky smiled, and Nastasia Philippovna gently chided him for his
purposeless doubts. They also spoke of the woman who had caused all
the trouble, but now that she could menace them no more, and the court
had decided that she must bear all the costs of the trial, they often
dubbed her “poor woman.”
Since the day Valia had heard that the woman had no longer any power to
take him, she had lost in his eyes the halo of mysterious fear, which
enveloped her like a mist and distorted the features of her thin face,
and Valia began to think of her as he did of all other people. He now
repeatedly heard that she was unhappy and could not understand why;
but this pale bloodless face grew more simple, natural and near to
him, the “poor woman,” as they called her, began to interest him, and
recalling other poor women of whom he had read, he felt a growing pity
and a timid tenderness for her.
He imagined that she must sit alone in some dark room, fearing
something and weeping, always weeping, as she had wept then when she
had come to see him. And he felt sorry that he had not told her the
story of Prince Bova better than he had at the time.
* * * * *
It appeared that three judges could, after all, disagree with the
decision of three other judges. The higher court had reversed the
decision of the district court, the child was adjudged to his real
mother. And the appeal was not considered by the senate.
When the woman came to take Valia away with her, Gregory Aristarchovich
was not at home, he was at Talonsky’s house and was lying in Talonsky’s
bedroom, and only the bald, rosy pate was visible above the sea of
snow-white pillows.
Nastasia Philippovna did not leave her room, and the maid led Valia
forth from it already dressed for the road. He wore a fur coat and
tall overshoes in which he moved his feet with difficulty. From under
his fur cap looked out a pale little face with a frank and serious
expression in the dark eyes. Under his arm Valia carried a book in
which was the story of a poor water-nymph.
The tall, gaunt woman pressed the boy to her shabby coat and sobbed
out: “How you have grown, Valichka! You are unrecognizable,” she said,
trying to joke, but Valia adjusted his cap and, contrary to habit, did
not look into the eyes of the one who from this day on was to be his
mother, but into her mouth. It was large, but with beautiful, small
teeth; the two wrinkles on the corners of the mouth were still on the
same place where Valia had seen them first, only now they were deeper.
“You are not angry with me?” asked mama; but Valia, not replying to her
question, said: “Let us be gone.”
“Valichka!” came a pitiful scream from Nastasia Philippovna’s room,
and she appeared on the threshold with eyes swollen from weeping, and
clasping her hands she rushed toward the child, sank on her knees,
and put her head on his shoulder. She did not utter a sound, only the
diamonds in her ears trembled.
“Come, Valia,” sternly said the tall woman, taking his hand. “We must
not remain any longer among people who have subjected your mother to
such torture--such torture!”
Her dry voice was full of hatred and she longed to strike the kneeling
woman with her foot.
“Ugh! heartless wretches! You would be glad to take even my only child
from me!” she wrathfully whispered, and pulled Valia away by his hand.
“Come! Don’t be like your father, who abandoned me.”
“Ta-ke ca-re of him,” Nastasia called after them.
The hired sleigh which stood waiting for them flew softly and lightly
over the snow and noiselessly carried Valia away from the quiet house
with its wonderful plants and flowers, its mysterious fairy-tale world,
immeasurable and deep as the sea, with its windows gently screened by
the boughs of the tall trees of the garden. Soon the house was lost in
the mass of other houses, as similar to each other as the letters in
Valia’s book, and vanished forever from Valia.
It seemed to him as if they were swimming in a river, the banks of
which were constituted of rows of lanterns as close to each other as
beads on a string, but when they approached nearer, the beads were
scattered, forming large, dark spaces and merging behind into just
such a line of light. And then Valia thought that they were standing
motionless on the very same spot; and everything began to be like a
fairy tale--he himself and the tall woman who was pressing him to her
with her bony hand, and everything around him.
The hand in which he carried his book was getting stiff with cold, but
he would not ask his mother to take the book from him.
The small room into which Valia’s mother had taken him was untidy and
hot; in a corner near the large bed stood a little curtained bed such
as Valia had not slept in for a long, long time.
“You are frozen! Well, wait, we shall soon have some tea! Well, now
you are with your mama. Are you glad?” his mother asked with the hard,
unpleasant look of one who has been forced to smile beneath blows all
her life long.
“No,” Valia replied shyly, frightened at his own frankness.
“No? And I had bought some toys for you. Just look, there they are on
the window.”
Valia approached the window and examined the toys. They were wretched
paper horses with straight, thick legs, Punch with a red cap on, with
an idiotically grinning face and a large nose, and little tin soldiers
with one foot raised in the air.
Valia had long ago given up playing with toys and did not like them,
but from politeness he did not show it to his mother. “Yes, they are
nice toys,” he said.
She noticed the glance he threw at the window, and said with that
unpleasant, ingratiating smile:
“I did not know what you liked, darling, and I bought them for you a
long time ago.”
Valia was silent, not knowing what to reply.
“You must know that I am all alone, Valia, all alone in the wide world;
I have no one whose advice I could ask; I thought they would please
you.” Valia was silent.
Suddenly the muscles of the woman’s face relaxed and the tears began
to drop from her eyes, quickly, quickly, one after the other; and she
threw herself on the bed which gave a pitiful squeak under the weight
of her body, and with one hand pressed to her breast, the other to her
temples, she looked vacantly through the wall with her pale, faded
eyes, and whispered:
“He was not pleased! Not pleased!--”
Valia promptly approached the bed, put his little hand, still red with
the cold, on the large head of his mother, and spoke with the same
serious staidness which distinguished this boy’s speech:
“Do not cry, mama. I will love you very much. I do not care to play
with toys, but I will love you ever so much. If you wish, I will read
to you the story of the poor water-nymph.”