Five Great Short Stories

CHAPTER V Red Spots

DELIGHTED THAT the part of peacemaker had been successful, Kovrin went into the park. While sitting on a bench thinking he heard the sound of wheels and of girls’ laughter—visitors had arrived. When the shades of evening had begun to settle down on the gardens faint sounds of a violin and of voices singing reached his ear, and this reminded him of the black monk. Where, in what land or on what planet was that optical incongruity now being borne?

He had scarcely remembered the legend, and recalled to his memory the dark vision he had seen in the rye field, when just before him a middle-sized man with a bare grey head and bare feet, who looked like a beggar, came silently out of the pine wood, walking with small, unheard steps. On his pale, deathlike face the black eyebrows stood out sharply. Nodding affably this beggar or pilgrim came noiselessly and sat down on the bench. Kovrin recognized in him the black monk. For a minute they looked at each other—Kovrin with astonishment; the monk in a kindly and, as on the previous occasion, in a somewhat cunning manner, and with a self-complacent expression.

“But you are a mirage,” Kovrin exclaimed; “why are you here and sitting in one place too? That is not in accordance with the legend.”

“That’s all the same,” the monk replied after a pause, in a low quiet voice, turning his face towards Kovrin. “The mirage, the legend and I are all the products of your excited imagination. I am a phantom.”

“Then, you do not exist?” Kovrin asked.

“Think what you like,” the monk answered with a faint smile. “I exist in your imagination, and your imagination is part of nature, consequently I exist in nature too.”

“You have a very old, clever and expressive face; just as if you had really existed for more than a thousand years,” Kovrin said. “I did not know that my imagination was capable of creating such phenomena. But why are you looking at me with such rapture? Do I please you?”

“Yes. You are one of the few who are justly called the chosen of God. You serve the eternal truth. Your thoughts, your intentions, your extraordinary science and your whole life bear the godlike, the heavenly stamp, as they are devoted to the reasonable and the beautiful, that is to say, to that which is eternal.”

“You said the eternal truth. . . . But can people attain to the eternal truth, and is it necessary for them if there is no eternal life?”

“There is eternal life,” the monk answered.

“Do you believe in the immortality of man?”

“Yes, of course. A great brilliant future awaits you men. And the more men like you there are on earth, the sooner this future will be realized. Without you, the servants of the first cause, you who live with discernment and in freedom, the human race would, indeed, be insignificant. Developing in a natural way it would long have waited for the end of its earthly history. You are leading it to the kingdom of eternal truth several thousand years sooner—and in this lies your great service. . . . You incarnate in yourselves the blessing with which God has honoured mankind.”

“But what is the object of eternal life?” Kovrin asked.

“The same as of all life—enjoyment. True enjoyment is knowledge, and eternal life offers numberless and inexhaustible sources of knowledge; this is the meaning of: ‘in my Father’s House are many mansions.’”

“If you only knew how pleasant it is to listen to you,” Kovrin said, rubbing his hands with satisfaction.

“I’m very pleased.”

“But I know that when you go away I will be troubled about your reality. You are a vision, a hallucination. Consequently I am physically ill, I am not normal.”

“And what of that! Why are you troubled? You are ill because you have worked beyond your strength and you are exhausted, which means that you have sacrificed your health to an idea, and the time is near when you will sacrifice your life to it too. What could be better? It is the object to which all noble natures, gifted from above, constantly aspire.”

“If I know that I am mentally diseased, can I believe in myself?”

“How do you know that the men of genius, who are believed in by the whole world, have not also seen visions? Scholars say now that genius is allied to insanity. My friend, only the ordinary people—the herd—are quite well and normal. All this consideration about the nervous century, overwork, degeneration, etc., can only seriously alarm those whose object in life is the present—that is the people of the herd.”

“The Romans said: ‘mens sana in corpore sano.’”

“Not all that the Romans and Greeks said is true. Overstrain, excitement, ecstasy, all that distinguishes the prophets, the poets, the martyrs for ideas, from ordinary people, is opposed to the animal side of man’s nature, that is, to his physical health. I repeat, if you wish to be healthy and normal go to the herd.”

“It is strange, you say what often comes into my mind,” Kovrin said. “You appear to have looked into my soul and listened to my most secret thoughts. But let us not speak of me. What do you mean by the eternal truth?”

The monk did not reply. Kovrin glanced at him and could not distinguish his face. The features became misty and melted away. The monk’s head and hands gradually disappeared, his body seemed to be blended with the bench and with the evening twilight and then he vanished entirely.

“The hallucination is over,” Kovrin said, and he laughed. “What a pity!”

He returned towards the house gay and happy. What little the black monk had said to him flattered not only his self-love, but his whole soul, his whole being. To be one of the chosen, to serve the eternal truth, to stand in the ranks of those who will render mankind worthy of the Kingdom of God a few thousand years sooner than it would otherwise have been, that is, will save mankind from an extra thousand years of struggle, sin and suffering, to sacrifice everything—youth, strength, health, to the idea—to be ready to die for the general good—what a high, what a happy fate! His clean, chaste life, so full of work, passed through his memory; he remembered what he himself had learned, what he had taught others, and he arrived at the conclusion that there was no exaggeration in the words the monk had spoken.

Tania came to meet him through the park. She was dressed in another frock.

“Here you are at last!” she said. “We are looking for you everywhere. But what has happened to you?” she said with astonishment, gazing at his enraptured, beaming countenance and his eyes that were brimming over with tears. “How strange you look, Andryusha.”

“I am satisfied, Tania,” Kovrin said, putting his hands on her shoulders. “I am more than satisfied, I am happy! Tania, dear Tania, you are a most congenial creature! Dear Tania, I am so glad, so glad!”

He kissed both her hands passionately and continued:

“I have just passed through bright, beautiful, unearthly moments. But I cannot tell you all because you would call me mad, or you would not believe me. Let us talk of you. Dear, charming Tania! I love you, and I have become used to love you. Your nearness, our meetings, ten times daily have become a necessity for my soul. I don’t know how I shall be able to exist without you, when I go home.”

Well!” and Tania laughed, “you will forget us in two days. We are little people, and you are a great man.”

“No, let us talk seriously,” he said. “I will take you with me. Yes? Won’t you come with me? You want to be mine?”

“Well, well!” Tania said and again she wanted to laugh, but laughter would not come, and red spots came out on her face.

She began to breathe fast, and she walked on very quickly, not towards the house, but deeper into the park.

“I never thought of this . . . never!” she said, clasping her hands as if in despair.

Kovrin followed her and continued to speak with the same brilliant, excited face.

“I want love that would conquer me entirely, and that love, Tania, you alone can give me. I am happy, happy!”

She was stupefied, she bent, she shrivelled, she seemed suddenly to grow ten years older, and he thought her beautiful and he expressed his thoughts aloud:

“How beautiful she is!”