Fifty-Two Stories

Motionless at the table sat a man who looked nothing like ordinary people. He was a skeleton covered in skin, with long womanish curls and a shaggy beard. The color of his face was yellow with a sallow tinge, his cheeks were sunken, his back long and narrow, and the arm that supported his unshorn head was so thin and bony it was scary to look at. His hair was already a silvery gray, and glancing at his aged, emaciated face, no one would have believed he was only forty years old. He was asleep…On the table in front of his bowed head lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in small script.

“Pathetic man!” the banker thought. “He sleeps and probably sees millions in his dreams! All I need to do is take this half-corpse, throw him onto the bed, and gently smother him with a pillow, and the most conscientious expertise will find no signs of a violent death. But first let’s read what he’s written here…”

The banker took the paper from the table and read the following:

“Tomorrow at twelve noon I will be granted freedom and the right to associate with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun, I find it necessary to say a few words. With a clear conscience and before God who sees me, I declare to you that I scorn freedom, and life, and health, and all that is known in your books as worldly blessings.

“For fifteen years I have attentively studied earthly life. True, I have seen neither earth nor people, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, sung songs, chased deer and wild boar in the forests, loved women…Beauties, airy as clouds, created by the magic of poets of genius, have visited me by night and whispered wondrous tales that intoxicated me. In your books I climbed the peaks of Elbrus and Mont Blanc, and from there I saw the sun rise in the mornings and in the evenings flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain peaks with crimson gold; from there I saw flashes of lightning cleave the clouds above me; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard sirens sing and shepherds’ pipes play; I touched the wings of beautiful devils, who flew to me to talk about God…In your books I threw myself into bottomless abysses, performed miracles, killed, burned cities, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms…

“Your books gave me wisdom. Everything that tireless human thought has created in the course of centuries is compressed in my skull into a small lump. I know that I am more intelligent than all of you.

“And I scorn your books, I scorn all the world’s blessings and its wisdom. It is all paltry, fleeting, illusory, and as deceptive as a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and beautiful, but death will wipe you from the face of the earth the same as cellar mice, and your descendants, history, the immortality of your geniuses will freeze or burn along with the terrestrial globe.

“You have lost your minds and are following the wrong path. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. You would be amazed if, owing to certain circumstances, apple and orange trees suddenly produced frogs and lizards instead of fruit, or roses smelled of horse sweat; so am I amazed at you, who have exchanged the sky for the earth. I do not want to understand you.

“To show you in practice my scorn for what you live by, I renounce the two million that I once dreamed of as of paradise, and which I now scorn. To deprive myself of my right to it, I will leave here five hours before the agreed term, thereby breaking the contract…”

Having read that, the banker put the paper on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, wept, and left the cottage. Never before, even after losing heavily on the stock market, had he felt such scorn for himself as he did now. On coming home, he went to bed, but for a long time agitation and tears did not let him sleep…

The next morning the pale-faced watchmen came running and informed him that they had seen the man who lived in the cottage climb out the window into the garden, go to the gate, and then disappear somewhere. Together with the servants, the banker went at once to the cottage and verified his prisoner’s escape. To avoid unnecessary discussions, he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, returning home, locked it in a safe.

1889

THE PRINCESS

THROUGH THE BIG, so-called “Red” gate of the N——sky Monastery drove a carriage and a foursome of fine, sleek horses. The hieromonks and novices who crowded near the gentry side of the guest house already recognized from afar, by the coachman and the horses, the lady who sat in the carriage as their good acquaintance, Princess Vera Gavrilovna.

An old man in livery jumped down from the box and helped the princess out of the carriage. She raised her dark veil, unhurriedly went up to each of the hieromonks to be blessed, then nodded affectionately to the novices and went into the house.