“Stahl,” I whispered, leaning towards him and indicating Bozevsky, “tell me—how do you think he is?”
Stahl did not answer. He seemed not to have heard me, but to be absorbed in some mysterious physical suffering of his own.
“What is the matter, Stahl? What is the matter? You are frightening me.”
With a nervous twist of his lips intended for a smile Stahl got up and began to walk up and down the room. His breath was still short and hurried. He drew the air through his teeth like one who is enduring spasms of pain.
Then he began to talk to himself in a low voice. “I can wait,” he said under his breath. “I can wait a little longer. Yes—yes—yes, I can wait a little longer.”
Bozevsky had opened his eyes and was watching him.
Horror held me motionless and shivers ran like icy water down my spine.
“Stahl, Stahl, what is the matter?” I said, and began to cry.
Stahl seemed not to hear me. He continued to walk up and down muttering to himself: “I can wait, I can wait. Just a little longer—a little longer—”
Bozevsky groaned. “Tell him to keep still,” he said, his gaze indicating Stahl.
I seized Stahl by the arm. “You must keep quiet,” I said. “Keep quiet at once.”
He turned to me a vacuous, bewildered face. I grasped his arm convulsively, clutching it with all my strength: “Keep still!”
Stahl sat down. “Right,” he said. “All right.”
He searched his pocket and drew out a small leather case.
Bozevsky moved and moaned. “I am thirsty,” he said. “Give me something to drink.”
I hurried to the bedside, and taking up a glass of sweetened water, I raised him on his pillow and held the glass to his lips. He drank eagerly. Then—horror!… horror! Even as he drank I perceived a spot of pale red color, wetting the gauze round his neck, oozing through it and spreading in an ever-widening stain. What—what could it be? It was the water he was drinking; he was not swallowing it … it was trickling out through the wound in his neck. All the gauze was already wet—now the pillow as well.
“Stahl, Stahl!” I shrieked. “Look, look at this!”
Stahl, who seemed to have suddenly regained his senses, came quickly to the bedside. I had laid Bozevsky back on the pillow and he was looking at us with wide-open eyes.
“Yes,” said Stahl, contemplating him thoughtfully. “Yes.” Suddenly he turned to me. “Come here, come here. Why should I let you suffer?”
Then I saw that he had in his hand a small glass instrument—a morphia syringe. He seized my wrist as in a vice and with the other hand pushed back the loose sleeve of my gown.
“What are you going to do?” I gasped.
“Why, why should you suffer?” cried Stahl, holding me tightly by the arm.
“Are you killing me?” I cried.
“No, no. I shall not kill you. You will see.”
I let him take my arm and he pricked it with the needle of the syringe, afterwards pressing and rubbing the punctured spot with his finger.
“Now you will see, now you will see,” he repeated over and over again with a vague stupefied smile. “Sit down there,” and he impelled me towards an armchair.
Bozevsky in his wet bandages on his wet pillow was watching us. I wanted to go to his assistance, to speak to him—but already a vague torpor was stealing over me, a feeling of gentle langour weighed upon my limbs. My tense and quivering nerves gradually relaxed. I felt as if I were submerged in a vague fluid serenity. Every anxious thought dissolved in a bland and blissful somnolence.... I could see Bozevsky move restlessly and again begin to turn his head from side to side. Sunk in the divine lassitude that held me, I watched his movements, glad that the sight of them gave me no pain.
I saw that Stahl had stretched himself on the couch and lay there with a vacant ecstatic smile on his lips.
All at once Bozevsky uttered a cry. I heard him, but I felt no inclination to answer. He struggled into a sitting position and looked at us both with wide, horrified eyes. He called us again and again. Then he began to weep. I could hear his weeping, but the beatific lethargy which engulfed me held me motionless. Perhaps I was even smiling, so free and so remote did I feel from all distress and suffering.
And now I saw Bozevsky with teeth clenched and hands curved like talons, madly clutching and tearing away the bandages from his neck.
He dragged and tore the gauze with quick frenzied movements, while from his lips came a succession of whimpering cries as of a dog imprisoned behind a door.
I smiled, I know I smiled, as I gazed at him from my armchair.
Stahl's eyes were shut; he was fast asleep.
Even when the wasted neck was stripped bare, those quick, frenzied movements still continued. What my eyes then saw I can never tell....
Thus died Alexis Bozevsky, the handsomest officer in the Imperial Guard.
XIX
After that all is dark. A blood-red abyss seems to open in my memory wherein everything is submerged—even my reason.
My reason! I have felt it totter and fall, like something detached and apart from myself; and I know that it has sunk into the grave that covers Alexis Bozevsky.
Vaguely, from my distant childhood, a memory rises up and confronts me.
I am in a school. I know not where. It is sunset, and I am at play, happy and alone, in the midst of a lawn; the daisies in the grass are already closed and rose-tipped, blushing in their sleep. Some one calls my name, and raising my eyes I see the small eager face of my playmate Tatiana peering out of an oval window in an old turret, where none of us are ever allowed to go. “Mura! Mura! Come quickly,” she cries. “The turret is full of swallows!”
“Full of swallows!” I can still recall the ecstasy of joy with which those three words filled me. I ran to the entrance of the old tower and helter-skeltered up the dark and narrow staircase; then, pushing aside a mildewed door, I found myself with Tatiana in a gloomy loft, and yes, yes! it was full of swallows!
They flew hither and thither, darting over our heads, brushing our faces, making us shriek with delight. We managed to catch any number of them. Many were even lying on the ground. Tatiana filled her apron with the fluttering creatures, while I held some in my handkerchief and some in my hands. Then we ran downstairs into the dining-halclass="underline" “Look, look! we have caught a lot of swallows!” I can still see the girls crowding round us, and the face of the mistress bending forward with an incredulous smile; I see her shrink back, horrified and pale, with a cry of disgust: “Mercy upon us! They are all bats!”
Even now the recollection of the shrieks we uttered as we flung them from us makes my flesh creep; even now I seem to feel the slippery smoothness of those cold membranes gliding through my fingers and near my cheeks....
To what end does this childish recollection enter into the dark tragedy of my life? This—that when I mount into the closed turret of my mind in quest of winged thoughts and soaring fancies, alas! there glide through my brain only the monstrous spirits of madness, the black bats of hypochandria....
I remember little or nothing of those somber days in Yalta. I can vaguely recollect Stahl telling me over and over again in answer to my delirious cries for Bozevsky: “He is dead! He is dead! He is dead!” And as I could not and would not believe him, he took me in a closed carriage through many streets; then into a low building and through echoing stone passages into a large bare room—a dissecting room!
The horror of it seals my lips.
Still more vaguely do I recollect the death of Stahl himself. I know that one evening he shot himself through the heart, and was carried to the hospital. I know that he sent me the following words traced in tremulous handwriting on a torn piece of paper: “Mura! I have only half an hour to live. Come to me, I implore you. Come!”