Short Stories
down quietly at the table, took out the revolver and put it down before
me. When I had put it down I asked myself, I remember, "Is that so?" and
answered with complete conviction, "It is." That is, I shall shoot myself.
I knew that I should shoot myself that night for certain, but how much
longer I should go on sitting at the table I did not know. And no doubt I
should have shot myself if it had not been for that little girl.
II
You see, though nothing mattered to me, I could feel pain, for instance. If
any one had struck me it would have hurt me. It was the same morally: if
anything very pathetic happened, I should have felt pity just as I used to
do in old days when there were things in life that did matter to me. I had
felt pity that evening. I should have certainly helped a child. Why, then,
had I not helped the little girl? Because of an idea that occurred to me at
the time: when she was calling and pulling at me, a question suddenly arose
before me and I could not settle it. The question was an idle one, but I
was vexed. I was vexed at the reflection that if I were going to make an
end of myself that night, nothing in life ought to have mattered to me. Why
was it that all at once I did not feel that nothing mattered and was sorry
for the little girl? I remember that I was very sorry for her, so much so
that I felt a strange pang, quite incongruous in my position. Really I do
not know better how to convey my fleeting sensation at the moment, but the
sensation persisted at home when I was sitting at the table, and I was very
much irritated as I had not been for a long time past. One reflection
followed another. I saw clearly that so long as I was still a human being
and not nothingness, I was alive and so could suffer, be angry and feel
shame at my actions. So be it. But if I am going to kill myself, in two
hours, say, what is the little girl to me and what have I to do with shame
or with anything else in the world? I shall turn into nothing, absolutely
nothing. And can it really be true that the consciousness that I shall
_completely_ cease to exist immediately and so everything else will cease
to exist, does not in the least affect my feeling of pity for the child nor
the feeling of shame after a contemptible action? I stamped and shouted at
the unhappy child as though to say--not only I feel no pity, but even if I
behave inhumanly and contemptibly, I am free to, for in another two hours
everything will be extinguished. Do you believe that that was why I shouted
that? I am almost convinced of it now. It seemed clear to me that life and
the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now
seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be
at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist
for any one when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is
extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a
phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this
world and all these people are only me myself. I remember that as I sat and
reflected, I turned all these new questions that swarmed one after another
quite the other way, and thought of something quite new. For instance, a
strange reflection suddenly occurred to me, that if I had lived before on
the moon or on Mars and there had committed the most disgraceful and
dishonourable action and had there been put to such shame and ignominy as
one can only conceive and realise in dreams, in nightmares, and if, finding
myself afterwards on earth, I were able to retain the memory of what I had
done on the other planet and at the same time knew that I should never,
under any circumstances, return there, then looking from the earth to the
moon--_should I care or not_? Should I feel shame for that action or not?
These were idle and superfluous questions for the revolver was already
lying before me, and I knew in every fibre of my being that it would happen
for certain, but they excited me and I raged. I could not die now without
having first settled something. In short, the child had saved me, for I
put off my pistol shot for the sake of these questions. Meanwhile the
clamour had begun to subside in the captain's room: they had finished their
game, were settling down to sleep, and meanwhile were grumbling and
languidly winding up their quarrels. At that point I suddenly fell asleep
in my chair at the table--a thing which had never happened to me before. I
dropped asleep quite unawares.
Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented
with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish
of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without
noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem
to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the
heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in
dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it! My brother died
five years ago, for instance. I sometimes dream of him; he takes part in my
affairs, we are very much interested, and yet all through my dream I quite
know and remember that my brother is dead and buried. How is it that I am
not surprised that, though he is dead, he is here beside me and working
with me? Why is it that my reason fully accepts it? But enough. I will
begin about my dream. Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of
November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it
matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the
truth? If once one has recognised the truth and seen it, you know that it
is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you
are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of
which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream,
my dream--oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full
of power!
Listen.
III
I have mentioned that I dropped asleep unawares and even seemed to be still
reflecting on the same subjects. I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the
revolver and aimed it straight at my heart--my heart, and not my head; and
I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After
aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my
table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste
to pull the trigger.
In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but
you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the
bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the
same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my
shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed,
and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded and benumbed,
and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and
could not make the slightest movement. People were walking and shouting
around me, the captain bawled, the landlady shrieked--and suddenly another
break and I was being carried in a closed coffin. And I felt how the coffin
was shaking and reflected upon it, and for the first time the idea struck
me that I was dead, utterly dead, I knew it and had no doubt of it, I could
neither see nor move and yet I was feeling and reflecting. But I was soon
reconciled to the position, and as one usually does in a dream, accepted
the facts without disputing them.
And now I was buried in the earth. They all went away, I was left alone,
utterly alone. I did not move. Whenever before I had imagined being buried
the one sensation I associated with the grave was that of damp and cold. So
now I felt that I was very cold, especially the tips of my toes, but I felt
nothing else.
I lay still, strange to say I expected nothing, accepting without dispute
that a dead man had nothing to expect. But it was damp. I don't know how
long a time passed--whether an hour, or several days, or many days. But all
at once a drop of water fell on my closed left eye, making its way through
a coffin lid; it was followed a minute later by a second, then a minute
later by a third--and so on, regularly every minute. There was a sudden
glow of profound indignation in my heart, and I suddenly felt in it a pang
of physical pain. "That's my wound," I thought; "that's the bullet...." And
drop after drop every minute kept falling on my closed eyelid. And all at
once, not with my voice, but with my whole being, I called upon the power
that was responsible for all that was happening to me:
"Whoever you may be, if you exist, and if anything more rational than what
is happening here is possible, suffer it to be here now. But if you are
revenging yourself upon me for my senseless suicide by the hideousness and
absurdity of this subsequent existence, then let me tell you that no
torture could ever equal the contempt which I shall go on dumbly feeling,
though my martyrdom may last a million years!"
I made this appeal and held my peace. There was a full minute of unbroken
silence and again another drop fell, but I knew with infinite unshakable
certainty that everything would change immediately. And behold my grave
suddenly was rent asunder, that is, I don't know whether it was opened or
dug up, but I was caught up by some dark and unknown being and we found
ourselves in space. I suddenly regained my sight. It was the dead of night,
and never, never had there been such darkness. We were flying through space
far away from the earth. I did not question the being who was taking me; I
was proud and waited. I assured myself that I was not afraid, and was
thrilled with ecstasy at the thought that I was not afraid. I do not know
how long we were flying, I cannot imagine; it happened as it always does in
dreams when you skip over space and time, and the laws of thought and
existence, and only pause upon the points for which the heart yearns. I
remember that I suddenly saw in the darkness a star. "Is that Sirius?" I
asked impulsively, though I had not meant to ask any questions.
"No, that is the star you saw between the clouds when you were coming
home," the being who was carrying me replied.
I knew that it had something like a human face. Strange to say, I did not
like that being, in fact I felt an intense aversion for it. I had expected
complete non-existence, and that was why I had put a bullet through my
heart. And here I was in the hands of a creature not human, of course, but
yet living, existing. "And so there is life beyond the grave," I thought
with the strange frivolity one has in dreams. But in its inmost depth my
heart remained unchanged. "And if I have got to exist again," I thought,
"and live once more under the control of some irresistible power, I won't
be vanquished and humiliated."
"You know that I am afraid of you and despise me for that," I said suddenly
to my companion, unable to refrain from the humiliating question which
implied a confession, and feeling my humiliation stab my heart as with a
pin. He did not answer my question, but all at once I felt that he was not
even despising me, but was laughing at me and had no compassion for me, and
that our journey had an unknown and mysterious object that concerned me
only. Fear was growing in my heart. Something was mutely and painfully
communicated to me from my silent companion, and permeated my whole being.
We were flying through dark, unknown space. I had for some time lost sight
of the constellations familiar to my eyes. I knew that there were stars in
the heavenly spaces the light of which took thousands or millions of years
to reach the earth. Perhaps we were already flying through those spaces. I