Short Stories
expected something with a terrible anguish that tortured my heart. And
suddenly I was thrilled by a familiar feeling that stirred me to the
depths: I suddenly caught sight of our sun! I knew that it could not be
_our_ sun, that gave life to _our_ earth, and that we were an infinite
distance from our sun, but for some reason I knew in my whole being that it
was a sun exactly like ours, a duplicate of it. A sweet, thrilling feeling
resounded with ecstasy in my heart: the kindred power of the same light
which had given me light stirred an echo in my heart and awakened it, and I
had a sensation of life, the old life of the past for the first time since
I had been in the grave.
"But if that is the sun, if that is exactly the same as our sun," I cried,
"where is the earth?"
And my companion pointed to a star twinkling in the distance with an
emerald light. We were flying straight towards it.
"And are such repetitions possible in the universe? Can that be the law of
Nature?... And if that is an earth there, can it be just the same earth as
ours ... just the same, as poor, as unhappy, but precious and beloved for
ever, arousing in the most ungrateful of her children the same poignant
love for her that we feel for our earth?" I cried out, shaken by
irresistible, ecstatic love for the old familiar earth which I had left.
The image of the poor child whom I had repulsed flashed through my mind.
"You shall see it all," answered my companion, and there was a note of
sorrow in his voice.
But we were rapidly approaching the planet. It was growing before my eyes;
I could already distinguish the ocean, the outline of Europe; and suddenly
a feeling of a great and holy jealousy glowed in my heart.
"How can it be repeated and what for? I love and can love only that earth
which I have left, stained with my blood, when, in my ingratitude, I
quenched my life with a bullet in my heart. But I have never, never ceased
to love that earth, and perhaps on the very night I parted from it I loved
it more than ever. Is there suffering upon this new earth? On our earth we
can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love
otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order
to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth
that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"
But my companion had already left me. I suddenly, quite without noticing
how, found myself on this other earth, in the bright light of a sunny day,
fair as paradise. I believe I was standing on one of the islands that make
up on our globe the Greek archipelago, or on the coast of the mainland
facing that archipelago. Oh, everything was exactly as it is with us, only
everything seemed to have a festive radiance, the splendour of some great,
holy triumph attained at last. The caressing sea, green as emerald,
splashed softly upon the shore and kissed it with manifest, almost
conscious love. The tall, lovely trees stood in all the glory of their
blossom, and their innumerable leaves greeted me, I am certain, with their
soft, caressing rustle and seemed to articulate words of love. The grass
glowed with bright and fragrant flowers. Birds were flying in flocks in the
air, and perched fearlessly on my shoulders and arms and joyfully struck me
with their darling, fluttering wings. And at last I saw and knew the people
of this happy land. They came to me of themselves, they surrounded me,
kissed me. The children of the sun, the children of their sun--oh, how
beautiful they were! Never had I seen on our own earth such beauty in
mankind. Only perhaps in our children, in their earliest years, one might
find some remote, faint reflection of this beauty. The eyes of these happy
people shone with a clear brightness. Their faces were radiant with the
light of reason and fullness of a serenity that comes of perfect
understanding, but those faces were gay; in their words and voices there
was a note of childlike joy. Oh, from the first moment, from the first
glance at them, I understood it all! It was the earth untarnished by the
Fall; on it lived people who had not sinned. They lived just in such a
paradise as that in which, according to all the legends of mankind, our
first parents lived before they sinned; the only difference was that all
this earth was the same paradise. These people, laughing joyfully, thronged
round me and caressed me; they took me home with them, and each of them
tried to reassure me. Oh, they asked me no questions, but they seemed, I
fancied, to know everything without asking, and they wanted to make haste
and smoothe away the signs of suffering from my face.
IV
And do you know what? Well, granted that it was only a dream, yet the
sensation of the love of those innocent and beautiful people has remained
with me for ever, and I feel as though their love is still flowing out to
me from over there. I have seen them myself, have known them and been
convinced; I loved them, I suffered for them afterwards. Oh, I understood
at once even at the time that in many things I could not understand them at
all; as an up-to-date Russian progressive and contemptible Petersburger, it
struck me as inexplicable that, knowing so much, they had, for instance, no
science like ours. But I soon realised that their knowledge was gained and
fostered by intuitions different from those of us on earth, and that their
aspirations, too, were quite different. They desired nothing and were at
peace; they did not aspire to knowledge of life as we aspire to understand
it, because their lives were full. But their knowledge was higher and
deeper than ours; for our science seeks to explain what life is, aspires to
understand it in order to teach others how to live, while they without
science knew how to live; and that I understood, but I could not understand
their knowledge. They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the
intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were
talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken
if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language,
and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all
Nature like that--at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not
attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the
stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I
am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in
thought, but by some living channel. Oh, these people did not persist in
trying to make me understand them, they loved me without that, but I knew
that they would never understand me, and so I hardly spoke to them about
our earth. I only kissed in their presence the earth on which they lived
and mutely worshipped them themselves. And they saw that and let me worship
them without being abashed at my adoration, for they themselves loved much.
They were not unhappy on my account when at times I kissed their feet with
tears, joyfully conscious of the love with which they would respond to
mine. At times I asked myself with wonder how it was they were able never
to offend a creature like me, and never once to arouse a feeling of
jealousy or envy in me? Often I wondered how it could be that, boastful and
untruthful as I was, I never talked to them of what I knew--of which, of
course, they had no notion--that I was never tempted to do so by a desire
to astonish or even to benefit them.
They were as gay and sportive as children. They wandered about their lovely
woods and copses, they sang their lovely songs; their fare was light--the
fruits of their trees, the honey from their woods, and the milk of the
animals who loved them. The work they did for food and raiment was brief
and not laborious. They loved and begot children, but I never noticed in
them the impulse of that _cruel_ sensuality which overcomes almost every
man on this earth, all and each, and is the source of almost every sin of
mankind on earth. They rejoiced at the arrival of children as new beings to
share their happiness. There was no quarrelling, no jealousy among them,
and they did not even know what the words meant. Their children were the
children of all, for they all made up one family. There was scarcely any
illness among them, though there was death; but their old people died
peacefully, as though falling asleep, giving blessings and smiles to those
who surrounded them to take their last farewell with bright and loving
smiles. I never saw grief or tears on those occasions, but only love, which
reached the point of ecstasy, but a calm ecstasy, made perfect and
contemplative. One might think that they were still in contact with the
departed after death, and that their earthly union was not cut short by
death. They scarcely understood me when I questioned them about
immortality, but evidently they were so convinced of it without reasoning
that it was not for them a question at all. They had no temples, but they
had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the
universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when
their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there
would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater
fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to
that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to
have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one
another.
In the evening before going to sleep they liked singing in musical and
harmonious chorus. In those songs they expressed all the sensations that
the parting day had given them, sang its glories and took leave of it. They
sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making
songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were
the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's
heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to
do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each
other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.
Some of their songs, solemn and rapturous, I scarcely understood at all.
Though I understood the words I could never fathom their full significance.
It remained, as it were, beyond the grasp of my mind, yet my heart
unconsciously absorbed it more and more. I often told them that I had had a
presentiment of it long before, that this joy and glory had come to me on
our earth in the form of a yearning melancholy that at times approached
insufferable sorrow; that I had had a foreknowledge of them all and of
their glory in the dreams of my heart and the visions of my mind; that
often on our earth I could not look at the setting sun without tears ...
that in my hatred for the men of our earth there was always a yearning
anguish: why could I not hate them without loving them? why could I not
help forgiving them? and in my love for them there was a yearning grief:
why could I not love them without hating them? They listened to me, and I
saw they could not conceive what I was saying, but I did not regret that I
had spoken to them of it: I knew that they understood the intensity of my
yearning anguish over those whom I had left. But when they looked at me
with their sweet eyes full of love, when I felt that in their presence my
heart, too, became as innocent and just as theirs, the feeling of the
fullness of life took my breath away, and I worshipped them in silence.
Oh, every one laughs in my face now, and assures me that one cannot dream
of such details as I am telling now, that I only dreamed or felt one
sensation that arose in my heart in delirium and made up the details myself