The Crushed Flower and Other Stories | Page 9

had arrived. I rose, and, for some reason, spent a long time washing myself, as was my wont in the morning before going to work, and my wife held the light. Then we put out the light and walked over to the window overlooking the street. It was spring; it was May, and the air that came in from the open window was such as we had never before felt in that old, large city. For several days the factories and the roads had been idle; and the air, free from smoke, was filled with the fragrance of the fields and the flowering gardens, perhaps with that of the dew. I do not know what it is that smells so wonderfully on spring nights when I go out far beyond the outskirts of the city. Not a lantern, not a carriage, not a single sound of the city over the unconcerned stony surface; if you had closed your eyes you would really have thought that you were in a village. There a dog was barking. I had never before heard a dog barking in the city, and I laughed for happiness.
"Listen, a dog is barking."
My wife embraced me, and said:
"It is there, on the corner."
We bent over the window-sill, and there, in the transparent, dark depth, we saw some movement--not people, but movement. Something was moving about like a shadow. Suddenly the blows of a hatchet or a hammer resounded. They sounded so cheerful, so resonant, as in a forest, as on a river when you are mending a boat or building a dam. And in the presentiment of cheerful, harmonious work, I firmly embraced my wife, while she looked above the houses, above the roofs, looked at the young crescent of the moon, which was already setting. The moon was so young, so strange, even as a young girl who is dreaming and is afraid to tell her dreams; and it was shining only for itself.
"When will we have a full moon?..."
"You must not! You must not!" my wife interrupted. "You must not speak of that which will be. What for? IT is afraid of words. Come here."
It was dark in the room, and we were silent for a long time, without seeing each other, yet thinking of the same thing. And when I started to speak, it seemed to me that some one else was speaking; I was not afraid, yet the voice of the other one was hoarse, as though suffocating for thirst.
"What shall it be?"
"And--they?"
"You will be with them. It will be enough for them to have a mother. I cannot remain."
"And I? Can I?"
I know that she did not stir from her place, but I felt distinctly that she was going away, that she was far--far away. I began to feel so cold, I stretched out my hands--but she pushed them aside.
"People have such a holiday once in a hundred years, and you want to deprive me of it. Why?" she said.
"But they may kill you there. And our children will perish."
"Life will be merciful to me. But even if they should perish--"
And this was said by her, my wife--a woman with whom I had lived for ten years. But yesterday she had known nothing except our children, and had been filled with fear for them; but yesterday she had caught with terror the stern symptoms of the future. What had come over her? Yesterday--but I, too, forgot everything that was yesterday.
"Do you want to go with me?"
"Do not be angry"--she thought that I was afraid, angry--"Don't be angry. To-night, when they began to knock here, and you were still sleeping, I suddenly understood that my husband, my children--all these were simply temporary... I love you, very much"--she found my hand and shook it with the same new, unfamiliar grasp--"but do you hear how they are knocking there? They are knocking, and something seems to be falling, some kind of walls seem to be falling--and it is so spacious, so wide, so free. It is night now, and yet it seems to me that the sun is shining. I am thirty years of age, and I am old already, and yet it seems to me that I am only seventeen, and that I love some one with my first love--a great, boundless love."
"What a night!" I said. "It is as if the city were no more. You are right, I have also forgotten how old I am."
"They are knocking, and it sounds to me like music, like singing of which I have always dreamed--all my life. And I did not know whom it was that I loved with such a boundless love, which made me feel like crying and laughing and singing. There is freedom--do not take my happiness away, let me die with those