Leonid Andreyev

“ Don’t dare cry when you are dying. I’ll dry your mean eyes upon the fire. Fire! Fire everywhere! Khorre—sailor! I am dying. They have poured molten tar into my chest. Oh, how it burns!”
“Don’t give way, Noni. Don’t give way. Recall your father. Strike them on the head, Noni!”
“I can’t, Khorre. My strength is failing. Where is my power?”
“Strike them on the head, Noni. Strike them on the head!”
“Take a knife, Khorre, and cut out my heart. There is no ship, Khorre—there is nothing. Cut out my heart, comrade—throw out the traitor from my breast.” ”

“ The face of Judas grew pale, and something suddenly came over Thomas, and as if it were a white cloud, passed over and concealed the road and Jesus. With a gentle movement Judas just as suddenly drew Thomas to himself, pressed him closely with a paralysing movement, and whispered in his ear—
“You mean, then, that a devil has instructed me, don’t you, Thomas? Well, I saved Jesus. Therefore a devil loves Jesus and has need of Him, and of the truth. Is it not so, Thomas? But then my father was not a devil, but a he-goat. Can a he-goat want Jesus? ”

“ Haggart exclaims in a muffled voice:
“Oh, Khorre!”
“What is it, Noni?”
“Why don’t you tell him that it isn’t Haggart? It is a lie!” whispers Haggart rapidly. “He thinks that he knows, but he does not know anything. He is a small, wretched old man with red eyes, like those of a rabbit, and to-morrow death will mow him down. Ha! He is dealing in diamonds, he throws them from one hand to the other like an old miser, and he himself is dying of hunger. It is a fraud, Khorre, a fraud. Let us shout loudly, Khorre, we are alone here.” ”

“ You are God’s justice, Haggart. Is it true that he was your nurse? Oh, I know what it means to be a nurse; a nurse feeds you, teaches you to walk—you love a nurse as your mother. Isn’t that true, Gart—you love a nurse as a mother? And yet—‘string him up with a rope, Khorre’!”
She laughs quietly.
A loud, ringing laughter resounds from the side where Khorre was led away. Haggart stops, perplexed.
“What is it?”
“The devil is meeting his soul there,” says Mariet.
“No. Let go of my hand! Eh, who’s there?”
A crowd is coming. They are laughing and grinning, showing their teeth. ”

“ Instead of having wasted dozens of years on a titanic struggle, instead of being tormented by the throes of despair, instead of growing enfeebled by horror in the face of unsolved mysteries, of striving to subject the world to my mind and my will, I could have climbed the table and—one instant of pain—I would be free; I would be triumphant over the lock and the walls, over truth and falsehood, over joys and sufferings. I will not say that I had not thought of suicide before as a means of escaping from our prison, but now for the first time it appeared before me in all its attractiveness. ”

“ Haggart shakes his head:
“No, Khorre, no! I am sad. Ah, sailor, why have I stopped here, where I hear the sea? I should go away, far away on land, where the people don’t know the sea at all, where the people have never heard about the sea—a thousand miles away, five thousand miles away!”
“There is no such land.”
“There is, Khorre. Let us drink and laugh, Khorre. That organist lies. Sing something for me, Khorre—you sing well. In your hoarse voice I hear the creaking of ropes. Your refrain is like a sail that is torn by the storm. Sing, sailor!” ”

“ Don’t gnash your teeth, without biting—no one will believe you. Did you put in cannon balls—round, cast-iron, good cannon balls? Give them wings, comrade—let them fly like blackbirds on land and sea.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Haggart laughs:
“I love to think how the cannon ball flies, Mariet. I love to watch its invisible flight. If some one comes in its way—let him! Fate itself strikes down like that. What is an aim? Only fools need an aim, while the devil, closing his eyes, throws stones—the wise game is merrier this way. But you are silent! What are you thinking of, Mariet?” ”

“ With the kiss of love we betray Thee to outrage, to torture, to death! With the voice of love we call together the hangmen from their dark holes, and we place a cross—and high over the top of the earth we lift love, crucified by love upon a cross.”
Thus stood Judas, silent and cold, like death, and the shouting and the noise about Jesus answered the cry of His soul. With the rude irresoluteness of armed force, with the awkwardness of a vaguely understood purpose, the soldiers seized Him and dragged Him off—mistaking their irresoluteness for resistance, their fear for derision and mockery. ”

“ A deserted field, overgrown with high grass, devoid of an echo, extends like a deep carpet to the very fence of our prison, whose majestic outlines subdue my imagination and my mind. When the dying sun illumines it with its last rays, and our prison, all in red, stands like a queen, like a martyr, with the dark wounds of its grated windows, and the sun rises silently and proudly over the plain—with sorrow, like a lover, I send my complaints and my sighs and my tender reproach and vows to her, to my love, to my dream, to my bitter and last sorrow. ”

“ Having taken into its embrace a multitude of instruments with which human beings produce their music—harps, reed-pipes, priceless violins, heavy drums and brass trumpets—it breaks them all, together with a wave, against the sharp rocks. It dashes them and bursts into laughter—only thus does the wind understand music—each time in the death of an instrument, each time in the breaking of strings, in the snapping of the clanging brass. Thus does the mad musician understand music. Haggart heaves a deep sigh and with some amazement, like a man just awakened from sleep, looks around on all sides. ”

“ I cannot recall without a smile that even the death of my mother, even the betrayal of the girl I loved did not arouse in me such a hopelessly bitter feeling as these gentlemen, whose names I remember but vaguely now, succeeded in wresting from my soul.
“What horror! What pain! My friends, you have left me alone! My friends, do you understand what you have done? You have left me alone. Can you conceive of leaving a human being alone? Even a serpent has its mate, even a spider has its comrade—and you have left a human being alone! You have given him a soul—and left him alone! ”

“ Turn around, Haggart! Noni is calling you. He wants to curse you, Haggart. Turn around! Look, Noni, look—that is your father. Remember him, Noni. And when you grow up, go out on every sea and find him, Noni. And when you find him—hang your father high on a mast, my little one.”
The thundering salute drowns her cry. Haggart has boarded his ship. The night grows darker and the dashing of the waves fainter—the ocean is moving away with the tide. The great desert of the sky is mute and the night grows darker and the dashing of the waves ever fainter. ”

“ Only by the beating of his heart Max could judge that Chronos had not left his chariot. His body was aching ever more from the unnatural position in which it lay, and the constant light and silence were growing ever more tormenting. How happy are they for whom night exists, near whom people are shouting, making noise, beating drums; who may sit on a chair, with their feet hanging down, or lie with their feet outstretched, placing the head in a corner and covering it with the hands in order to create the illusion of darkness. ”

“ The horror and the dreams of Judas are realised, he gets up from his knees on which, for some reason, he has knelt, and gazes around coldly.
Thus does a stern conqueror look, when he has already determined in his heart to surrender everything to destruction and death, and for the last time throws a glance over a rich foreign city, still alive with sound, but already phantom-like under the cold hand of death. And suddenly, as clearly as his terrible victory, Iscariot saw its ominous precariousness. What if they should suddenly understand? It is not yet too late! Jesus still lives. ”

“ Go away, Thomas.”
“Why do you groan, and grind your teeth? Are you ill?”
Judas was silent for a while, and then fretfully there fell from his lips distressful words, fraught with grief and anger—
“Why does not He love me? Why does He love the others? Am I not handsomer, better and stronger than they? Did not I save His life while they ran away like cowardly dogs?”
“My poor friend, you are not quite right. You are not good-looking at all, and your tongue is as disagreeable as your face. You lie and slander continually; how then can you expect Jesus to love you?” ”