A Very Short Romance

Frost and cold. January is approaching, and is making its coming known to every unfortunate being⁠—dvorniks and gorodovois⁠—unable to hide their noses in some warm place. It is also letting me know. Not because I have been unable to find a warm corner, but through a whim of mine.

As a matter of fact, why am I stumping along this deserted quay? The lamps are shining brightly, although the wind keeps forcing its way inside them and making the gas-jets dance. Their bright light makes the dark mass of the sumptuous Palace, and especially its windows, look all the more gloomy. The wind is moaning and howling across the icy waste of the Neva. Through the gusts of wind comes the sound of the chimes of the Fortress Cathedral, and every stroke of the mournful bells keeps time with the tap of my wooden leg on the ice-covered granite slabs of the pavement and with the beating of my aching heart against the walls of its narrow cell.

I must present myself to the reader. I am a young man with a wooden leg. Perhaps you will say I am imitating Dickens. You remember Silas Wegg, the literary gent with the wooden leg (in Our Mutual Friend)? No, I am not copying him. I really am a young man with a wooden leg. Only I have become so recently.

“Ding-dong, ding-dong!” The chimes again ring out their doleful chant, and then one o’clock strikes. Only one o’clock! Still seven hours before daylight, then this black winter night, with its cold, wet snow, will give place to a grey day. Shall I go home? I do not know. It is absolutely all the same to me. I have no need of sleep.

In the spring, also, I loved to spend whole nights walking up and down this quay. Ah, what nights those are! What can surpass them? They are not the scented nights of the South, with their strange black heaven and big stars with their pursuing gaze. Here all is light and bright. The sky with its varied hues is coldly beautiful, and throughout the night remains gilded north and east with the rays of a scarce-setting sun. The air is fresh and keen. The limpid Neva rolls onwards proudly, its dancing wavelets contentedly lapping against the stonework of the quay. I am standing on this quay, and on my arm a young girl is leaning. And this girl⁠—

Ah, good people! why have I begun to tell you of my wounds? But such is the stupidity of the poor human heart. When it is stricken it dreams of seeking relief from each it meets, and does not find it. This is, however, quite intelligible. Who is in want of an old undarned stocking? Everyone endeavours to throw it away⁠—the farther the better.

My heart was in no need of mending when in the spring of this year I met Masha⁠—the best of all Mashas in this world. I met her on this same quay, which was not, however, as cold as it is now. And I had a real leg instead of this disgusting wooden stump⁠—a real well-made leg, like the one that I have left me. Taking me all round, I was a well-made fellow, and, of course, did not walk, as now, like some bandy-legged fool. Not a nice word to use, but at present I cannot pick my words. And so I met her. It happened quite simply. I was walking along; she was walking along. (I am not a Lothario, or rather was not, because now I have a wooden stump.)

I do not know what impelled me to do so, but I spoke. First of all I, of course, told her I was not one of those sort of blackguards, etc., then I declared my intentions were honourable, and so on. My face (on which there is now a deep furrow above the bridge of my nose (a very gloomy-looking furrow)) calmed her fears, and we walked together as far as her home. She was returning from her old grandmother, to whom she used to read. The poor old lady was blind.

Now the grandmother is dead. This year many have died, and not only old grandmothers. I could have died very easily, I assure you. But I have not. Oh, how much trouble can a man stand? You do not know, and neither do I.

Very well, Masha ordered me to be a hero, and therefore I had to join the army.

The times of the Crusades have passed, and knights are extinct; but if she whom you love were to say to you, “I am this ring,” and throw it into a fire, even were it the greatest possible conflagration, would you not throw yourself into the flames to get that ring? Oh, what a quaint fellow! “Of course not,” you reply⁠—“of course not. I should go to the best jeweller and buy her another ring ten times more valuable.” And she would say: “This is not the same ring, but is it an expensive ring? I will never believe you.” However, I am not of the same opinion as you, gentle reader. Perhaps the woman who would appeal to you would act in that way. You, no doubt, are the proud possessor of many shares and stocks, and can gratify any wish. You perhaps even subscribe to a foreign journal for your amusement. Perhaps you remember as a child having watched a moth which had flown into a flame? That also amused you in those days. The moth lay on its back quivering and fluttering its little striped wings. This interested you; then, when it no longer amused you, you squashed it with your linger, and the unhappy little thing ceased to suffer. Ah, kind reader, if only you would squash me with your finger, so that I might cease to suffer!

She was a strange girl. When war was declared she went about dreamily, and without speaking, for several days, and nothing I did would amuse her. “Listen,” she said to me at length, “you are an honourable man?”

“I may admit that,” I replied.

“Honourable people prove their words by deeds. You were for the war; you must fight.” She puckered her brows and warmly pressed her little hand into mine.

I looked at Masha, and said seriously: “Yes.”

“When you return I will be your wife,” she said to me on the station platform. “Come back!” Tears dimmed my sight, and I almost sobbed aloud. But I kept my self-control, and found strength to answer Masha:

“Remember, Masha, honourable people⁠—”

“Prove their words by deeds,” said she, finishing the sentence. I clasped her to my heart for the last time, and jumped into the railway-carriage.

I went to fight for Masha’s sake, but I did my duty by my country honourably. I marched bravely through Romania amidst rain and dust, heat and cold. Self-sacrificingly I gnawed the ration biscuit. When we first met the Turks I did not fail, but won the “Cross” and promotion as N.C.O. In the second action something happened, and I fell to the ground. Groans, mist; a doctor in white apron with blood-covered hands; hospital nurses; my leg, with its birthmark, taken off below the knee. All this happened as in a dream. Then the ambulance-train, with its comfortable cots and dainty lady in charge, brought me to St. Petersburg.

When you leave a town in the usual and proper way with two legs, and return to it with one leg and a stump instead of the other⁠—believe me, it costs something.

They placed me in a hospital. This was in July. I begged them to find out the address of Mary Ivanovna and the good-natured attendant brought it me.

I wrote, then again, and a third time⁠—but no answer. My kind reader, I have told you all this, and, of course, you do not believe me. What an unlikely story! you say. A certain knight and a certain crafty traitress⁠—the old, old story. My intelligent reader, believe me there are many such knights besides myself.

Eventually they fitted me with a wooden leg, and I was able now to find out for myself the cause of Masha’s silence. I drove to her house, and then stumped up the long staircase. How I had flown up it eight months ago! At last the door. I ring with a sinking at my heart. I hear footsteps, and the old servant opens the door to me. Without listening to her joyous exclamations I rush (if it is possible to rush when your legs are of different kinds) into the drawing-room. Masha!

She is not alone, but is sitting with a very nice young fellow, a distant relative, who was at the University with me, and was expecting to obtain a good appointment eventually. Both congratulated me very tenderly (probably owing to my wooden leg), but both were somewhat confused. Within a quarter of an hour I understood all.

I did not wish to stand in the way of their happiness. The intelligent reader smiles sceptically. Surely you do not want me to believe all this? Who would gratuitously surrender the girl he loves to any good-for-nothing fellow?

First, he is not a good-for-nothing fellow; and, second⁠—well, I would tell you that second only you would not understand, because you do not believe that virtue and justice exist nowadays. You would prefer the unhappiness of three persons to the misery of one. You do not believe me, intelligent reader? Then don’t!

The wedding took place two days ago, and I was best man. I performed my duties at the ceremony with dignity, and gave to another what I most prize in this world. Masha from time to time glanced timidly at me, and her husband regarded me with a perplexed air of bewilderment. The wedding was a merry one. Champagne flowed, her German relatives cried “Hoch!” and called me “der Russische Held.” Masha and her husband were Lutherans.

“Aha!” exclaims the intelligent reader; “see how you have betrayed yourself, sir hero! Why must you make use of the Lutheran religion? Simply because there are no orthodox marriages in December! That is the whole reason and explanation, and the whole narrative is pure invention.”

Think what you like, dear reader. It is a matter of absolute indifference to me. But were you to come with me on these December nights along the Palace Quay, and listen to the storm and chimes, and the tap of my wooden leg on the pavement; if you could feel what effect these winter nights have on me; if you could believe⁠—

“Ding-dong, ding-dong!” The chimes are sounding four o’clock. It is time to go home, and throw myself on to my lonely bed and sleep.

“Au revoir,” reader!