The Sorrows of Belgium / A Play in Six Scenes

lls, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in the whole world as though no other soul exi

. He would sit down for awhile, then start to run again, he would press his forehead against the wall, stop and seek something with his eyes-as if looking for some medicine. His expression change

will to face danger and death, so long as he had death, even though it seemed terrible, in his own hands, he felt at ease. He was even cheerful; in the sensation of boundless freedom, of brave and firm conviction of his fearless will, his little, shrunken, womanish fear was drowned, leaving no trace. With an infernal machine at his girdle, he made the c

en life and death, but he will surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting to be slaughtered, a

ike work will be performed over him by human beings like himself, lent to them a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect-they seemed to him like ghosts that came to him for this one purp

e attempted to picture to himself that human beings had tongues and that they could speak, but he could not-they seemed to him to be mute. He tried to recall their speech, the meaning of the

egin to judge him: the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and the divan. He would cry and toss about, entreating, calling for help, while they would speak among thems

ped into his cell through the little window and handed him the food in silence. And that which he was experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him. Death with all its eternal mysteriousness and incomprehensibility was more acceptable to his reason than this strangely and fantastically changed world. What is mo

d have disappear

erstanding him. But as he mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old woman in the black l

is a soldier-puppet, and there, at home, is a father

oiled wheels. When his mother began to cry, something human again flashed for an instant, but at the very first word

se under the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter and irritating sediment remained; but faith there was none. But once, perhaps in his earliest childhoo

all the af

ithout being definitely conscious of it, these words: "The joy of all the afflicted"-and suddenly h

life? Eh, my deare

l like mussing up his hair, putting forth his knee and thrusting ou

ll the afflicted" and it was as though he himself did not know about it,-so

, even as the water in high-flood covers the willow twigs on the shore,-a desire came upon him to pray. He f

ated tenderly, in anguish: "Joy of all the

er and before he had entered the organization, he used then to call himself half-boastingly, half-pityingly, "Vaska Kashirin,"-and now for some reas

d died out quietly, without illuminating the deathly gloom. The wound-up clock in the steeple struck. Th

u are silent! Will you not sa

andles burning; the priest in his vestments; the ikon painted on the wall. He recalled his father, bending and stretching himself, praying and bowing to the ground, while

g now dis

is dying reason flared up as red as blood again and said that he, Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps become insane here, suffer pains for which there is no name, reach a degree of anguish and suffering that had never been experienced by a single li

and to carry his trembling, moist body. His hands, which had a consciousness of their own, endeav

d. His eyes stared. And th

is cell. He did not even imagine that this visit meant that it was time to g

h his livid lips and silently retreated to the depth of the cell

ust s

dress himself slowly. His consciousness must have returned to him, for he suddenly asked the official for a cigarette.