The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Otto Penzler

  He took my hand which I had held out to him, pressed it slightly as though it bored him to do so, and said: “I am Dr. Garine.” Then something happened, the thought of which I had always ridiculed up to this time. Although I could not distinguish his features clearly, I felt that we were not strangers. He walked along beside me without speaking and was going to leave me without a word. “Thanks, thanks very much,” I stammered. He raised his hat and said to me coldly and indifferently: “I am afraid you are losing your head. Don’t do it. Good night, Madame.”

  June 17th.

  I have told my husband everything.

  I also asked him about Dr. Garine. It seems that he is a rather well-known scientist who lives alone and who seldom attends social functions. I asked my husband to go and thank him for having come to my aid.

  June 23rd.

  Tania and I went to see the fireworks in honor of the feast of St. John. We were bored, although there was a large crowd in the public gardens, and were just about to leave the place when we ran into Dr. Garine.

  “Oh, Doctor!”

  He hesitated, then bowed silently as though he had no desire to enter upon a conversation. I insisted, however, on his going to a café with us, where we spent the whole evening with him. He proved to be a brilliant conversationalist, and joked about the battle the other evening, in which I was the martyr and he the hero. He has an expressive face, an energetic mouth, and rather a heavy chin. I am glad he is smooth shaven. He scarcely looked at me, but he was very attentive to Tania. My cousin is very pretty.

  July 10th.

  We meet Dr. Garine occasionally. His attitude towards me is always discreetly correct. It is hard to believe that he really made that peculiar statement to me the first time we met. He is a man of great culture and is wonderfully intelligent. At times he is charmingly good-natured; at others, he is indifferent and taciturn and it is almost impossible to drag a word out of him. He pays absolutely no attention to me. I do not exist for him. I will admit that he troubles me and interests me very much, and that things seem wrong if I do not see him regularly.

  July 25th.

  My husband does not like Dr. Garine and tries to be most disagreeable to him. Dr. Garine is perfectly indifferent to this. I have never, in all my life, met a man so completely master of himself.

  August 1st.

  I passed last evening tête-à-tête with Dr. Garine. Contrary to his customary attitude, he surprised me by his unusual gentleness and thought-fulness. He told me of his life in Paraguay. I am entering one of his statements in my diary. “Europeans pride themselves on their intelligence. A great deal of good it does them! True, they may be more developed than the primitive races, but the latter are unquestionably more vividly alive. They have made me understand the meaning of love, which is life!”

  I did not ask him to explain what he meant.

  August 20th.

  An unbelievable thing happened to-day, which has completely upset me.

  I have locked myself in my room, a prey to an awful presentiment.

  We had Dr. Garine to dinner with us. The conversation turned to medicine, and my husband, as usual, tried to pick a quarrel with the doctor, saying: “Medicine is a fraud, and doctors are impostors.” The doctor listened calmly to my husband’s impertinences and continued peeling his apple. Finally, still intent upon his apple, he asked: “Dimitri Nikolaevitch, are you a brave man?” My husband was disconcerted for a moment, then replied angrily: “Certainly. I wear the Cross of St. George.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything. I can’t understand you; why this subterfuge? Do you fear the truth?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Just a moment. You will know what I am talking about. You try to anger me in many different ways. Why? Naturally you are jealous. But you anticipate. No word of love has ever passed between your wife and myself. But, if you insist”—he smiled and put a piece of apple in his mouth—“there is only one thing left for you to do: that is to yield. I love Nina Petrovna.”

  “And she?” demanded my husband in a thick voice.

  “And she,” he replied calmly, “loves me. It cannot be otherwise.”

  “Nina, is this true?” My husband grasped my wrists. I was almost unconscious, could not say a word. My husband grabbed his revolver and rushed upon Garine. “Get out, you dog, or I’ll kill you,” he screamed savagely. Garine, as though trying to exasperate my husband, took another apple and started to cut it into pieces.

  “Evidently, Dimitri Nikolaevitch, we are going to have a duel. It is rather a primitive way of settling an argument, but I am an advocate of primitive life. Only, I warn you, I will kill you. I see death written upon your face.”

  My husband, beside himself with rage, seized the doctor’s shoulder, and I covered my face, expecting to hear a shot. But the doctor had seized Dimitri’s arm and held it with such force as to cause him to drop the revolver. Then, slowly, authoritatively, he forced him into a chair, and left the house without a word.

  September 10th.

  I have not touched my diary for three weeks. Life is so strangely changed for me during this time that I sometimes believe that I am in a dream.

  My husband and Garine have fought the duel. The doctor’s assistant told me about it.

  Garine exacted the most difficult conditions. Thirteen paces, and the mortal injury of one of the adversaries. Garine fired the first shot. An excellent shot, he wounded my husband’s right arm, which forced Dimitri to fire with his left hand. This was a great disadvantage.

  I know Dimitri did not want to kill Garine, as he said to me the evening before, as he left me, “If only I don’t kill him!” Firing with his left hand, the shot was almost fatal. The ball had grazed the heart.

  Garine fell.

  “Dress the wound and give me a hypodermic. The duel will continue.”

  The assistant gave him an injection of morphine and ergotine.

  “Even if my heart has been touched, I will live.”

  He was livid. His hand trembled with weakness.

  “My whole being rebels at this butchery, but it must be done,” said Dimitri.

  “Fire more quickly!” said one of my husband’s seconds.

  “It is ended. I can’t see,” exclaimed Garine.

  The assistant gave him an intravenous injection. He arose and fired, almost without aiming, then sank into unconsciousness.

  For three weeks he hovered between life and death. I did not leave him for an instant, not even to go to my husband’s funeral. Nothing matters now. I could not do otherwise. I am his.

  The bullet is lodged dangerously near the heart. The doctors say he is very near death’s door. But he lives. He must live. He is mine, my joy, my love, my all.

  He talked to me in his delirium. He said peculiar things which made me love him all the more. I now partially understand this strange, distant being. Sometimes his words seem to be the only thing that matters.

  “Do you hear the rolling of the wheels? Do you see the cable, the glowing water? I am heart-sick; I know what the wheels are saying. She laughs at them and at life.

  “I am far, far away … and I laugh.

  “I hear the sound of falling water … and I laugh.

  “Love is all that remains. I see the narrow passage and hear the rolling wheels!”

  Yesterday his temperature dropped and he regained consciousness.

  “Where is the bullet?”

  I was troubled and did not reply.

  “I am not afraid of the truth. Can it be that you do not yet understand me?”

  When I told him that it was impossible to remove it, he became silent and thoughtful.

  “Very well. All is well; even that I still want to live.”

  October 15th.

  He is a strange, enigmatic person. Usually taciturn, he never laughs, but often smiles a perfectly adorable smile. Occasionally he likes to talk; then he is all enthusiasm. More often he is calm, with the calmness of self-confide
nce and strength.

  He works incessantly; too much, I think. He arises very early and goes to his laboratory. He often writes until late at night.

  I cannot become accustomed to my present life after my past existence, which was filled with social obligations and so-called gayety and pleasure. We read a great deal, and sometimes it wearies me to do this, and to follow the trend of his thoughts.

  I don’t know whether he loves me, because he has never spoken to me of it: I say never; yes, once. It was during his convalescence. The doctor had permitted him to sit up in a chair.

  It was evening and the whole house seemed to sleep the sleep of the dead. We seemed entirely alone in the world. He began to talk:

  “Fire attracts me as it did the pagans. While still a boy, ten years or twelve years old, I used to run away to the country in search of bonfires.

  “I used to go to the shepherds, taking no notice of their dogs, and sit long and silently, gazing dreamily into their fires.

  “Little by little I seemed to become incorporated with the names. Child that I was, home seemed to me something distant, foreign, ‘fiction’.”

  The coals in the fire-place were a golden glow. Garine bent over, took a burning coal into his hand, held it for a moment, and then threw it back into the fireplace.

  “What are you doing? Did you burn yourself?” I cried.

  I took his hand. He did not withdraw it and smiled. Then, tenderly, as though talking to a little girl, he said:

  “It was only a little joke, a little, innocent ruse. I wanted you to hold my hand.” Then he continued:

  “As I have grown older I have lost the faculty of conforming objects and things to my will.

  “I have ceased to be a primitive man. My mind has developed. It has reached the limits of intellectual development accorded to Europeans. But, on the other hand, my sensibilities have become dulled; I have lost one of the most essential characteristics of the human personality, intuition. Partly, at least, if not entirely.” He smiled, then continued: “In spite of this atrophy, I am infinitely more sensitive than most people. This may be attributed, I think, to my childhood. I used to spend whole days and nights alone in the forests talking to the birds and trees. They seemed to understand my language. There I had friends and enemies. The ugly old oak was my most bitter enemy. The gentle lime-tree rejoiced my wild, incomprehensible, childish soul by its charming, tender murmurs. I was a part of the forest. When I returned to the city I discovered that the humdrum of daily existence deprived me of this faculty.

  “The commotion of the city; society; in short, contact with human beings distressed me.

  “Later, when as a student I returned to the forest, I could hear only the grumbling noises of city life in the whisperings of the trees and the songs of the birds, which had formerly been so dear to me.

  “The rhythm of daily life, the cadence of time obsessed me, because I had lost all primitive impulses, having given myself over, body and soul, to human motives. Do you understand me?”

  I waited attentively for him to explain his meaning to me. He gave as an example, the life of a citizen of our day, especially in America.

  “The struggle for daily existence destroys all the rhythm of life, especially for the humble.”

  He spoke of the sick, who would be called by death to-morrow, perhaps even to-day. “They no longer belong to life, and yet they give themselves over to the joys of existence. Pitiful, wretched creatures swaying feebly to the sounds of the barbaric organ—life.”

  The most insignificant of his stories struck me, I don’t know why, and made a powerful impression on me.

  “I was consulted by one of my cousins, an engineer. ‘I am tired, exhausted,’ he told me. I examined him and was greatly distressed by my findings. He was completely gone. A radioscopic examination proved his case still more serious.

  “His condition called for absolute rest. He should have ceased work immediately. I did not attempt to deceive him. We could have hoped to save him by patience and care.

  “He was overwhelmed, not only because of his condition, but because of the necessity for immediate rest. He continually repeated: ‘I have an important business deal for to-morrow, which will bring me a large fortune.’ I became angry. To the devil with money! I again tried to convince him of the absolute necessity of entering a sanitarium. He promised me that he would go.

  “At the end of three days he came back to me. He was a new man.

  “‘My deal has succeeded. I have two or three more like this. In a week I will begin to take care of myself.’

  “He stopped speaking suddenly, swayed, and fell. For two hours I remained in silence beside his dead body.

  “The next day I left for the Brazilian forests of South America. The bonds of civilization pursued me even there. For three years I wandered among the most primitive, the most savage of the natives. For three years I searched for freedom. But, city life held me in its tentacles.

  “I experienced a sense of intuition for the first time when I met you. Boresome trivialities were vanquished, and my sense of premonition had recovered its vitality.”

  He was silent for a long time. Then he caressed my hand and murmured:

  “This is what is ordinarily called love, a word which, man has profaned long ago. My sentiment is not love. No, it is not love in the sense that the word is vulgarly used.”

  November 20th.

  He overwhelms me with his tenderness. I am troubled and afraid in spite of the fact that he is always faultlessly correct. Our attitude towards each other, and our love-making are of a peculiar nature. I cannot become accustomed to it. After the joys and sensuality of my first marriage, the austerity of our life and the gravity of our love, of this super-love, sometimes depress me. And yet, I am entirely his, his slave, and I adore him.

  I am angry with myself for my statement: “His slave!”

  December 5th.

  I am happy to-day, perhaps for the first time in my life. All of my past love is nothing as compared to that which I experienced yesterday. It was not passion, but a storm, a tempest, a something between life and death. I wept, I sobbed, I laughed.

  How I pity those who have never experienced such ecstasy!

  We had friends in to dinner, and he had drunk more than usual; he is ordinarily so temperate. The wine completely changed him—his correctness, his self-control, his cold, stern attitude, all this had disappeared, and he smiled and joked with excessive gayety.

  After the departure of our guests he was maddened by an insatiable desire … as though he were trying to drain the cup of voluptuousness. He wept and he moaned as though his soul were wounded by the excess of his feelings, then yielded anew to his passions.

  December 6th.

  Yesterday he was cold, and more reserved than ever. He retired to his room very early in the evening. We did not even do any reading.

  December 15th.

  Life has become strangely monotonous. Sometimes I think he is one of those unfathomable beings whom it is impossible to understand. I often think of our one great experience. Will I ever know it again?

  January 20th, 1911.

  It is cold and windy. Sometimes Dr. Levitsky, my husband’s assistant, comes and helps me, to a certain extent, to overcome my ennui. He is very gay and I think perhaps he is interested in me. We go riding occasionally. On Saturdays he dines with us and spends the evening. He is fond of music and sings rather well. He is very young and flushes delightfully if I happen to touch him.

  February 5th.

  Yesterday, a return of his “madness” brought us very close unto death.

  To death, do I say? No, to resurrection. Joy and passion brought complete satiety. It was like a descent, into fathomless depths. Time and space were as nothing, and one thing only remained—eternity.

  Is it possible that only the chosen few experience this supreme joy? Is this love? Then why is he depressed, displeased, and angry with himself afterwards?

  February 22nd.<
br />
  I notice that I am beginning to use my husband’s language. This irritates and gladdens me. “Rejoice, O Slave!”

  February 26th.

  Levitsky has made a declaration of love. I was amused but also touched by it. He esteems and fears my husband greatly. “I implore you not to tell your husband of this,” said he after his avowal. “This must be our secret.” I stroked his silken hair—how soft it is!—and promised to say nothing.

  That same evening, however, I could not keep from telling him all about it.

  He did not seem surprised or angry.

  “Very well,” said he, “Levitsky is a nice young man. Be kind to him.”

  This is too much. He doesn’t love me at all.

  February 27th.

  I have reread yesterday’s notes and I am ashamed of myself. My heart is filled to overflowing with love for my husband. Yet, I am bored at times. Or, rather, I have dark presentiments. It is then that Levitsky is such a help to me. With him, I can laugh; I can joke and gossip; I can scold him and tease him.

  Sometimes, I wonder whether I am happy.

  March 10th.

  Never, even in my innermost soul, not even in the moments of our most intimate tenderness, do I call him “George.” However, I speak of Levitsky as Leon all of the time, whether he is present or not. My husband finds this entirely natural.

  March 22nd.

  Yesterday, Garine became very talkative while we were alone. “I cannot conceive of a future,” he told me in a calm, indifferent voice. Sometimes I have the impression that he is dissatisfied with himself, at others, that he is not of this world. Just like every one else who knows him, I am surprised at the formidable amount of work he does.

  When he comes home joyful and happy, I know that one of his experiments has succeeded, or that he is satisfied with a diagnosis he has made.

  Yesterday, he was very enthusiastic. I heard him say several times: “Is it possible that I have succeeded!” He is experimenting with a serum, but I don’t know what it is all about.

  March 24th.

  I have just returned from a long ride on horseback with our young friend. What a glorious spring day it has been! The stupid boy made love to me again. I became angry and threatened to tell my husband. He became very pale but said nothing. When he left me he implored fearfully: “Do not, I beg of you, speak of this to the Doctor.”