"An achievement! A victory of some sort!" Yourii wrung his hands in
despair. "To blaze up, and then to expire, without fear, without pain.
That is the only real life!"
A thousand exploits one more heroic than the other, presented
themselves to his mind, each like some grinning death's head. Closing
his eyes, Yourii could clearly behold a grey Petersburg morning, damp
brick walls and a gibbet faintly outlined against the leaden sky. He
pictured the barrel of a revolver pressed to his brow; he imagined that
he could hear the whiz of nagaïkas as they struck his defenceless
face and naked back.
"That's what's in store for one! To that one must come!" he exclaimed.
The deeds of heroism vanished, and in their place, his own helplessness
grinned at him like a mocking mask. He felt that all his dreams of
victory and valour were only childish fancies.
"Why should I sacrifice my own life or submit to insult and death in
order that the working classes in the thirty-second century may not
suffer through want of food or of sexual satisfaction? The devil take
all workers and non-workers in this world!"
"I wish somebody would shoot me," he thought. "Kill me, right out, with
a shot aimed from behind, so that I should feel nothing. What nonsense,
isn't it? Why must somebody else do it? and not I myself? Am I really
such a coward that I cannot pluck up courage to end this life which I
know to be nothing but misery? Sooner or later, one must die, so
that..."
He approached the drawer in which he kept his revolver, and furtively
took it out.
"Suppose I were to try? Not really because I ... just for fun!"
He slipped the weapon into his pocket and went out on to the veranda
leading to the garden. On the steps lay yellow, withered leaves. He
kicked them in all directions as he whistled a melancholy tune.
"What's that you're whistling?" asked Lialia, gaily, as she came across
the garden. "It's like a dirge for your departed youth."
"Don't talk nonsense!" replied Yourii irritably; and from that moment
he felt the approach of something that it was beyond his power to
prevent. Like an animal that knows death is near, he wandered
restlessly hither and thither, to look for some quiet spot. The
courtyard only irritated him, so he walked down to the river where
yellow leaves were floating, and threw a dry twig into the stream. For
a long time he watched the eddying circles on the water as the floating
leaves danced. He turned back and went towards the house, stopping to
look at the ruined flower-beds where the last red blossoms yet
lingered. Then he returned to the garden.