The Burglar—A Story by Leonid Andreyev
The author of this story (which is translated for Current Literature from the Russian, by Thomas Seltzer) is now in a Russian prison, where he was recently sent, together with his friend, Maxim Gorky, on political charges relating to the recent troubles in St. Petersburg. Gorky has been released, but Andreyev is, presumably, still held.
A great burglary is to be committed; perhaps
also a murder.
To-night is the time appointed for this deed. Alone in his room, waiting, sits one of the men who is to commit the crime.
He must make haste to find his comrade and not sit alone and idle in the house. The lonely and idle man is a prey to all imaginable terrors, and he is everywhere surrounded by a mocking, jeering throng, whose hollow, malicious laughter penetrates and torments his soul.
A mouse terrifies him. It scratches mysteriously at the boards underneath the floor, and will not be silenced even when he raps with his cane until he is seized with fear himself. For a moment it remains silent, but as soon as, reassured, he reclines his head on his pillow, it is there again under his bed, gnawing away at the boards so loud . . . so loud . . . that it might be heard in the street . . . that someone might come and make inquiries.
The dog terrifies him, which, outside in the yard, rattles the chain sharply and barks at somebody.
Then the dog and the people are silent for a long while, and something happens out yonder. No footsteps are heard, but something is approaching the door, and a hand lays hold of the latch and holds it with a powerful grip without opening it.
The entire old moldy house terrifies, as if it had acquired, in its long existence with the groaning, weeping and teeth-gnashing inhabitants, the ability to speak and to utter indefinite, horrible threats. Something looks staringly out of the darkness of the narrow corner, and when he brings the lamp near it springs back noiselessly and is transformed into a tall dark shadow which dances and laughs—so quaintly dances and laughs on the round beams of the walls. Overhead on the low ceiling someone is treading with heavy footsteps; no footsteps are heard, but the boards are bending and fine dust is falling into the joints. How could it fall if there were no one upon the dark floor, walking about and looking for something? Yet the dust keeps falling, and sooty cobwebs tremble and wriggle and squirm. The mute, insidious, monstrous darkness greedily engorges the little windows, and—who knows?—perhaps there are shadowy faces peeping in with the uncanny composure of the invisible, and pointing at him: "See . . . see! Look at him!"
When a man is alone even his old acquaintances terrify him. They come and he is glad to see them. He laughs cheerfully and looks tranquilly into that corner in which someone had just been hidden, looks boldly at the ceiling over which someone had been walking back and forth. Now there is no one there; the boards do not bend, and no fine dust is falling. Yet—the men speak too much and too loud. They shout as if he were deaf, and in so doing their words vanish and lose their meaning. They cry so loudly and so long that their cries turn into stillness and their words into muteness. He knows their faces, but their eyes seem strange and unusual, and appear to live apart from their faces and their smiles, as if from the hollows of the eyes of old and trusted faces there looked out some stranger, a new man, who knew all and was so hideously treacherous.
And the man who has projected a great burglary, perhaps a murder, steps forth from the old rickety house. He steps forth into the street and breathes a sigh of relief.
But the street also—the deserted, hushed street of the suburb, where the pure white snow of the fields grapples with the noisy city, and forcibly penetrates into it with its white streams—the street also terrifies the man when he is alone. Already night is on, but darkness is not yet to conceal him. Somewhere in the distance, before and behind, it coils itself up in the dark houses with their closed shutters; but it steps back before him; he is forever walking in a luminous circle apart from but visible to all, as if he were carried along raised upon the broad white palm of a hand. And in every house which his bent form passes by there are doors, and even they stare at him with such a watchful and intent look, as if behind each there stood a man ready to rush forth upon him. And behind the fences, behind the long fences, stretches forth the invisible distance. There are gardens and vegetable beds, and surely no one can be there in this cold winter night; but if someone lies hidden there and looks at him through the dark
