The Crushed Flower & Other Stories

Last Sunday a great misfortune occurred in our prison:  The artist K., whom the reader knows already, ended his life in suicide by flinging himself from the table with his head against the stone floor.  The fall and the force of the blow had been so skilfully calculated by the unfortunate young man that his skull was split in two.  The grief of the Warden was indescribable.  Having called me to the office, the Warden, without shaking hands with me, reproached me in angry and harsh terms for having deceived him, and he regained his calm, only after my hearty apologies and promises that such accidents would not happen again.  I promised to prepare a project for watching the criminals which would render suicide impossible.  The esteemed wife of the Warden, whose portrait remained unfinished, was also grieved by the death of the artist.

Of course, I had not expected this outcome, either, although a few days before committing suicide, K. had provoked in me a feeling of uneasiness.  Upon entering his cell one morning, and greeting him, I noticed with amazement that he was sitting before his slate once more drawing human figures.

“What does this mean, my friend?” I inquired cautiously.  “And how about the portrait of the second assistant?”

“The devil take it!”

“But you—­”

“The devil take it!”

After a pause I remarked distractedly: 

“Your portrait of the Warden is meeting with great success.  Although some of the people who have seen it say that the right moustache is somewhat shorter than the left—­”

“Shorter?”

“Yes, shorter.  But in general they find that you caught the likeness very successfully.”

K. had put aside his slate pencil and, perfectly calm, said: 

“Tell your Warden that I am not going to paint that prison riffraff any more.”

After these words there was nothing left for me to do but leave him, which I decided to do.  But the artist, who could not get along without giving vent to his effusions, seized me by the hand and said with his usual enthusiasm: 

“Just think of it, old man, what a horror!  Every day a new repulsive face appears before me.  They sit and stare at me with their froglike eyes.  What am I to do?  At first I laughed—­I even liked it—­but when the froglike eyes stared at me every day I was seized with horror.  I was afraid they might start to quack—­qua-qua!”

Indeed there was a certain fear, even madness, in the eyes of the artist—­the madness which shortly led him to his untimely grave.

“Old man, it is necessary to have something beautiful.  Do you understand me?”

“And the wife of the Warden?  Is she not—­”

I shall pass in silence the unbecoming expressions with which he spoke of the lady in his excitement.  I must, however, admit that to a certain extent the artist was right in his complaints.  I had been present several times at the sittings, and noticed that all who had posed for the artist behaved rather unnaturally.  Sincere and naive, conscious of the importance of their position, convinced that the features of their faces perpetuated upon the canvas would go down to posterity, they exaggerated somewhat the qualities which are so characteristic of their high and responsible office in our prison.  A certain bombast of pose, an exaggerated expression of stern authority, an obvious consciousness of their own importance, and a noticeable contempt for those on whom their eyes were directed—­all this disfigured their kind and affable faces.  But I cannot understand what horrible features the artist found where there should have been a smile.  I was even indignant at the superficial attitude with which an artist, who considered himself talented and sensible, passed the people without noticing that a divine spark was glimmering in each one of them.  In the quest after some fantastic beauty he light-mindedly passed by the true beauties with which the human soul is filled.  I cannot help feeling sorry for those unfortunate people who, like K., because of a peculiar construction of their brains, always turn their eyes toward the dark side, whereas there is so much joy and light in our prison!

When I said this to K. I heard, to my regret, the same stereotyped and indecent answer: 

“The devil take it!”

All I could do was to shrug my shoulders.  Suddenly changing his tone and bearing, the artist turned to me seriously with a question which, in my opinion, was also indecent: 

“Why do you lie, old man?”

I was astonished, of course.

“I lie?”

“Well, let it be the truth, if you like, but why?  I am looking and thinking.  Why did you say that?  Why?”

My indulgent reader, who knows well what the truth has cost me, will readily understand my profound indignation.  I deliberately mention this audacious and other calumnious phrases to show in what an atmosphere of malice, distrust, and disrespect I have to plod along the hard road of suffering.  He insisted rudely: 

“I have had enough of your smiles.  Tell me plainly, why do you speak so?”

Then, I admit, I flared up: 

“You want to know why I speak the truth?  Because I hate falsehood and I commit it to eternal anathema!  Because fate has made me a victim of injustice, and as a victim, like Him who took upon Himself the great sin of the world and its great sufferings, I wish to point out the way to mankind.  Wretched egoist, you know only yourself and your miserable art, while I love mankind.”

My anger grew.  I felt the veins on my forehead swelling.

“Fool, miserable dauber, unfortunate schoolboy, in love with colours!  Human beings pass before you, and you see only their froglike eyes.  How did your tongue turn to say such a thing ?  Oh, if you only looked even once into the human soul!  What treasures of tenderness, love, humble faith, holy humility, you would have discovered there!  And to you, bold man, it would have seemed as if you entered a temple—­a bright, illuminated temple.  But it is said of people like you—­’do not cast your pearls before swine.’”

The artist was silent, crushed by my angry and unrestrained speech.  Finally he sighed and said: 

“Forgive me, old man; I am talking nonsense, of course, but I am so unfortunate and so lonely.  Of course, my dear old man, it is all true about the divine spark and about beauty, but a polished boot is also beautiful.  I cannot, I cannot!  Just think of it!  How can a man have such moustaches as he has ?  And yet he is complaining that the left moustache is shorter!”

He laughed like a child, and, heaving a sigh, added: 

“I’ll make another attempt.  I will paint the lady.  There is really something good in her.  Although she is after all—­a cow.”

He laughed again, and, fearing to brush away with his sleeve the drawing on the slate, he cautiously placed it in the corner.

Here I did that which my duty compelled me to do.  Seizing the slate, I smashed it to pieces with a powerful blow.  I thought that the artist would rush upon me furiously, but he did not.  To his weak mind my act seemed so blasphemous, so supernaturally horrible, that his deathlike lips could not utter a word.

“What have you done?” he asked at last in a low voice.  “You have broken it?”

And raising my hand I replied solemnly: 

“Foolish youth, I have done that which I would have done to my heart if it wanted to jest and mock me!  Unfortunate youth, can you not see that your art has long been mocking you, that from that slate of yours the devil himself was making hideous faces at you?”

“Yes.  The devil!”

“Being far from your wonderful art, I did not understand you at first, nor your longing, your horror of aimlessness.  But when I entered your cell to-day and noticed you at your ruinous occupation, I said to myself:  It is better that he should not create at all than to create in this manner.  Listen to me.”

I then revealed for the first time to this youth the sacred formula of the iron grate, which, dividing the infinite into squares, thereby subjects it to itself.  K. listened to my words with emotion, looking with the horror of an ignorant man at the figures which must have seemed to him to be cabalistic, but which were nothing else than the ordinary figures used in mathematics.

“I am your slave, old man,” he said at last, kissing my hand with his cold lips.

“No, you will be my favourite pupil, my son.  I bless you.”

And it seemed to me that the artist was saved.  True, he regarded me with great joy, which could easily be explained by the extreme respect with which I inspired him, and he painted the portrait of the Warden’s wife with such zeal and enthusiasm that the esteemed lady was sincerely moved.  And, strange to say, the artist succeeded in making so strangely beautiful the features of this woman, who was stout and no longer young, that the Warden, long accustomed to the face of his wife, was greatly delighted by its new expression.  Thus everything went on smoothly, when suddenly this catastrophe occurred, the entire horror of which I alone knew.

Not desiring to call forth any unnecessary disputes, I concealed from the Warden the fact that on the eve of his death the artist had thrown a letter into my cell, which I noticed only in the morning.  I did not preserve the note, nor do I remember all that the unfortunate youth told me in his farewell message; I think it was a letter of thanks for my effort to save him.  He wrote that he regretted sincerely that his failing strength did not permit him to avail himself of my instructions.  But one phrase impressed itself deeply in my memory, and you will understand the reason for it when I repeat it in all its terrifying simplicity.

“I am going away from your prison,” thus read the phrase.

And he really did go away.  Here are the walls, here is the little window in the door, here is our prison, but he is not there; he has gone away.  Consequently I, too, could go away.  Instead of having wasted dozens of years on a titanic struggle, instead of being tormented by the throes of despair, instead of growing enfeebled by horror in the face of unsolved mysteries, of striving to subject the world to my mind and my will, I could have climbed the table and—­one instant of pain—­I would be free; I would be triumphant over the lock and the walls, over truth and falsehood, over joys and sufferings.  I will not say that I had not thought of suicide before as a means of escaping from our prison, but now for the first time it appeared before me in all its attractiveness.  In a fit of base faint-heartedness, which I shall not conceal from my reader, even as I do not conceal from him my good qualities; perhaps even in a fit of temporary insanity I momentarily forgot all I knew about our prison and its great purpose.  I forgot—­I am ashamed to say—­ even the great formula of the iron grate, which I conceived and mastered with such difficulty, and I prepared a noose made of my towel for the purpose of strangling myself.  But at the last moment, when all was ready, and it was but necessary to push away the taburet, I asked myself, with my habit of reasoning which did not forsake me even at that time:  But where am I going?  The answer was:  I am going to death.  But what is death?  And the answer was:  I do not know.

These brief reflections were enough for me to come to myself, and with a bitter laugh at my cowardice I removed the fatal noose from my neck.  Just as I had been ready to sob for grief a minute before, so now I laughed—­I laughed like a madman, realising that another trap, placed before me by derisive fate, had so brilliantly been evaded by me.  Oh, how many traps there are in the life of man!  Like a cunning fisherman, fate catches him now with the alluring bait of some truth, now with the hairy little worm of dark falsehood, now with the phantom of life, now with the phantom of death.

My dear young man, my fascinating fool, my charming silly fellow—­who told you that our prison ends here, that from one prison you did not fall into another prison, from which it will hardly be possible for you to run away?  You were too hasty, my friend, you forgot to ask me something else—­I would have told it to you.  I would have told you that omnipotent law reigns over that which you call non-existence and death just as it reigns over that which you call life and existence.  Only the fools, dying, believe that they have made an end of themselves —­they have ended but one form of themselves, in order to assume another form immediately.

Thus I reflected, laughing at the foolish suicide, the ridiculous destroyer of the fetters of eternity.  And this is what I said addressing myself to my two silent roommates hanging motionlessly on the white wall of my cell: 

“I believe and confess that our prison is immortal.  What do you say to this, my friends?”

But they were silent.  And having burst into good-natured laughter—­ What quiet roommates I have!  I undressed slowly and gave myself to peaceful sleep.  In my dream I saw another majestic prison, and wonderful jailers with white wings on their backs, and the Chief Warden of the prison himself.  I do not remember whether there were any little windows in the doors or not, but I think there were.  I recall that something like an angel’s eye was fixed upon me with tender attention and love.  My indulgent reader will, of course, guess that I am jesting.  I did not dream at all.  I am not in the habit of dreaming.

Without hoping that the Warden, occupied with pressing official affairs, would understand me thoroughly and appreciate my idea concerning the impossibility of escaping from our prison, I confined myself, in my report, to an indication of several ways in which suicides could be averted.  With magnanimous shortsightedness peculiar to busy and trusting people, the Warden failed to notice the weak points of my project and clasped my hand warmly, expressing to me his gratitude in the name of our entire prison.

On that day I had the honour, for the first time, to drink a glass of tea at the home of the Warden, in the presence of his kind wife and charming children, who called me “Grandpa.”  Tears of emotion which gathered in my eyes could but faintly express the feelings that came over me.

At the request of the Warden’s wife, who took a deep interest in me, I related in detail the story of the tragic murders which led me so unexpectedly and so terribly to the prison.  I could not find expressions strong enough—­there are no expressions strong enough in the human language—­to brand adequately the unknown criminal, who not only murdered three helpless people, but who mocked them brutally in a fit of blind and savage rage.

As the investigation and the autopsy showed, the murderer dealt the last blows after the people had been dead.  It is very possible, however—­even murderers should be given their due—­that the man, intoxicated by the sight of blood, ceased to be a human being and became a beast, the son of chaos, the child of dark and terrible desires.  It was characteristic that the murderer, after having committed the crime, drank wine and ate biscuits—­some of these were left on the table together with the marks of his blood-stained fingers.  But there was something so horrible that my mind could neither understand nor explain:  the murderer, after lighting a cigar himself, apparently moved by a feeling of strange kindness, put a lighted cigar between the closed teeth of my father.

I had not recalled these details in many years.  They had almost been erased by the hand of time, and now while relating them to my shocked listeners, who would not believe that such horrors were possible, I felt my face turning pale and my hair quivering on my head.  In an outburst of grief and anger I rose from my armchair, and straightening myself to my full height, I exclaimed: 

“Justice on earth is often powerless, but I implore heavenly justice, I implore the justice of life which never forgives, I implore all the higher laws under whose authority man lives.  May the guilty one not escape his deserved punishment!  His punishment!”

Moved by my sobs, my listeners there and then expressed their zeal and readiness to work for my liberation, and thus at least partly redeem the injustice heaped upon me.  I apologised and returned to my cell.

Evidently my old organism cannot bear such agitation any longer; besides, it is hard even for a strong man to picture in his imagination certain images without risking the loss of his reason.  Only in this way can I explain the strange hallucination which appeared before my fatigued eyes in the solitude of my cell.  As though benumbed I gazed aimlessly at the tightly closed door, when suddenly it seemed to me that some one was standing behind me.  I had felt this deceptive sensation before, so I did not turn around for some time.  But when I turned around at last I saw—­in the distance, between the crucifix and my portrait, about a quarter of a yard above the floor—­the body of my father, as though hanging in the air.  It is hard for me to give the details, for twilight had long set in, but I can say with certainty that it was the image of a corpse, and not of a living being, although a cigar was smoking in its mouth.  To be more exact, there was no smoke from the cigar, but a faintly reddish light was seen.  It is characteristic that I did not sense the odour of tobacco either at that time or later—­I had long given up smoking.  Here—­I must confess my weakness, but the illusion was striking—­I commenced to speak to the hallucination.  Advancing as closely as possible—­the body did not retreat as I approached, but remained perfectly motionless—­I said to the ghost: 

“I thank you, father.  You know how your son is suffering, and you have come—­you have come to testify to my innocence.  I thank you, father.  Give me your hand, and with a firm filial hand-clasp I will respond to your unexpected visit.  Don’t you want to?  Let me have your hand.  Give me your hand, or I will call you a liar!”

I stretched out my hand, but of course the hallucination did not deem it worth while to respond, and I was forever deprived of the opportunity of feeling the touch of a ghost.  The cry which I uttered and which so upset my friend, the jailer, creating some confusion in the prison, was called forth by the sudden disappearance of the phantom—­it was so sudden that the space in the place where the corpse had been seemed to me more terrible than the corpse itself.

Such is the power of human imagination when, excited, it creates phantoms and visions, peopling the bottomless and ever silent emptiness with them.  It is sad to admit that there are people, however, who believe in ghosts and build upon this belief nonsensical theories about certain relations between the world of the living and the enigmatic land inhabited by the dead.  I understand that the human ear and eye can be deceived—­but how can the great and lucid human mind fall into such coarse and ridiculous deception?

I asked the jailer: 

“I feel a strange sensation, as though there were the odour of cigar smoke in my cell.  Don’t you smell it?”

The jailer sniffed the air conscientiously and replied: 

“No I don’t.  You only imagined it.”

If you need any confirmation, here is a splendid proof that all I had seen, if it existed at all, existed only in the net of my eye.