“Silence,” which was published in 1900, and is therefore one of our author’s earliest stories, is a sketch whose iterant impressionism is felt in every line.
SILENCE
By Leonid Andreev
I
It was a moonlight night in May, and the nightingales were singing, when the wife of Father Ignatius entered his chamber. Her countenance expressed suffering, and the little lamp she held in her hand trembled. Approaching her husband, she touched his shoulder, and managed to say between her sobs:
“Father, let us go to Verochka!”
Without turning his head, Father Ignatius glanced severely at his wife over the rims of his spectacles, and looked long and intently, till she waved her unoccupied hand and dropped on a low divan.
“That one toward the other should be so pitiless!” she pronounced slowly, with emphasis on the final syllables, and her good plump face was distorted with a grimace of pain and exasperation, as if thus she would express what stern people they were—her husband and daughter.
Father Ignatius smiled and arose. Closing his book, he took off his spectacles, put them in the case, and meditated. His long black beard, inwoven with silver threads, lay dignified on his breast, and slowly heaved at every deep breath.
“Well, let us go,” said he.