Love, Faith and Hope

by Leonid Andreyev

　　According to his passport, he was called Max Z. But as it wasstated in the same passport that he had no special peculiaritiesabout his features, I prefer to call him Mr. N+1. He represented along line of young men who possess wavy, dishevelled locks, straight,bold, and open looks, well-formed and strong bodies, and very largeand powerful hearts.

　　All these youths have loved and perpetuated their love. Some ofthem have succeeded in engraving it on the tablets of history, likeHenry IV; others, like Petrarch, have made literary preserves of it;some have availed themselves for that purpose of the newspapers,wherein the happenings of the day are recorded, and where theyfigured among those who had strangled themselves, shot themselves, orwho had been shot by others; still others, the happiest and mostmodest of all, perpetuated their love by entering it in the birthrecords--by creating posterity.

　　The love of N+1 was as strong as death, as a certain writer put it;as strong as life, he thought.

　　Max was firmly convinced that he was the first to have discoveredthe method of loving so intensely, so unrestrainedly, so passionately,and he regarded with contempt all who had loved before him. Stillmore, he was convinced that even after him no one would love as hedid, and he felt sorry that with his death the secret of true lovewould be lost to mankind. But, being a modest young man, he attributedpart of his achievement to her--to his beloved. Not that she wasperfection itself, but she came very close to it, as close as anideal can come to reality.

　　There were prettier women than she, there were wiser women, but wasthere ever a better woman? Did there ever exist a woman on whoseface was so clearly and distinctly written that she alone was worthyof love--of infinite, pure, and devoted love? Max knew that therenever were, and that there never would be such women. In thisrespect, he had no special peculiarities, just as Adam did not havethem, just as you, my reader, do not have them. Beginning withGrandmother Eve and ending with the woman upon whom your eyes weredirected--before you read these lines--the same inscription is to beclearly and distinctly read on the face of every woman at a certaintime. The difference is only in the quality of the ink.

　　A very nasty day set in--it was Monday or Tuesday--when Max noticedwith a feeling of great terror that the inscription upon the dearface was fading. Max rubbed his eyes, looked first from a distance,then from all sides; but the fact was undeniable--the inscription wasfading. Soon the last letter also disappeared--the face was whitelike the recently whitewashed wall of a new house. But he wasconvinced that the inscription had disappeared not of itself, butthat some one had wiped it off. Who?

　　Max went to his friend, John N. He knew and he felt sure that sucha true, disinterested, and honest friend there never was and neverwould be. And in this respect, too, as you see, Max had no specialpeculiarities. He went to his friend for the purpose of taking hisadvice concerning the mysterious disappearance of the inscription,and found John N. exactly at the moment when he was wiping away thatinscription by his kisses. It was then that the records of the localoccurrences were enriched by another unfortunate incident, entitled"An Attempt at Suicide."

　　. . . . . . . .It is said that death always comes in due time. Evidently, thattime had not yet arrived for Max, for he remained alive--that is, heate, drank, walked, borrowed money and did not return it, andaltogether he showed by a series of psycho-physiological acts that hewas a living being, possessing a stomach, a will, and a mind--but hissoul was dead, or, to be more exact, it was absorbed in lethargicsleep. The sound of human speech reached his ears, his eyes sawtears and laughter, but all that did not stir a single echo, a singleemotion in his soul. I do not know what space of time had elapsed.It may have been one year, and it may have been ten years, for thelength of such intermissions in life depends on how quickly the actorsucceeds in changing his costume.

　　One beautiful day--it was Wednesday or Thursday--Max awakenedcompletely. A careful and guarded liquidation of his spiritualproperty made it clear that a fair piece of Max's soul, the partwhich contained his love for woman and for his friends, was dead,like a paralysis-stricken hand or foot. But what remained was,nevertheless, enough for life. That was love for and faith inmankind. Then Max, having renounced personal happiness, started towork for the happiness of others.

　　That was a new phase--he believed.

　　All the evil that is tormenting the world seemed to him to beconcentrated in a "red flower," in one red flower. It was butnecessary to tear it down, and the incessant, heart-rending cries andmoans which rise to the indifferent sky from all points of the earth,like its natural breathing, would be silenced. The evil of theworld, he believed, lay in the evil will and in the madness of thepeople. They themselves were to blame for being unhappy, and theycould be happy if they wished. This seemed so clear and simple thatMax was dumfounded in his amazement at human stupidity. Humanityreminded him of a crowd huddled together in a spacious temple andpanic-stricken at the cry of "Fire!"

　　Instead of passing calmly through the wide doors and savingthemselves, the maddened people, with the cruelty of frenzied beasts,cry and roar, crush one another and perish--not from the fire (for itis only imaginary), but from their own madness. It is enoughsometimes when one sensible, firm word is uttered to this crowd--thecrowd calms down and imminent death is thus averted. Let, then, ahundred calm, rational voices be raised to mankind, showing themwhere to escape and where the danger lies--and heaven will beestablished on earth, if not immediately, then at least within a verybrief time.

　　Max began to utter his word of wisdom. How he uttered it you willlearn later. The name of Max was mentioned in the newspapers,shouted in the market places, blessed and cursed; whole books werewritten on what Max N+1 had done, what he was doing, and what heintended to do. He appeared here and there and everywhere. He wasseen standing at the head of the crowd, commanding it; he was seen inchains and under the knife of the guillotine. In this respect Maxdid not have any special peculiarities, either. A preacher ofhumility and peace, a stern bearer of fire and sword, he was the sameMax--Max the believer. But while he was doing all this, time keptpassing on. His nerves were shattered; his wavy locks became thinand his head began to look like that of Elijah the Prophet; here andthere he felt a piercing pain....

　　The earth continued to turn light-mindedly around the sun, nowcoming nearer to it, now retreating coquettishly, and giving theimpression that it fixed all its attention upon its household friend,the moon; the days were replaced by other days, and the dark nightsby other dark nights, with such pedantic German punctuality andcorrectness that all the artistic natures were compelled to move overto the far north by degrees, where the devil himself would break hishead endeavouring to distinguish between day and night--when suddenlysomething happened to Max.

　　Somehow it happened that Max became misunderstood. He had calmedthe crowd by his words of wisdom many a time before and had savedthem from mutual destruction but now he was not understood. Theythought that it was he who had shouted "Fire!" With all theeloquence of which he was capable he assured them that he wasexerting all his efforts for their sake alone; that he himself neededabsolutely nothing, for he was alone, childless; that he was ready toforget the sad misunderstanding and serve them again with faith andtruth--but all in vain. They would not trust him. And in thisrespect Max did not have any special peculiarities, either. The sadincident ended for Max in a new intermission.

　　. . . . . . . .Max was alive, as was positively established by medical experts, whohad made a series of simple tests. Thus, when they pricked a needleinto his foot, he shook his foot and tried to remove the needle. Whenthey put food before him, he ate it, but he did not walk and did notask for any loans, which clearly testified to the complete decline ofhis energy. His soul was dead--as much as the soul can be dead whilethe body is alive. To Max all that he had loved and believed in wasdead. Impenetrable gloom wrapped his soul. There were neither feelingsin it, nor desires, nor thoughts. And there was not a more unhappy manin the world than Max, if he was a man at all.

　　But he was a man.

　　According to the calendar, it was Friday or Saturday, when Maxawakened as from a prolonged sleep. With the pleasant sensation ofan owner to whom his property has been restored which had wronglybeen taken from him, Max realised that he was once more in possessionof all his five senses.

　　His sight reported to him that he was all alone, in a place whichmight in justice be called either a room or a chimney. Each wall ofthe room was about a metre and a half wide and about ten metres high.The walls were straight, white, smooth, with no openings, except onethrough which food was brought to Max. An electric lamp was burningbrightly on the ceiling. It was burning all the time, so that Maxdid not know now what darkness was. There was no furniture in theroom, and Max had to lie on the stone floor. He lay curled together,as the narrowness of the room did not permit him to stretch himself.

　　His sense of hearing reported to him that until the day of his deathhe would not leave this room.... Having reported this, his hearingsank into inactivity, for not the slightest sound came from without,except the sounds which Max himself produced, tossing about, orshouting until he was hoarse, until he lost his voice.

　　Max looked into himself. In contrast to the outward light whichnever went out he saw within himself impenetrable, heavy, andmotionless darkness. In that darkness his love and faith were buried.

　　Max did not know whether time was moving or whether it stoodmotionless. The same even, white light poured down on him--the samesilence and quiet. Only by the beating of his heart Max could judgethat Chronos had not left his chariot. His body was aching ever morefrom the unnatural position in which it lay, and the constant lightand silence were growing ever more tormenting. How happy are theyfor whom night exists, near whom people are shouting, making noise,beating drums; who may sit on a chair, with their feet hanging down,or lie with their feet outstretched, placing the head in a corner andcovering it with the hands in order to create the illusion of darkness.

　　Max made an effort to recall and to picture to himself what there isin life; human faces, voices, the stars.... He knew that his eyeswould never in life see that again. He knew it, and yet he lived.He could have destroyed himself, for there is no position in which aman can not do that, but instead Max worried about his health, tryingto eat, although he had no appetite, solving mathematical problems tooccupy his mind so as not to lose his reason. He struggled againstdeath as if it were not his deliverer, but his enemy; and as if lifewere to him not the worst of infernal tortures--but love, faith, andhappiness. Gloom in the Past, the grave in the Future, and infernaltortures in the Present--and yet he lived. Tell me, John N., wheredid he get the strength for that?

　　He hoped.