Page:Gorky - Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi.djvu/53

 he behaved towards him rather strangely, almost like a superior. I have also mislaid my notes somewhere, and cannot find them; someone in Russia must have got them. I watched Tolstoi very attentively, because I was looking for—I am still looking for, and will until my death—a man with an active and a living faith. And also because once Anton Tchekhov, speaking of our lack of culture, complained:

"Goethe's words were all recorded, but Tolstoi's thoughts are being lost in the air. That, my dear fellow, is intolerably Russian. After his death they will bestir themselves, will begin to write reminiscences, and will lie."

But to return to Shestov. "'It is impossible,' he says, 'to live looking at horrible ghosts,' but how does he know whether it's horrible or not? If he knew, if he saw ghosts, he would not write this nonsense, but would do something serious, what Buddha did all his life."

Someone remarked that Shestov was a Jew.

"Hardly," said Leo Nicolayevitch doubtfully.

"No, he is not like a Jew; there are no disbelieving Jews, you can't name one. . . . no."

It seemed sometimes as though this old sorcerer were playing with Death, coquetting with her, trying somehow to deceive her, saying: "I am not afraid of thee, I love thee, I long for thee."

And at the same time peering at Death with his keen little eyes: "What art thou like? What