Page:More Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/240

 slumber. It seemed to him as if he and the pain were shut up together somehow in a narrow and deep black sack, and were getting deeper and deeper into it and couldn't get out. And this horrible state of affairs was accompanied with great personal suffering. And he was afraid, and wanted to break out somewhere and struggled, and wanted help. And quite suddenly he burst out of the sack and fell somewhere, and awoke. Gerasim was still sitting at his feet on the bed, brooding quietly and patiently. There he was lying with the thin, stockinged feet of his master raised upon his shoulders; the light was still there with the shade upon it, and there, too, was the same unceasing pain.

"Go away, Gerasim," he whispered.

"It doesn't matter, I'll sit a bit longer."

"No, go away."

He removed his feet, lay with his hand on his side, and felt very sorry for himself. He continued to lie like this until Gerasim had gone into the other room, and then he was unable to contain himself, and wept like a child. He wept because of his helplessness, because of his frightful loneliness, because of the cruelty of people, because of the cruelty of God, because of the absence of God.

"Why hast Thou done all this? Why hast Thou brought me hither ? Why, oh why, dost Thou torture me so terribly?"

He did not expect an answer, and he wept because there was no answer, and couldn't be an answer. The pain rose up again, but he did not move, he did not call. He said to himself: "Very well, then,