The Christmas Doll

He tossed in his bed for the third or fourth time without opening his eyes; but this time he quietly threw off his covers and went at once to the window, and without turning on the light in the room he stood there, drawing his burning breaths, pressing his forehead to the glass as though he felt a burning heat in it. And his eyes were nailed to the spot where the moon cast its pale beams on the face of the sea, so that they danced — and his thoughts danced, and his fancies danced with them.

It is the night of the feast, and yet he takes to his bed early, as he is accustomed to every evening; but tonight he begs for sleep and it does not answer him; he tries to forget himself and cannot.

What foolishness... can any creature on earth forget himself, even for one brief moment? And how should any man, whatever sort of person he may be, forget himself at the feasts, when the feasts themselves remind him?!

Some doctors are deluded, beyond a doubt — otherwise they would never have laid down this silly rule without taking the trouble to test it.

His eyes flashed; then he laughed a laugh that held mockery and vexation. All day long he had been downcast and scattered of mind, unable to settle; and yet a calm had lain over his spirit very like the calm of children after a long, insistent fit of weeping. The neighborhood clock struck ten; he started, drew back to turn on the light, dressed hurriedly, and went out of the house — his going out for no reason, on no drawn plan, without even putting on the overcoat that would have shielded him from the cold of this night.

By then the sky had begun to send down a drizzle of rain; the lights still shone from the windows of the crowded buildings; and the people walked with faces overflowing with cheer, as though their hearts were empty of sorrows, most of them laden down with charming gifts and wonderful toys.

Toys!! What a captivating sight.

And before one of the famous toy shops he stopped, staring through the glass at a beautiful doll with blue eyes and long lashes and a hat with embroidered edges.

An hour passed, or part of an hour, without a single soul taking notice of his presence before that well-stocked shop — indeed, without his quite knowing that he had spent all that long time absent of mind, lost of gaze.

For he had gone back in memory to the feasts of years past, and found in none of them any stamp to set it apart from the other days except the stamp of sorrow that marked it. His mother had died a little while after his birth — on the third day of the New Year... He halted at this thought, panting; for it had often turned in his mind that the star of ill omen which clung to him, and which came down upon the house the day he was born — that that star alone had killed the young mother; and that it was that same star that made his father lose in his trade for the first time since he had gone into trade, in that very year in which he first saw the light.

It was he, too, who brought ruin down upon his uncle from the time he lived with him and settled in his house — otherwise his father would not have recovered his position, after a hard pinch of living, only once he had left the house; nor would his uncle have gone on wrestling with misery until the boy left his home for school.

And his wife! That innocent woman — what had she done, that he should make her a partner in his life! Beyond a doubt he had dashed her sweet dreams and destroyed the dearest hope she cherished and leaped with happiness over; he had wronged her from the moment he loved her — and what a wrong.

He loved her truly, and she loved him in return; he painted life at his side as a bliss many a woman would envy her, and she came to him proud and radiant. And it was only a matter of months before she was wrestling with his money troubles alongside him, making ready to ward off the specter of want. In vain she tried to economize, for economy no longer availed anything; in vain she tried to take from this hand to pay that, for she lay under a debt that had no beginning and no end. And yet, in spite of it all, she felt a kind of hidden happiness, with its own taste and its own color, that drove her ever onward to struggle — indeed, to take delight in that struggle.

But he — he could not bear to see her

suffer for his sake, or strive along with him; his dignity — or, more truly, his pride — would rise up in him, and he would meet her with a face other than the one she had grown to love. He was nervous of temper, taut of nerves, meeting small things and great with fault-finding and criticism, flaring up at any motion that beloved wife made or any word she spoke — until, when life grew too narrow for her, or she for it, she came to him asking that they part. And he did — after he had had by her a beautiful little daughter...

A daughter... what a beloved word, that gladdens his heart and sends the blood leaping to his face. And oh, God — at times he feels his longing come over him like a flood, so that he cannot rest, and it broods over his face for days on end; and at times it seems to him that he could go to her, ask the first one's forgiveness in repentance, and clasp the second to his breast to feel the bliss of life; and he is certain that the first — molded as she is of goodness — would pardon him, and that the second — his own daughter — would be driven toward him by the call of blood.

But no... he holds her too dear to give her over to misery. Let the two of them stay far from him, untouched by his ill luck; let his presence not spoil life for them. Let them stay — what does it matter to him if he remains all his life deprived of them, aching to live in their shelter? Let them stay...

But one single wish kept haunting his imagination, and his eyes kept striking sparks of a will that was no will of his; and with the lightness of a merry bird he entered the shop to buy one of the large dolls. And when the clock struck twelve exactly, he was closing the shutter of the window — the window of her house — upon the doll from outside, after his tearful eyes had drunk their fill of the sight of the two of them. And he slipped away in haste...