Lehal Library

During August his best friend fell ill of a fatal disease diagnosed as typhus. On the night of the friend's death crisis, Kazhinski was suddenly awakened out of his sleep by a noise that sounded like a silver spoon striking a glass. In vain he looked in his room for what might have caused this sound. The next afternoon he learned his friend had died during the night. Arriving at his friend's house to pay his respects he noticed a glass with a silver spoon in it on the table next to the bed in which his friend had died and on which the corpse was laid out. Seeing him studying those objects, the dead man's mother burst anew into tears. She explained that she had been about to give her son his medicine. But at the very moment she put the spoon to his lips he had died -- and she had dropped the spoon back into the empty glass. When the mother demonstrated just how she had done this, Kazhinski heard the exact sound that had awakened him at the very moment his friend had died -- even though their mutual homes were a mile apart. Kazhinski was very moved -- but excited, too. How was it possible that the tone had communicated to him across such a distance and awakened him from sleep? Here we now encounter one of those small things which result in big ones, in this case a very big one.