diff options
Diffstat (limited to '6722-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 6722-h/6722-h.htm | 5562 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6722-h/images/Andreyev.jpg | bin | 0 -> 116239 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 6722-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 358824 bytes |
3 files changed, 5562 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/6722-h/6722-h.htm b/6722-h/6722-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fb2d4fe --- /dev/null +++ b/6722-h/6722-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5562 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Seven who were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 175%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} +h3 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.letter {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +p.center {text-align: center; + text-indent: 0em; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.right {text-align: right; + margin-right: 10%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; } + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Seven who were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Seven who were Hanged + +Author: Leonid Andreyev + +Release Date: June 1, 2009 [EBook #6722] +Last Updated: September 15, 2019 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED *** + + + + +Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger + + + + + + +</pre> + +<div class="fig" style="width:60%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="cover " /><br/><br/> +</div> + +<h1>The Seven who were Hanged</h1> + + <h4> + A STORY + </h4> + +<h2>by Leonid Andreyev</h2> + + <h4> + Authorized Translation From The Russian By Herman Bernstein. + </h4> + +<hr /> + +<h3>Contents</h3> + +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"> + +<tr> +<td></td><td> <a href="#chap01">FOREWORD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td></td><td> <a href="#chap02">INTRODUCTION</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td></td><td> <a href="#chap03">THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER I</td><td> <a href="#chap04">AT ONE O’CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY!</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER II</td><td> <a href="#chap05">CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER III</td><td> <a href="#chap06">WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER IV</td><td> <a href="#chap07">WE COME FROM ORYOL</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER V</td><td> <a href="#chap08">KISS—AND SAY NOTHING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VI</td><td> <a href="#chap09">THE HOURS ARE RUSHING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VII</td><td> <a href="#chap10">THERE IS NO DEATH</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER VIII</td><td> <a href="#chap11">THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER IX</td><td> <a href="#chap12">DREADFUL SOLITUDE</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER X</td><td> <a href="#chap13">THE WALLS ARE FALLING</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XI</td><td> <a href="#chap14">ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td>CHAPTER XII</td><td> <a href="#chap15">THEY ARE HANGED</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<hr /> + +<div class="fig" style="width:40%;"> +<img src="images/Andreyev.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="Andreyev" /><br/><br/> +</div> + +<h5><b>Leonid Andreyev</b></h5> + +<p class="center"> +DEDICATION<br/> +To Count Leo N. Tolstoy<br/> +This Book is Dedicated<br/> +by Leonid Andreyev<br/><br/> +The Translation of this Story<br/> +Is Also Respectfully Inscribed to<br/> +Count Leo N. Tolstoy<br/> +by Herman Bernstein +</p> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap01"></a>FOREWORD</h3> + +<p> +Leonid Andreyev, who was born in Oryol, in 1871, is the most popular, and next +to Tolstoy, the most gifted writer in Russia to-day. Andreyev has written many +important stories and dramas, the best known among which are “Red +Laughter,” “Life of Man,” “To the Stars,” +“The Life of Vasily Fiveisky,” “Eliazar,” “Black +Masks,” and “The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged.” +</p> + +<p> +In “Red Laughter” he depicted the horrors of war as few men had +ever before done it. He dipped his pen into the blood of Russia and wrote the +tragedy of the Manchurian war. +</p> + +<p> +In his “Life of Man” Andreyev produced a great, imaginative +“morality” play which has been ranked by European critics with some +of the greatest dramatic masterpieces. +</p> + +<p> +The story of “The Seven Who Were Hanged” is thus far his most +important achievement. The keen psychological insight and the masterly +simplicity with which Andreyev has penetrated and depicted each of the +tragedies of the seven who were hanged place him in the same class as an artist +with Russia’s greatest masters of fiction, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev and +Tolstoy. +</p> + +<p> +I consider myself fortunate to be able to present to the English-reading public +this remarkable work, which has already produced a profound impression in +Europe and which, I believe, is destined for a long time to come to play an +important part in opening the eyes of the world to the horrors perpetrated in +Russia and to the violence and iniquity of the destruction of human life, +whatever the error or the crime. +</p> + +<p> +<i>New York.</i> +</p> + +<p class="right"> +HERMAN BERNSTEIN. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap02"></a>INTRODUCTION</h3> + +<h4> [Translation of the Foregoing Letter in Russian] </h4> <p> +I am very glad that “The Story of the Seven Who Were Hanged” will +be read in English. The misfortune of us all is that we know so little, even +nothing, about one another—neither about the soul, nor the life, the +sufferings, the habits, the inclinations, the aspirations of one another. +Literature, which I have the honor to serve, is dear to me just because the +noblest task it sets before itself is that of wiping out boundaries and +distances. +</p> + +<p> +As in a hard shell, every human being is enclosed in a cover of body, dress, +and life. Who is man? We may only conjecture. What constitutes his joy or his +sorrow? We may guess only by his acts, which are oft-times enigmatic; by his +laughter and by his tears, which are often entirely incomprehensible to us. And +if we, Russians, who live so closely together in constant misery, understand +one another so poorly that we mercilessly put to death those who should be +pitied or even rewarded, and reward those who should be punished by contempt +and anger—how much more difficult is it for you Americans, to understand +distant Russia? But then, it is just as difficult for us Russians to understand +distant America, of which we dream in our youth and over which we ponder so +deeply in our years of maturity. +</p> + +<p> +The Jewish massacres and famine; a Parliament and executions; pillage and the +greatest heroism; “The Black Hundred,” and Leo Tolstoy—what a +mixture of figures and conceptions, what a fruitful source for all kinds of +misunderstandings! The truth of life stands aghast in silence, and its brazen +falsehood is loudly shouting, uttering pressing, painful questions: “With +whom shall I sympathize? Whom shall I trust? Whom shall I love?” +</p> + +<p> +In the story of “The Seven Who Were Hanged” I attempted to give a +sincere and unprejudiced answer to some of these questions. +</p> + +<p> +That I have treated ruling and slaughtering Russia with restraint and mildness +may best be gathered from the fact that the Russian censor has permitted my +book to circulate. This is sufficient evidence when we recall how many books, +brochures and newspapers have found eternal rest in the peaceful shade of the +police stations, where they have risen to the patient sky in the smoke and +flame of bonfires. +</p> + +<p> +But I did not attempt to condemn the Government, the fame of whose wisdom and +virtues has already spread far beyond the boundaries of our unfortunate +fatherland. Modest and bashful far beyond all measure of her virtues, Russia +would sincerely wish to forego this honor, but unfortunately the free press of +America and Europe has not spared her modesty, and has given a sufficiently +clear picture of her glorious activities. Perhaps I am wrong in this: it is +possible that many honest people in America believe in the purity of the +Russian Government’s intentions—but this question is of such +importance that it requires a special treatment, for which it is necessary to +have both time and calm of soul. But there is no calm soul in Russia. +</p> + +<p> +My task was to point out the horror and the iniquity of capital punishment +under any circumstances. The horror of capital punishment is great when it +falls to the lot of courageous and honest people whose only guilt is their +excess of love and the sense of righteousness—in such instances, +conscience revolts. But the rope is still more horrible when it forms the noose +around the necks of weak and ignorant people. And however strange it may +appear, I look with a lesser grief and suffering upon the execution of the +revolutionists, such as Werner and Musya, than upon the strangling of ignorant +murderers, miserable in mind and heart, like Yanson and Tsiganok. Even the last +mad horror of inevitably approaching execution Werner can offset by his +enlightened mind and his iron will, and Musya, by her purity and her innocence. +*** +</p> + +<p> +But how are the weak and the sinful to face it if not in madness, with the most +violent shock to the very foundation of their souls? And these people, now that +the Government has steadied its hands through its experience with the +revolutionists, are being hanged throughout Russia—in some places one at +a time, in others, ten at once. Children at play come upon badly buried bodies, +and the crowds which gather look with horror upon the peasants’ boots +that are sticking out of the ground; prosecutors who have witnessed these +executions are becoming insane and are taken away to hospitals—while the +people are being hanged—being hanged. +</p> + +<p> +I am deeply grateful to you for the task you have undertaken in translating +this sad story. Knowing the sensitiveness of the American people, who at one +time sent across the ocean, steamers full of bread for famine-stricken Russia, +I am convinced that in this case our people in their misery and bitterness will +also find understanding and sympathy. And if my truthful story about seven of +the thousands who were hanged will help toward destroying at least one of the +barriers which separate one nation from another, one human being from another, +one soul from another soul, I shall consider myself happy. + +</p> <p class="right"> +Respectfully yours,<br/> +LEONID ANDREYEV. +</p> + +<hr /> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap03"></a>THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED</h3> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap04"></a>CHAPTER I<br/>AT ONE O’CLOCK, YOUR +EXCELLENCY!</h3> + +<p> +As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they feared to +arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with every possible +precaution that they informed him that a very serious attempt upon his life had +been planned. When they saw that he received the news calmly, even with a +smile, they gave him, also, the details. The attempt was to be made on the +following day at the time that he was to start out with his official report; +several men, terrorists, whose plans had already been betrayed by a +<i>provocateur</i>, and who were now under the vigilant surveillance of +detectives, were to meet at one o’clock in the afternoon in front of his +house, and, armed with bombs and revolvers, were to wait till he came out. +There the terrorists were to be trapped. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait!” muttered the Minister, perplexed. “How did they know +that I was to leave the house at one o’clock in the afternoon with my +report, when I myself learned of it only the day before yesterday?” +</p> + +<p> +The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug. +</p> + +<p> +“Exactly at one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency,” +he said. +</p> + +<p> +Half surprised, half commending the work of the police, who had managed +everything skilfully, the Minister shook his head, a morose smile upon his +thick, dark lips, and still smiling obediently, and not desiring to interfere +with the plans of the police, he hastily made ready, and went out to pass the +night in some one else’s hospitable palace. His wife and his two children +were also removed from the dangerous house, before which the bomb-throwers were +to gather upon the following day. +</p> + +<p> +While the lights were burning in the palace, and courteous, familiar faces were +bowing to him, smiling and expressing their concern, the dignitary experienced +a sensation of pleasant excitement—he felt as if he had already received, +or was soon to receive, some great and unexpected reward. But the people went +away, the lights were extinguished, and through the mirrors, the lace-like and +fantastic reflection of the electric lamps on the street, quivered across the +ceiling and over the walls. A stranger in the house, with its paintings, its +statues and its silence, the light—itself silent and +indefinite—awakened painful thoughts in him as to the vanity of bolts and +guards and walls. And then, in the dead of night, in the silence and solitude +of a strange bedroom, a sensation of unbearable fear swept over the dignitary. +</p> + +<p> +He had some kidney trouble, and whenever he grew strongly agitated, his face, +his hands and his feet became swollen. Now, rising like a mountain of bloated +flesh above the taut springs of the bed, he felt, with the anguish of a sick +man, his swollen face, which seemed to him to belong to some one else. +Unceasingly he kept thinking of the cruel fate which people were preparing for +him. He recalled, one after another, all the recent horrible instances of bombs +that had been thrown at men of even greater eminence than himself; he recalled +how the bombs had torn bodies to pieces, had spattered brains over dirty brick +walls, had knocked teeth from their roots. And influenced by these meditations, +it seemed to him that his own stout, sickly body, outspread on the bed, was +already experiencing the fiery shock of the explosion. He seemed to be able to +feel his arms being severed from the shoulders, his teeth knocked out, his +brains scattered into particles, his feet growing numb, lying quietly, their +toes upward, like those of a dead man. He stirred with an effort, breathed +loudly and coughed in order not to seem to himself to resemble a corpse in any +way. He encouraged himself with the live noise of the grating springs, of the +rustling blanket; and to assure himself that he was actually alive and not +dead, he uttered in a bass voice, loudly and abruptly, in the silence and +solitude of the bedroom: +</p> + +<p> +“<i>Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi!</i> (Good boys)!” +</p> + +<p> +He was praising the detectives, the police, and the soldiers—all those +who guarded his life, and who so opportunely and so cleverly had averted the +assassination. But even though he stirred, even though he praised his +protectors, even though he forced an unnatural smile, in order to express his +contempt for the foolish, unsuccessful terrorists, he nevertheless did not +believe in his safety, he was not sure that his life would not leave him +suddenly, at once. Death, which people had devised for him, and which was only +in their minds, in their intention, seemed to him to be already standing there +in the room. It seemed to him that Death would remain standing there, and would +not go away until those people had been captured, until the bombs had been +taken from them, until they had been placed in a strong prison. There Death was +standing in the corner, and would not go away—it could not go away, even +as an obedient sentinel stationed on guard by a superior’s will and +order. +</p> + +<p> +“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” this +phrase kept ringing, changing its tone continually: now it was cheerfully +mocking, now angry, now dull and obstinate. It sounded as if a hundred wound-up +gramophones had been placed in his room, and all of them, one after another, +were shouting with idiotic repetition the words they had been made to shout: +</p> + +<p> +“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly, this one o’clock in the afternoon to-morrow, which but a +short while ago was not in any way different from other hours, which was only a +quiet movement of the hand along the dial of his gold watch, assumed an ominous +finality, sprang out of the dial, began to live separately, stretched itself +into an enormously huge black pole which cut all life in two. It seemed as if +no other hours had existed before it and no other hours would exist after +it—as if this hour alone, insolent and presumptuous, had a right to a +certain peculiar existence. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what do you want?” asked the Minister angrily, muttering +between his teeth. +</p> + +<p> +The gramophone shouted: +</p> + +<p> +“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” and the +black pole smiled and bowed. Gnashing his teeth, the Minister rose in his bed +to a sitting posture, leaning his face on the palms of his hands—he +positively could not sleep on that dreadful night. +</p> + +<p> +Clasping his face in his swollen, perfumed palms, he pictured to himself with +horrifying clearness how on the following morning, not knowing anything of the +plot against his life, he would have risen, would have drunk his coffee, not +knowing anything, and then would have put on his coat in the hallway. And +neither he, nor the doorkeeper who would have handed him his fur coat, nor the +lackey who would have brought him the coffee, would have known that it was +utterly useless to drink coffee, and to put on the coat, since a few instants +later, everything—the fur coat and his body and the coffee within +it—would be destroyed by an explosion, would be seized by death. The +doorkeeper would have opened the glass door.... He, the amiable, kind, gentle +doorkeeper, with the blue, typical eyes of a soldier, and with medals across +his breast—he himself with his own hands would have opened the terrible +door, opened it because he knew nothing. Everybody would have smiled because +they did not know anything. +</p> + +<p> +“Oho!” he suddenly said aloud, and slowly removed his hands from +his face. Peering into the darkness, far ahead of him, with a fixed, strained +look, he outstretched his hand just as slowly, felt the button on the wall and +pressed it. Then he arose, and without putting on his slippers, walked in his +bare feet over the rug in the strange, unfamiliar bedroom, found the button of +another lamp upon the wall and pressed it. It became light and pleasant, and +only the disarranged bed with the blanket, which had slipped off to the floor, +spoke of the horror, not altogether past. +</p> + +<p> +In his night-clothes, with his beard disheveled by his restless movements, with +his angry eyes, the dignitary resembled any other angry old man who suffered +with insomnia and shortness of breath. It was as if the death which people were +preparing for him, had made him bare, had torn away from him the magnificence +and splendor which had surrounded him—and it was hard to believe that it +was he who had so much power, that his body was but an ordinary plain human +body that must have perished terribly in the flame and roar of a monstrous +explosion. Without dressing himself and not feeling the cold, he sat down in +the first armchair he found, stroking his disheveled beard, and fixed his eyes +in deep, calm thoughtfulness upon the unfamiliar plaster figures of the +ceiling. +</p> + +<p> +So that was the trouble! That was why he had trembled in fear and had become so +agitated! That was why Death seemed to stand in the corner and would not go +away, could not go away! +</p> + +<p> +“Fools!” he said emphatically, with contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“Fools!” he repeated more loudly, and turned his head slightly +toward the door that those to whom he was referring might hear it. He was +referring to those whom he had praised but a moment before, who in the excess +of their zeal had told him of the plot against his life. +</p> + +<p> +“Of course,” he thought deeply, an easy, convincing idea arising in +his mind. “Now that they have told me, I know, and feel terrified, but if +I had not been told, I would not have known anything and would have drunk my +coffee calmly. After that Death would have come—but then, am I so afraid +of Death? Here have I been suffering with kidney trouble, and I must surely die +from it some day, and yet I am not afraid—because I do not know anything. +And those fools told me: ‘At one o’clock in the afternoon, your +Excellency!’ and they thought I would be glad. But instead of that Death +stationed itself in the corner and would not go away. It would not go away +because it was my thought. It is not death that is terrible, but the knowledge +of it: it would be utterly impossible to live if a man could know exactly and +definitely the day and hour of his death. And the fools cautioned me: ‘At +one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!’” +</p> + +<p> +He began to feel light-hearted and cheerful, as if some one had told him that +he was immortal, that he would never die. And, feeling himself again strong and +wise amidst the herd of fools who had so stupidly and impudently broken into +the mystery of the future, he began to think of the bliss of ignorance, and his +thoughts were the painful thoughts of an old, sick man who had gone through +endless experience. It was not given to any living being—man or +beast—to know the day and hour of death. Here had he been ill not long +ago and the physicians told him that he must expect the end, that he should +make his final arrangements—but he had not believed them and he remained +alive. In his youth he had become entangled in an affair and had resolved to +end his life; he had even loaded the revolver, had written his letters, and had +fixed upon the hour for suicide—but before the very end he had suddenly +changed his mind. It would always be thus—at the very last moment +something would change, an unexpected accident would befall—no one could +tell when he would die. +</p> + +<p> +“At one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” those +kind asses had said to him, and although they had told him of it only that +death might be averted, the mere knowledge of its possibility at a certain hour +again filled him with horror. It was probable that some day he should be +assassinated, but it would not happen to-morrow—it would not happen +to-morrow—and he could sleep undisturbed, as if he were really immortal. +Fools—they did not know what a great law they had dislodged, what an +abyss they had opened, when they said in their idiotic kindness: “At one +o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, not at one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency, but no +one knows when. No one knows when! What?” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing,” answered Silence, “nothing.” +</p> + +<p> +“But you did say something.” +</p> + +<p> +“Nothing, nonsense. I say: to-morrow, at one o’clock in the +afternoon!” +</p> + +<p> +There was a sudden, acute pain in his heart—and he understood that he +would have neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that accursed black hour +standing out of the dial should have passed. Only the shadow of the knowledge +of something which no living being could know stood there in the corner, and +that was enough to darken the world and envelop him with the impenetrable gloom +of horror. The once disturbed fear of death diffused through his body, +penetrated into his bones. +</p> + +<p> +He no longer feared the murderers of the next day—they had vanished, they +had been forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and +incidents which surrounded his life. He now feared something sudden and +inevitable—an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some foolish thin little +vessel which might suddenly fail to withstand the pressure of the blood and +might burst like a tight glove upon swollen fingers. +</p> + +<p> +His short, thick neck seemed terrible to him. It became unbearable for him to +look upon his short, swollen fingers—to feel how short they were and how +they were filled with the moisture of death. And if before, when it was dark, +he had had to stir in order not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright, cold, +inimical, dreadful light he was so filled with horror that he could not move in +order to get a cigarette or to ring for some one. His nerves were giving way. +Each one of them seemed as if it were a bent wire, at the top of which there +was a small head with mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a convulsively gaping, +speechless mouth. He could not draw his breath. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust and cobwebs somewhere upon the +ceiling, an electric bell came to life. The small, metallic tongue, agitatedly, +in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing cap, became silent—and +again quivered in an unceasing, frightened din. His Excellency was ringing his +bell in his own room. +</p> + +<p> +People began to run. Here and there, in the shadows upon the walls, lamps +flared up—there were not enough of them to give light, but there were +enough to cast shadows. The shadows appeared everywhere; they rose in the +corners, they stretched across the ceiling; tremulously clinging to each and +every elevation, they covered the walls. And it was hard to understand where +all these innumerable, deformed silent shadows—voiceless souls of +voiceless objects—had been before. +</p> + +<p> +A deep, trembling voice said something loudly. Then the doctor was hastily +summoned by telephone; the dignitary was collapsing. The wife of his Excellency +was also called. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap05"></a>CHAPTER II<br/>CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED</h3> + +<p> +Everything befell as the police had foretold. Four terrorists, three men and a +woman, armed with bombs, infernal machines and revolvers, were seized at the +very entrance of the house, and another woman was later found and arrested in +the house where the conspiracy had been hatched. She was its mistress. At the +same time a great deal of dynamite and half finished bomb explosives were +seized. All those arrested were very young; the eldest of the men was +twenty-eight years old, the younger of the women was only nineteen. They were +tried in the same fortress in which they were imprisoned after the arrest; they +were tried swiftly and secretly, as was done during that unmerciful time. +</p> + +<p> +At the trial all of them were calm, but very serious and thoughtful. Their +contempt for the judges was so intense that none of them wished to emphasize +his daring by even a superfluous smile or by a feigned expression of +cheerfulness. Each was simply as calm as was necessary to hedge in his soul, +from curious, evil and inimical eyes, the great gloom that precedes death. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes they refused to answer questions; sometimes they answered, briefly, +simply and precisely, as though they were answering not the judge, but +statisticians, for the purpose of supplying information for particular special +tables. Three of them, one woman and two men, gave their real names, while two +others refused and thus remained unknown to the judges. +</p> + +<p> +They manifested for all that was going on at the trial a certain curiosity, +softened, as though through a haze, such as is peculiar to persons who are very +ill or are carried away by some great, all-absorbing idea. They glanced up +occasionally, caught some word in the air more interesting than the others, and +then resumed the thought from which their attention had been distracted. +</p> + +<p> +The man who was nearest to the judges called himself Sergey Golovin, the son of +a retired colonel, himself an ex-officer. He was still a very young, +light-haired, broad-shouldered man, so strong that neither the prison nor the +expectation of inevitable death could remove the color from his cheeks and the +expression of youthful, happy frankness from his blue eyes. He kept +energetically tugging at his bushy, small beard, to which he had not become +accustomed, and continually blinking, kept looking out of the window. +</p> + +<p> +It was toward the end of winter, when amidst the snowstorms and the gloomy, +frosty days, the approaching spring sent as a forerunner a clear, warm, sunny +day, or but an hour, yet so full of spring, so eagerly young and beaming that +sparrows on the streets lost their wits for joy, and people seemed almost as +intoxicated. And now the strange and beautiful sky could be seen through an +upper window which was dust-covered and unwashed since the last summer. At +first sight the sky seemed to be milky-gray—smoke-colored—but when +you looked longer the dark blue color began to penetrate through the shade, +grew into an ever deeper blue—ever brighter, ever more intense. And the +fact that it did not reveal itself all at once, but hid itself chastely in the +smoke of transparent clouds, made it as charming as the girl you love. And +Sergey Golovin looked at the sky, tugged at his beard, blinked now one eye, now +the other, with its long, curved lashes, earnestly pondering over something. +Once he began to move his fingers rapidly and thoughtlessly, knitted his brow +in some joy, but then he glanced about and his joy died out like a spark which +is stepped upon. Almost instantly an earthen, deathly blue, without first +changing into pallor, showed through the color of his cheeks. He clutched his +downy hair, tore their roots painfully with his fingers, whose tips had turned +white. But the joy of life and spring was stronger, and a few minutes later his +frank young face was again yearning toward the spring sky. +</p> + +<p> +The young, pale girl, known only by the name of Musya, was also looking in the +same direction, at the sky. She was younger than Golovin, but she seemed older +in her gravity and in the darkness of her open, proud eyes. Only her very thin, +slender neck, and her delicate girlish hands spoke of her youth; but in +addition there was that ineffable something, which is youth itself, and which +sounded so distinctly in her clear, melodious voice, tuned irreproachably like +a precious instrument, every simple word, every exclamation giving evidence of +its musical timbre. She was very pale, but it was not a deathly pallor, but +that peculiar warm whiteness of a person within whom, as it were, a great, +strong fire is burning, whose body glows transparently like fine Sèvres +porcelain. She sat almost motionless, and only at times she touched with an +imperceptible movement of her fingers the circular mark on the middle finger of +her right hand, the mark of a ring which had been recently removed. +</p> + +<p> +She gazed at the sky without caressing kindness or joyous +recollections—she looked at it simply because in all the filthy, official +hall the blue bit of sky was the most beautiful, the purest, the most truthful +object, and the only one that did not try to search hidden depths in her eyes. +</p> + +<p> +The judges pitied Sergey Golovin; her they despised. +</p> + +<p> +Her neighbor, known only by the name of Werner, sat also motionless, in a +somewhat affected pose, his hands folded between his knees. If a face may be +said to look like a false door, this unknown man closed his face like an iron +door and bolted it with an iron lock. He stared motionlessly at the dirty +wooden floor, and it was impossible to tell whether he was calm or whether he +was intensely agitated, whether he was thinking of something, or whether he was +listening to the testimony of the detectives as presented to the court. He was +not tall in stature. His features were refined and delicate. Tender and +handsome, so that he reminded you of a moonlit night in the South near the +seashore, where the cypress trees throw their dark shadows, he at the same time +gave the impression of tremendous, calm power, of invincible firmness, of cold +and audacious courage. The very politeness with which he gave brief and precise +answers seemed dangerous, on his lips, in his half bow. And if the prison garb +looked upon the others like the ridiculous costume of a buffoon, upon him it +was not noticeable, so foreign was it to his personality. And although the +other terrorists had been seized with bombs and infernal machines upon them, +and Werner had had but a black revolver, the judges for some reason regarded +him as the leader of the others and treated him with a certain deference, +although succinctly and in a business-like manner. +</p> + +<p> +The next man, Vasily Kashirin, was torn between a terrible, dominating fear of +death and a desperate desire to restrain the fear and not betray it to the +judges. From early morning, from the time they had been led into court, he had +been suffocating from an intolerable palpitation of his heart. Perspiration +came out in drops all along his forehead; his hands were also perspiring and +cold, and his cold, sweat-covered shirt clung to his body, interfering with the +freedom of his movements. With a supernatural effort of will-power he forced +his fingers not to tremble, his voice to be firm and distinct, his eyes to be +calm. He saw nothing about him; the voices came to him as through a mist, and +it was to this mist that he made his desperate efforts to answer firmly, to +answer loudly. But having answered, he immediately forgot question as well as +answer, and was again struggling with himself silently and terribly. Death was +disclosed in him so clearly that the judges avoided looking at him. It was hard +to define his age, as is the case with a corpse which has begun to decompose. +According to his passport, he was only twenty-three years old. Once or twice +Werner quietly touched his knee with his hand, and each time Kashirin spoke +shortly: +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind!” +</p> + +<p> +The most terrible sensation was when he was suddenly seized with an +insufferable desire to cry out, without words, the desperate cry of a beast. He +touched Werner quickly, and Werner, without lifting his eyes, said softly: +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, Vasya. It will soon be over.” +</p> + +<p> +And embracing them all with a motherly, anxious look, the fifth terrorist, +Tanya Kovalchuk, was faint with alarm. She had never had any children; she was +still young and red-cheeked, just as Sergey Golovin, but she seemed as a mother +to all of them: so full of anxiety, of boundless love were her looks, her +smiles, her sighs. She paid not the slightest attention to the trial, regarding +it as though it were something entirely irrelevant, and she listened only to +the manner in which the others were answering the questions, to hear whether +the voice was trembling, whether there was fear, whether it was necessary to +give water to any one. +</p> + +<p> +She could not look at Vasya in her anguish and only wrung her fingers silently. +At Musya and Werner she gazed proudly and respectfully, and she assumed a +serious and concentrated expression, and then tried to transfer her smile to +Sergey Golovin. +</p> + +<p> +“The dear boy is looking at the sky. Look, look, my darling!” she +thought about Golovin. +</p> + +<p> +“And Vasya! What is it? My God, my God! What am I to do with him? If I +should speak to him I might make it still worse. He might suddenly start to +cry.” +</p> + +<p> +So like a calm pond at dawn, reflecting every hastening, passing cloud, she +reflected upon her full, gentle, kind face every swift sensation, every thought +of the other four. She did not give a single thought to the fact that she, too, +was upon trial, that she, too, would be hanged; she was entirely indifferent to +it. It was in her house that the bombs and the dynamite had been discovered, +and, strange though it may seem, it was she who had met the police with +pistol-shots and had wounded one of the detectives in the head. +</p> + +<p> +The trial ended at about eight o’clock, when it had become dark. Before +Musya’s and Golovin’s eyes the sky, which had been turning ever +bluer, was gradually losing its tint, but it did not turn rosy, did not smile +softly as in summer evenings, but became muddy, gray, and suddenly grew cold, +wintry. Golovin heaved a sigh, stretched himself, glanced again twice at the +window, but the cold darkness of the night alone was there; then continuing to +tug at his short beard, he began to examine with childish curiosity the judges, +the soldiers with their muskets, and he smiled at Tanya Kovalchuk. When the sky +had darkened Musya calmly, without lowering her eyes to the ground, turned them +to the corner where a small cobweb was quivering from the imperceptible +radiations of the steam heat, and thus she remained until the sentence was +pronounced. +</p> + +<p> +After the verdict, having bidden good-by to their frock-coated lawyers, and +evading each other’s helplessly confused, pitying and guilty eyes, the +convicted terrorists crowded in the doorway for a moment and exchanged brief +words. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, Vasya. Everything will be over soon,” said Werner. +</p> + +<p> +“I am all right, brother,” Kashirin replied loudly, calmly and even +somewhat cheerfully. And indeed, his face had turned slightly rosy, and no +longer looked like that of a decomposing corpse. +</p> + +<p> +“The devil take them; they’ve hanged us,” Golovin cursed +quaintly. +</p> + +<p> +“That was to be expected,” replied Werner calmly. +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow the sentence will be pronounced in its final form and we shall +all be placed together,” said Tanya Kovalchuk consolingly. “Until +the execution we shall all be together.” +</p> + +<p> +Musya was silent. Then she resolutely moved forward. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap06"></a>CHAPTER III<br/>WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?</h3> + +<p> +Two weeks before the terrorists had been tried the same military district +court, with a different set of judges, had tried and condemned to death by +hanging Ivan Yanson, a peasant. +</p> + +<p> +Ivan Yanson was a workman for a well-to-do farmer, in no way different from +other workmen. He was an Esthonian by birth, from Vezenberg, and in the course +of several years, passing from one farm to another, he had come close to the +capital. He spoke Russian very poorly, and as his master was a Russian, by name +Lazarev, and as there were no Esthonians in the neighborhood, Yanson had +practically remained silent for almost two years. In general, he was apparently +not inclined to talk, and was silent not only with human beings, but even with +animals. He would water the horse in silence, harness it in silence, moving +about it, slowly and lazily, with short, irresolute steps, and when the horse, +annoyed by his manner, would begin to frolic, to become capricious, he would +beat it in silence with a heavy whip. He would beat it cruelly, with stolid, +angry persistency, and when this happened at a time when he was suffering from +the aftereffects of a carouse, he would work himself into a frenzy. At such +times the crack of the whip could be heard in the house, with the frightened, +painful pounding of the horse’s hoofs upon the board floor of the barn. +For beating the horse his master would beat Yanson, but then, finding that he +could not be reformed, paid no more attention to him. +</p> + +<p> +Once or twice a month Yanson became intoxicated, usually on those days when he +took his master to the large railroad station, where there was a refreshment +bar. After leaving his master at the station, he would drive off about half a +verst away, and there, stalling the sled and the horse in the snow on the side +of the road, he would wait until the train had gone. The sled would stand +sideways, almost overturned, the horse standing with widely spread legs up to +his belly in a snow-bank, from time to time lowering his head to lick the soft, +downy snow, while Yanson would recline in an awkward position in the sled as if +dozing away. The unfastened ear-lappets of his worn fur cap would hang down +like the ears of a setter, and the moist sweat would stand under his little +reddish nose. +</p> + +<p> +Soon he would return to the station, and would quickly become intoxicated. +</p> + +<p> +On his way back to the farm, the whole ten versts, he would drive at a fast +gallop. The little horse, driven to madness by the whip, would rear, as if +possessed by a demon; the sled would sway, almost overturn, striking against +poles, and Yanson, letting the reins go, would half sing, half exclaim abrupt, +meaningless phrases in Esthonian. But more often he would not sing, but with +his teeth gritted together in an onrush of unspeakable rage, suffering and +delight, he would drive silently on as though blind. He would not notice those +who passed him, he would not call to them to look out, he would not slacken his +mad pace, either at the turns of the road or on the long slopes of the mountain +roads. How it happened at such times that he crushed no one, how he himself was +never dashed to death in one of these mad rides, was inexplicable. +</p> + +<p> +He would have been driven from this place, as he had been driven from other +places, but he was cheap and other workmen were not better, and thus he +remained there two years. His life was uneventful. One day he received a +letter, written in Esthonian, but as he himself was illiterate, and as the +others did not understand Esthonian, the letter remained unread; and as if not +understanding that the letter might bring him tidings from his native home, he +flung it into the manure with a certain savage, grim indifference. At one time +Yanson tried to make love to the cook, but he was not successful, and was +rudely rejected and ridiculed. He was short in stature, his face was freckled, +and his small, sleepy eyes were somewhat of an indefinite color. Yanson took +his failure indifferently, and never again bothered the cook. +</p> + +<p> +But while Yanson spoke but little, he was listening to something all the time. +He heard the sounds of the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their heaps of +frozen manure resembling rows of small, snow-covered graves, the sounds of the +blue, tender distance, of the buzzing telegraph wires, and the conversation of +other people. What the fields and telegraph wires spoke to him he alone knew, +and the conversation of the people were disquieting, full of rumors about +murders and robberies and arson. And one night he heard in the neighboring +village the little church bell ringing faintly and helplessly, and the +crackling of the flames of a fire. Some vagabonds had plundered a rich farm, +had killed the master and his wife, and had set fire to the house. +</p> + +<p> +And on their farm, too, they lived in fear; the dogs were loose, not only at +night, but also during the day, and the master slept with a gun by his side. He +wished to give such a gun to Yanson, only it was an old one with one barrel. +But Yanson turned the gun about in his hand, shook his head and declined it. +His master did not understand the reason and scolded him, but the reason was +that Yanson had more faith in the power of his Finnish knife than in the rusty +gun. +</p> + +<p> +“It would kill me,” he said, looking at his master sleepily with +his glassy eyes, and the master waved his hand in despair. +</p> + +<p> +“You fool! Think of having to live with such workmen!” +</p> + +<p> +And this same Ivan Yanson, who distrusted a gun, one winter evening, when the +other workmen had been sent away to the station, committed a very complicated +attempt at robbery, murder and rape. He did it in a surprisingly simple manner. +He locked the cook in the kitchen, lazily, with the air of a man who is longing +to sleep, walked over to his master from behind and swiftly stabbed him several +times in the back with his knife. The master fell unconscious, and the mistress +began to run about, screaming, while Yanson, showing his teeth and brandishing +his knife, began to ransack the trunks and the chests of drawers. He found the +money he sought, and then, as if noticing the mistress for the first time, and +as though unexpectedly even to himself, he rushed upon her in order to violate +her. But as he had let his knife drop to the floor, the mistress proved +stronger than he, and not only did not allow him to harm her, but almost choked +him into unconsciousness. Then the master on the floor turned, the cook +thundered upon the door with the oven-fork, breaking it open, and Yanson ran +away into the fields. He was caught an hour later, kneeling down behind the +corner of the barn, striking one match after another, which would not ignite, +in an attempt to set the place on fire. +</p> + +<p> +A few days later the master died of blood poisoning, and Yanson, when his turn +among other robbers and murderers came, was tried and condemned to death. In +court he was the same as always; a little man, freckled, with sleepy, glassy +eyes. It seemed as if he did not understand in the least the meaning of what +was going on about him; he appeared to be entirely indifferent. He blinked his +white eyelashes, stupidly, without curiosity; examined the sombre, unfamiliar +courtroom, and picked his nose with his hard, shriveled, unbending finger. Only +those who had seen him on Sundays at church would have known that he had made +an attempt to adorn himself. He wore on his neck a knitted, muddy-red shawl, +and in places had dampened the hair of his head. Where the hair was wet it lay +dark and smooth, while on the other side it stuck up in light and sparse tufts, +like straws upon a hail-beaten, wasted meadow. +</p> + +<p> +When the sentence was pronounced—death by hanging—Yanson suddenly +became agitated. He reddened deeply and began to tie and untie the shawl about +his neck as though it were choking him. Then he waved his arms stupidly and +said, turning to the judge who had not read the sentence, and pointing with his +finger at the judge who read it: +</p> + +<p> +“He said that I should be hanged.” +</p> + +<p> +“Who do you mean?” asked the presiding judge, who had pronounced +the sentence in a deep, bass voice. Every one smiled; some tried to hide their +smiles behind their mustaches and their papers. Yanson pointed his index finger +at the presiding judge and answered angrily, looking at him askance: +</p> + +<p> +“You!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson again turned his eyes to the judge who had been silent, restraining a +smile, whom he felt to be a friend, a man who had nothing to do with the +sentence, and repeated: +</p> + +<p> +“He said I should be hanged. Why must I be hanged?” +</p> + +<p> +“Take the prisoner away.” +</p> + +<p> +But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily: +</p> + +<p> +“Why must I be hanged?” +</p> + +<p> +He looked so absurd, with his small, angry face, with his outstretched finger, +that even the soldier of the convoy, breaking the rule, said to him in an +undertone as he led him away from the courtroom: +</p> + +<p> +“You are a fool, young man!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why must I be hanged?” repeated Yanson stubbornly. +</p> + +<p> +“They’ll swing you up so quickly that you’ll have no time to +kick.” +</p> + +<p> +“Keep still!” cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could +not refrain from adding: +</p> + +<p> +“A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang +for that!” +</p> + +<p> +“They might pardon him,” said the first soldier, who began to feel +sorry for Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, yes! They’ll pardon people like him, will they? Well, +we’ve talked enough.” +</p> + +<p> +But Yanson had become silent again. +</p> + +<p> +He was again placed in the cell in which he had already sat for a month and to +which he had grown accustomed, just as he had become accustomed to everything: +to blows, to vodka, to the dismal, snow-covered fields, with their snow-heaps +resembling graves. And now he even began to feel cheerful when he saw his bed, +the familiar window with the grating, and when he was given something to +eat—he had not eaten anything since morning. He had an unpleasant +recollection of what had taken place in the court, but of that he could not +think—he was unable to recall it. And death by hanging he could not +picture to himself at all. +</p> + +<p> +Although Yanson had been condemned to death, there were many others similarly +sentenced, and he was not regarded as an important criminal. They spoke to him +accordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just as they would speak to +prisoners who were not to be executed. The warden, on learning of the verdict, +said to him: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my friend, they’ve hanged you!” +</p> + +<p> +“When are they going to hang me?” asked Yanson distrustfully. The +warden meditated a moment. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, you’ll have to wait—until they can get together a +whole party. It isn’t worth bothering for one man, especially for a man +like you. It is necessary to work up the right spirit.” +</p> + +<p> +“And when will that be?” persisted Yanson. He was not at all +offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone. He did not believe it, +but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to +revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible +moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, +becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems. +</p> + +<p> +“When? When?” cried the warden, a dull, morose old man, growing +angry. “It isn’t like hanging a dog, which you take behind the +barn—and it is done in no time. I suppose you would like to be hanged +like that, you fool!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be hanged,” and suddenly Yanson frowned +strangely. “He said that I should be hanged, but I don’t want +it.” +</p> + +<p> +And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet +gay and joyous laughter. It sounded like the cackling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The +warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow sternly. This strange +gayety of a man who was to be executed was an offence to the prison, as well as +to the very executioner; it made them appear absurd. And suddenly, for the +briefest instant, it appeared to the old warden, who had passed all his life in +the prison, and who looked upon its laws as the laws of nature, that the prison +and all the life within it was something like an insane asylum, in which he, +the warden, was the chief lunatic. +</p> + +<p> +“Pshaw! The devil take you!” and he spat aside. “Why are you +giggling here? This is no dramshop!” +</p> + +<p> +“And I don’t want to be hanged—ga-ga-ga!” laughed +Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +“Satan!” muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the +sign of the cross. +</p> + +<p> +This little man, with his small, wizened face—he resembled least of all +the devil—but there was that in his silly giggling which destroyed the +sanctity and the strength of the prison. If he laughed longer, it seemed to the +warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if +the warden himself might lead the prisoners to the gates, bowing and saying: +“Take a walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some of you would like to +go to the village?” +</p> + +<p> +“Satan!” +</p> + +<p> +But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly. +</p> + +<p> +“You had better look out!” said the warden, with an indefinite +threat, and he walked away, glancing back of him. +</p> + +<p> +Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout the evening. He repeated to himself, +“I shall not be hanged,” and it seemed to him so convincing, so +wise, so irrefutable, that it was unnecessary to feel uneasy. He had long +forgotten about his crime, only sometimes he regretted that he had not been +successful in attacking his master’s wife. But he soon forgot that, too. +</p> + +<p> +Every morning Yanson asked when he was to be hanged, and every morning the +warden answered him angrily: +</p> + +<p> +“Take your time, you devil! Wait!” and he would walk off quickly +before Yanson could begin to laugh. +</p> + +<p> +And from these monotonously repeated words, and from the fact that each day +came, passed and ended as every ordinary day had passed, Yanson became +convinced that there would be no execution. He began to lose all memory of the +trial, and would roll about all day long on his cot, vaguely and happily +dreaming about the white melancholy fields, with their snow-mounds, about the +refreshment bar at the railroad station, and about other things still more +vague and bright. He was well fed in the prison, and somehow he began to grow +stout rapidly and to assume airs. +</p> + +<p> +“Now she would have liked me,” he thought of his master’s +wife. “Now I am stout—not worse-looking than the master.” +</p> + +<p> +But he longed for a drink of vodka, to drink and to take a ride on horseback, +to ride fast, madly. +</p> + +<p> +When the terrorists were arrested the news of it reached the prison. And in +answer to Yanson’s usual question, the warden said eagerly and +unexpectedly: +</p> + +<p> +“It won’t be long now!” +</p> + +<p> +He looked at Yanson calmly with an air of importance and repeated: +</p> + +<p> +“It won’t be long now. I suppose in about a week.” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson turned pale, and as though falling asleep, so turbid was the look in his +glassy eyes, asked: +</p> + +<p> +“Are you joking?” +</p> + +<p> +“First you could not wait, and now you think I am joking. We are not +allowed to joke here. You like to joke, but we are not allowed to,” said +the warden with dignity as he went away. +</p> + +<p> +Toward evening of that day Yanson had already grown thinner. His skin, which +had stretched out and had become smooth for a time, was suddenly covered with a +multitude of small wrinkles, and in places it seemed even to hang down. His +eyes became sleepy, and all his motions were now so slow and languid as though +each turn of the head, each move of the fingers, each step of the foot were a +complicated and cumbersome undertaking which required very careful +deliberation. At night he lay on his cot, but did not close his eyes, and thus, +heavy with sleep, they remained open until morning. +</p> + +<p> +“Aha!” said the warden with satisfaction, seeing him on the +following day. “This is no dramshop for you, my dear!” +</p> + +<p> +With a feeling of pleasant gratification, like a scientist whose experiment had +proved successful again, he examined the condemned man closely and carefully +from head to foot. Now everything would go along as necessary. Satan was +disgraced, the sacredness of the prison and the execution was re-established, +and the old man inquired condescendingly, even with a feeling of sincere pity: +</p> + +<p> +“Do you want to meet somebody or not?” +</p> + +<p> +“What for?” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, to say good-by! Have you no mother, for instance, or a +brother?” +</p> + +<p> +“I must not be hanged,” said Yanson softly, and looked askance at +the warden. “I don’t want to be hanged.” +</p> + +<p> +The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence. +</p> + +<p> +Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer. +</p> + +<p> +The day had been so ordinary, the cloudy winter sky looked so ordinary, the +footsteps of people and their conversation on matters of business sounded so +ordinary, the smell of the sour soup of cabbage was so ordinary, customary and +natural that he again ceased believing in the execution. But the night became +terrible to him. Before this Yanson had felt the night simply as darkness, as +an especially dark time, when it was necessary to go to sleep, but now he began +to be aware of its mysterious and uncanny nature. In order not to believe in +death, it was necessary to hear and see and feel ordinary things about him, +footsteps, voices, light, the soup of sour cabbage. But in the dark everything +was unnatural; the silence and the darkness were in themselves something like +death. +</p> + +<p> +And the longer the night dragged the more dreadful it became. With the ignorant +innocence of a child or a savage, who believe everything possible, Yanson felt +like crying to the sun: “Shine!” He begged, he implored that the +sun should shine, but the night drew its long, dark hours remorselessly over +the earth, and there was no power that could hasten its course. And this +impossibility, arising for the first time before the weak consciousness of +Yanson, filled him with terror. Still not daring to realize it clearly, he +already felt the inevitability of approaching death, and felt himself making +the first step upon the gallows, with benumbed feet. +</p> + +<p> +Day quieted him, but night again filled him with fear, and so it was until one +night when he realized fully that death was inevitable, that it would come in +three days at dawn with the sunrise. +</p> + +<p> +He had never thought of what death was, and it had no image to him—but +now he realized clearly, he saw, he felt that it had entered his cell and was +looking for him, groping about with its hands. And to save himself, he began to +run wildly about the room. +</p> + +<p> +But the cell was so small that it seemed that its corners were not sharp but +dull, and that all of them were pushing him into the center of the room. And +there was nothing behind which to hide. And the door was locked. And it was +dark. Several times he struck his body against the walls, making no sound, and +once he struck against the door—it gave forth a dull, empty sound. He +stumbled over something and fell upon his face, and then he felt that IT was +going to seize him. Lying on his stomach, holding to the floor, hiding his face +in the dark, dirty asphalt, Yanson howled in terror. He lay; and cried at the +top of his voice until some one came. And when he was lifted from the floor and +seated upon the cot, and cold water was poured over his head, he still did not +dare open his tightly closed eyes. He opened one eye, and noticing some +one’s boot in one of the corners of the room, he commenced crying again. +</p> + +<p> +But the cold water began to produce its effect in bringing him to his senses. +To help the effect, the warden on duty, the same old man, administered medicine +to Yanson in the form of several blows upon the head. And this sensation of +life returning to him really drove the fear of death away. Yanson opened his +eyes, and then, his mind utterly confused, he slept soundly for the remainder +of the night. He lay on his back, with mouth open, and snored loudly, and +between his lashes, which were not tightly closed, his flat, dead eyes, which +were upturned so that the pupil did not show, could be seen. +</p> + +<p> +Later, everything in the world—day and night, footsteps, voices, the soup +of sour cabbage, produced in him a continuous terror, plunging him into a state +of savage uncomprehending astonishment. His weak mind was unable to combine +these two things which so monstrously contradicted each other—the bright +day, the odor and taste of cabbage—and the fact that two days later he +must die. He did not think of anything. He did not even count the hours, but +simply stood in mute stupefaction before this contradiction which tore his +brain in two. And he became evenly pale, neither white nor redder in parts, and +appeared to be calm. Only he ate nothing and ceased sleeping altogether. He sat +all night long on a stool, his legs crossed under him, in fright. Or he walked +about in his cell, quietly, stealthily, and sleepily looking about him on all +sides. His mouth was half-open all the time, as though from incessant +astonishment, and before taking the most ordinary thing into his hands, he +would examine it stupidly for a long time, and would take it distrustfully. +</p> + +<p> +When he became thus, the wardens as well as the sentinel who watched him +through the little window, ceased paying further attention to him. This was the +customary condition of prisoners, and reminded the wardens of cattle being led +to slaughter after a staggering blow. +</p> + +<p> +“Now he is stunned, now he will feel nothing until his very death,” +said the warden, looking at him with experienced eyes. “Ivan! Do you +hear? Ivan!” +</p> + +<p> +“I must not be hanged,” answered Yanson, in a dull voice, and his +lower jaw again drooped. +</p> + +<p> +“You should not have committed murder. You would not be hanged +then,” answered the chief warden, a young but very important-looking man +with medals on his chest. “You committed murder, yet you do not want to +be hanged?” +</p> + +<p> +“He wants to kill human beings without paying for it. Fool! fool!” +said another. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be hanged,” said Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, my friend, you may want it or not, that’s your +affair,” replied the chief warden indifferently. “Instead of +talking nonsense, you had better arrange your affairs. You still have +something.” +</p> + +<p> +“He has nothing. One shirt and a suit of clothes. And a fur cap! A +sport!” +</p> + +<p> +Thus time passed until Thursday. And on Thursday, at midnight a number of +people entered Yanson’s cell, and one man, with shoulder-straps, said: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, get ready. We must go.” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson, moving slowly and drowsily as before, put on everything he had and tied +his muddy-red muffler about his neck. The man with shoulder-straps, smoking a +cigarette, said to some one while watching Yanson dress: +</p> + +<p> +“What a warm day this will be. Real spring.” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson’s small eyes were closing; he seemed to be falling asleep, and he +moved so slowly and stiffly that the warden cried to him: +</p> + +<p> +“Hey, there! Quicker! Have you fallen asleep?” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Yanson stopped. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be hanged,” said he. +</p> + +<p> +He was taken by the arms and led away, and began to stride obediently, raising +his shoulders. Outside he found himself in the moist, spring air, and beads of +sweat stood under his little nose. Notwithstanding that it was night, it was +thawing very strongly and drops of water were dripping upon the stones. And +waiting while the soldiers, clanking their sabres and bending their heads, were +stepping into the unlighted black carriage, Yanson lazily moved his finger +under his moist nose and adjusted the badly tied muffler about his neck. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap07"></a>CHAPTER IV<br/>WE COME FROM ORYOL</h3> + +<p> +The same council-chamber of the military district court which had condemned +Yanson had also condemned to death a peasant of the Government of Oryol, of the +District of Yeletzk, Mikhail Golubets, nicknamed Tsiganok, also Tatarin. His +latest crime, proven beyond question, had been the murder of three people and +armed robbery. Behind that, his dark past disappeared in a depth of mystery. +There were vague rumors that he had participated in a series of other murders +and robberies, and in his path there was felt to be a dark trail of blood, +fire, and drunken debauchery. He called himself murderer with utter frankness +and sincerity, and scornfully regarded those who, according to the latest +fashion, styled themselves “expropriators.” Of his last crime, +since it was useless for him to deny anything, he spoke freely and in detail, +but in answer to questions about his past, he merely gritted his teeth, +whistled, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Search for the wind of the fields!” +</p> + +<p> +When he was annoyed in cross-examination, Tsiganok assumed a serious and +dignified air: +</p> + +<p> +“All of us from Oryol are thoroughbreds,” he would say gravely and +deliberately. “Oryol and Kroma are the homes of first-class thieves. +Karachev and Livna are the breeding-places of thieves. And Yeletz—is the +parent of all thieves. Now—what else is there to say?” +</p> + +<p> +He was nicknamed Tsiganok (gypsy) because of his appearance and his thievish +manner. He was black-haired, lean, with yellow spots on his prominent, +“Tartar-like cheek-bones. His glance was swift, brief, but fearfully +direct and searching, and the thing upon which he looked for a moment seemed to +lose something, seemed to deliver up to him a part of itself, and to become +something else. It was just as unpleasant and repugnant to take a cigarette at +which he looked, as though it had already been in his mouth. There was a +certain constant restlessness in him, now twisting him like a rag, now throwing +him about like a body of coiling live wires. And he drank water almost by the +bucket. +</p> + +<p> +To all questions during the trial he answered shortly, firmly, jumping up +quickly, and at times he seemed to answer even with pleasure. +</p> + +<p> +“Correct!” he would say. +</p> + +<p> +Sometimes he emphasized it. +</p> + +<p> +“Cor-r-rect!” +</p> + +<p> +At one time, suddenly, when they were speaking of something that would hardly +have seemed to suggest it, he jumped to his feet and asked the presiding judge: +</p> + +<p> +“Will you allow me to whistle?” +</p> + +<p> +“What for?” asked the judge, surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“They said that I gave the signal to my comrades. I would like to show +you how. It is very interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +The judge consented, somewhat wonderingly. Tsiganok quickly placed four fingers +in his mouth, two fingers of each hand, rolled his eyes fiercely—and then +the dead air of the courtroom was suddenly rent by a real, wild, +murderer’s whistle—at which frightened horses leap and rear on +their hind legs and human faces involuntarily blanch. The mortal anguish of him +who is to be assassinated, the wild joy of the murderer, the dreadful warning, +the call, the gloom and loneliness of a stormy autumn night—all this rang +in his piercing shriek, which was neither human nor beastly. +</p> + +<p> +The presiding officer shouted—then waved his arm at Tsiganok, and +Tsiganok obediently became silent. And, like an artist who had triumphantly +performed a difficult aria, he sat down, wiped his wet fingers upon his coat, +and surveyed those present with an air of satisfaction. +</p> + +<p> +“What a robber!” said one of the judges, rubbing his ear. +</p> + +<p> +Another one, however, with a wild Russian beard, but with the eyes of a Tartar, +like those of Tsiganok, gazed pensively above Tsiganok’s head, then +smiled and remarked: +</p> + +<p> +“It is indeed interesting.” +</p> + +<p> +With light hearts, without mercy, without the slightest pangs of conscience, +the judges brought out against Tsiganok a verdict of death. +</p> + +<p> +“Correct!” said Tsiganok, when the verdict was pronounced. +“In the open field and on a cross-beam! Correct!” +</p> + +<p> +And turning to the convoy, he hurled with bravado: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, are we not going? Come on, you sour-coat. And hold your +gun—I might take it away from you!” +</p> + +<p> +The soldier looked at him sternly, with fear, exchanged glances with his +comrade, and felt the lock of his gun. The other did the same. And all the way +to the prison the soldiers felt that they were not walking but flying through +the air—as if hypnotized by the prisoner, they felt neither the ground +beneath their feet, nor the passage of time, nor themselves. +</p> + +<p> +Mishka Tsiganok, like Yanson, had had to spend seventeen days in prison before +his execution. And all seventeen days passed as though they were one +day—they were bound up in one inextinguishable thought of escape, of +freedom, of life. The restlessness of Tsiganok, which was now repressed by the +walls and the bars and the dead window through which nothing could be seen, +turned all its fury upon himself and burned his soul like coals scattered upon +boards. As though he were in a drunken vapor, bright but incomplete images +swarmed upon him, failing and then becoming confused, and then again rushing +through his mind in an unrestrainable blinding whirlwind—and all were +bent toward escape, toward liberty, toward life. With his nostrils expanded, +like those of a horse, Tsiganok smelt the air for hours long—it seemed to +him that he could smell the odor of hemp, of the smoke of fire—the +colorless and biting smell of burning. Now he whirled about in the room like a +top, touching the walls, tapping them nervously with his fingers from time to +time, taking aim, boring the ceiling with his gaze, filing the prison bars. By +his restlessness, he had tired out the soldiers who watched him through the +little window, and who, several times, in despair, had threatened to shoot. +Tsiganok would retort, coarsely and derisively, and the quarrel would end +peacefully because the dispute would soon turn into boorish, unoffending abuse, +after which shooting would have seemed absurd and impossible. +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok slept during the nights soundly, without stirring, in unchanging yet +live motionlessness, like a wire spring in temporary inactivity. But as soon as +he arose, he immediately commenced to walk, to plan, to grope about. His hands +were always dry and hot, but his heart at times would suddenly grow cold, as if +a cake of unmelting ice had been placed upon his chest, sending a slight, dry +shiver through his whole body. At such times, Tsiganok, always dark in +complexion, would turn black, assuming the shade of bluish cast-iron. And he +acquired a curious habit; as though he had eaten too much of something +sickeningly sweet, he kept licking his lips, smacking them, and would spit on +the floor, hissingly, through his teeth. When he spoke, he did not finish his +words, so rapidly did his thoughts run that his tongue was unable to compass +them. +</p> + +<p> +One day the chief warden, accompanied by a soldier, entered his cell. He looked +askance at the floor and said gruffly: +</p> + +<p> +“Look! How dirty he has made it!” +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok retorted quickly: +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve made the whole world dirty, you fat-face, and yet I +haven’t said anything to you. What brings you here?” +</p> + +<p> +The warden, speaking as gruffly as before, asked him whether he would act as +executioner. Tsiganok burst out laughing, showing his teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“You can’t find any one else? That’s good! Go ahead, hang! +Ha! ha! ha! The necks are there, the rope is there, but there is nobody to +string it up. By God! that’s good!” +</p> + +<p> +“You’ll save your neck if you do it.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course—I couldn’t hang them if I were dead. Well said, +you fool!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what do you say? Is it all the same to you?” +</p> + +<p> +“And how do you hang them here? I suppose they’re choked on the +sly.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, with music,” snarled the warden. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what a fool! Of course it can be done with music. This way!” +and he began to sing, with a bold and daring swing. +</p> + +<p> +“You have lost your wits, my friend,” said the warden. “What +do you say? Speak sensibly.” +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok grinned. +</p> + +<p> +“How eager you are! Come another time and I’ll tell you.” +</p> + +<p> +After that, into that chaos of bright, yet incomplete images which oppressed +Tsiganok by their impetuosity, a new image came—how good it would be to +become a hangman in a red shirt. He pictured to himself vividly a square +crowded with people, a high scaffold, and he, Tsiganok, in a red shirt walking +about upon the scaffold with an ax. The sun shone overhead, gaily flashing from +the ax, and everything was so gay and bright that even the man whose head was +soon to be chopped off was smiling. And behind the crowd, wagons and the heads +of horses could be seen—the peasants had come from the village; and +beyond them, further, he could see the village itself. +</p> + +<p> +“Ts-akh!” +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok smacked his lips, licking them, and spat. And suddenly he felt as +though a fur cap had been pushed over his head to his very mouth—it +became black and stifling, and his heart again became like a cake of unmelting +ice, sending a slight, dry shiver through his whole body. +</p> + +<p> +The warden came in twice again, and Tsiganok, showing his teeth, said: +</p> + +<p> +“How eager you are! Come in again!” +</p> + +<p> +Finally one day the warden shouted through the casement window as he passed +rapidly: +</p> + +<p> +“You’ve let your chance slip by, you fool! We’ve found +somebody else.” +</p> + +<p> +“The devil take you! Hang yourself!” snarled Tsiganok, and he +stopped dreaming of the execution. +</p> + +<p> +But toward the end, the nearer he approached the time, the weight of the +fragments of his broken images became unbearable. Tsiganok now felt like +standing still, like spreading his legs and standing—but a whirling +current of thoughts carried him away and there was nothing at which he could +clutch—everything about him swam. And his sleep also became uneasy. +Dreams even more violent than his thoughts appeared—new dreams, solid, +heavy, like wooden painted blocks. And it was no longer like a current, but +like an endless fall to an endless depth, a whirling flight through the whole +visible world of colors. +</p> + +<p> +When Tsiganok was free he had worn only a pair of dashing mustaches, but in the +prison a short, black, bristly beard grew on his face and it made him look +fearsome, insane. At times Tsiganok really lost his senses and whirled absurdly +about in the cell, still tapping upon the rough, plastered walls nervously. And +he drank water like a horse. +</p> + +<p> +At times toward evening when they lit the lamp, Tsiganok would stand on all +fours in the middle of his cell and would howl the quivering howl of a wolf. He +was peculiarly serious while doing it, and would howl as though he were +performing an important and indispensable act. He would fill his chest with air +and then exhale it, slowly in a prolonged tremulous howl, and, cocking his +eyes, would listen intently as the sound issued forth. And the very quiver in +his voice seemed in a manner intentional. He did not scream wildly, but drew +out each note carefully in that mournful wail full of untold sorrow and terror. +</p> + +<p> +Then he would suddenly break off howling and for several minutes would remain +silent, still standing on all fours. Then suddenly he would mutter softly, +staring at the ground: +</p> + +<p> +“My darlings, my sweethearts!... My darlings, my sweethearts! have +pity.... My darlings!... My sweethearts!” +</p> + +<p> +And it seemed again as if he were listening intently to his own voice. As he +said each word he would listen. +</p> + +<p> +Then he would jump up and for a whole hour would curse continually. +</p> + +<p> +He cursed picturesquely, shouting and rolling his blood-shot eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“If you hang me—hang me!” and he would burst out cursing +again. +</p> + +<p> +And the sentinel, in the meantime white as chalk, weeping with pain and fright, +would knock at the door with the butt-end of the gun and cry helplessly: +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll fire! I’ll kill you as sure as I live! Do you +hear?” +</p> + +<p> +But he dared not shoot. If there was no actual rebellion they never fired at +those who had been condemned to death. And Tsiganok would gnash his teeth, +would curse and spit. His brain thus racked on a monstrously sharp blade +between life and death was falling to pieces like a lump of dry clay. +</p> + +<p> +When they entered the cell at midnight to lead Tsiganok to the execution he +began to bustle about and seemed to have recovered his spirits. Again he had +that sweet taste in his mouth, and his saliva collected abundantly, but his +cheeks turned rosy and in his eyes began to glisten his former somewhat savage +slyness. Dressing himself he asked the official: +</p> + +<p> +“Who is going to do the hanging? A new man? I suppose he hasn’t +learned his job yet.” +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t worry about it,” answered the official dryly. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t help worrying, your Honor. I am going to be hanged, not +you. At least don’t be stingy with the government’s soap on the +noose.” +</p> + +<p> +“All right, all right! Keep quiet!” +</p> + +<p> +“This man here has eaten all your soap,” said Tsiganok, pointing to +the warden. “See how his face shines.” +</p> + +<p> +“Silence!” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t be stingy!” +</p> + +<p> +And Tsiganok burst out laughing. But he began to feel that it was getting ever +sweeter in his mouth, and suddenly his legs began to feel strangely numb. +Still, on coming out into the yard, he managed to exclaim: +</p> + +<p> +“The carriage of the Count of Bengal!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap08"></a>CHAPTER V<br/>KISS—AND SAY NOTHING</h3> + +<p> +The verdict concerning the five terrorists was pronounced finally and confirmed +upon the same day. The condemned were not told when the execution would take +place, but they knew from the usual procedure that they would be hanged the +same night, or, at the very latest, upon the following night. And when it was +proposed to them that they meet their relatives upon the following Thursday +they understood that the execution would take place on Friday at dawn. +</p> + +<p> +Tanya Kovalchuk had no near relatives, and those whom she had were somewhere in +the wilderness in Little Russia, and it was not likely that they even knew of +the trial or of the coming execution. Musya and Werner, as unidentified people, +were not supposed to have relatives, and only two, Sergey Golovin and Vasily +Kashirin, were to meet their parents. Both of them looked upon that meeting +with terror and anguish, yet they dared not refuse the old people the last +word, the last kiss. +</p> + +<p> +Sergey Golovin was particularly tortured by the thought of the coming meeting. +He dearly loved his father and mother; he had seen them but a short while +before, and now he was in a state of terror as to what would happen when they +came to see him. The execution itself, in all its monstrous horror, in its +brain-stunning madness, he could imagine more easily, and it seemed less +terrible than these other few moments of meeting, brief and unsatisfactory, +which seemed to reach beyond time, beyond life itself. How to look, what to +think, what to say, his mind could not determine. The most simple and ordinary +act, to take his father by the hand, to kiss him, and to say, “How do you +do, father?” seemed to him unspeakably horrible in its monstrous, +inhuman, absurd deceitfulness. +</p> + +<p> +After the sentence the condemned were not placed together in one cell, as Tanya +Kovalchuk had supposed they would be, but each was put in solitary confinement, +and all the morning, until eleven o’clock, when his parents came, Sergey +Golovin paced his cell furiously, tugged at his beard, frowned pitiably and +muttered inaudibly. Sometimes he would stop abruptly, would breathe deeply and +then exhale like a man who has been too long under water. But he was so +healthy, his young life was so strong within him, that even in the moments of +most painful suffering his blood played under his skin, reddening his cheeks, +and his blue eyes shone brightly and frankly. +</p> + +<p> +But everything was far different from what he had anticipated. +</p> + +<p> +Nikolay Sergeyevich Golovin, Sergey’s father, a retired colonel, was the +first to enter the room where the meeting took place. He was all +white—his face, his beard, his hair, and his hands—as if he were a +snow statue attired in man’s clothes. He had on the same old but +well-cleaned coat, smelling of benzine, with new shoulder-straps crosswise, +that he had always worn, and he entered firmly, with an air of stateliness, +with strong and steady steps. He stretched out his white, thin hand and said +loudly: +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Sergey?” +</p> + +<p> +Behind him Sergey’s mother entered with short steps, smiling strangely. +But she also pressed his hands and repeated loudly: +</p> + +<p> +“How do you do, Seryozhenka?” +</p> + +<p> +She kissed him on the lips and sat down silently. She did not rush over to him; +she did not burst into tears; she did not break into a sob; she did not do any +of the terrible things which Sergey had feared. She just kissed him and +silently sat down. And with her trembling hands she even adjusted her black +silk dress. +</p> + +<p> +Sergey did not know that the colonel, having locked himself all the previous +night in his little study, had deliberated upon this ritual with all his power. +“We must not aggravate, but ease the last moments of our son,” +resolved the colonel firmly, and he carefully weighed every possible phase of +the conversation, every act and movement that might take place on the following +day. But somehow he became confused, forgetting what he had prepared, and he +wept bitterly in the corner of the oilcloth-covered couch. In the morning he +explained to his wife how she should behave at the meeting. +</p> + +<p> +“The main thing is, kiss—and say nothing!” he taught her. +“Later you may speak—after a while—but when you kiss him, be +silent. Don’t speak right after the kiss, do you understand? Or you will +say what you should not say.” +</p> + +<p> +“I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich,” answered the mother, weeping. +</p> + +<p> +“And you must not weep. For God’s sake, do not weep! You will kill +him if you weep, old woman!” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you weep?” +</p> + +<p> +“With women one cannot help weeping. But you must not weep, do you +hear?” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well, Nikolay Sergeyevich.” +</p> + +<p> +Riding in the drozhky, he had intended to school her in the instructions again, +but he forgot. And so they rode in silence, bent, both gray and old, and they +were lost in thought, while the city was gay and noisy. It was Shrovetide, and +the streets were crowded. +</p> + +<p> +They sat down. Then the colonel stood up, assumed a studied pose, placing his +right hand upon the border of his coat. Sergey sat for an instant, looked +closely upon the wrinkled face of his mother and then jumped up. +</p> + +<p> +“Be seated, Seryozhenka,” begged the mother. +</p> + +<p> +“Sit down, Sergey,” repeated the father. +</p> + +<p> +They became silent. The mother smiled. +</p> + +<p> +“How we have petitioned for you, Seryozhenka! Father—” +</p> + +<p> +“You should not have done that, mother——” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel spoke firmly: +</p> + +<p> +“We had to do it, Sergey, so that you should not think your parents had +forsaken you.” +</p> + +<p> +They became silent again. It was terrible for them to utter even a word, as +though each word in the language had lost its individual meaning and meant but +one thing—Death. Sergey looked at his father’s coat, which smelt of +benzine, and thought: “They have no servant now, consequently he must +have cleaned it himself. How is it that I never before noticed when he cleaned +his coat? I suppose he does it in the morning.” Suddenly he asked: +</p> + +<p> +“And how is sister? Is she well?” +</p> + +<p> +“Ninochka does not know anything,” the mother answered hastily. +</p> + +<p> +The colonel interrupted her sternly: “Why should you tell a falsehood? +The child read it in the newspapers. Let Sergey know that everybody—that +those who are dearest to him—were thinking of him—at this +time—and—” +</p> + +<p> +He could not say any more and stopped. Suddenly the mother’s face +contracted, then it spread out, became agitated, wet and wild-looking. Her +discolored eyes stared blindly, and her breathing became more frequent, and +briefer, louder. +</p> + +<p> +“Se—Se—Se—Ser—” she repeated without moving +her lips. “Ser—” +</p> + +<p> +“Dear mother!” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel strode forward, and all quivering in every fold of his coat, in +every wrinkle of his face, not understanding how terrible he himself looked in +his death-like whiteness, in his heroic, desperate firmness. He said to his +wife: +</p> + +<p> +“Be silent! Don’t torture him! Don’t torture him! He has to +die! Don’t torture him!” +</p> + +<p> +Frightened, she had already become silent, but he still shook his clenched +fists before him and repeated: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t torture him!” +</p> + +<p> +Then he stepped back, placed his trembling hands behind his back, and loudly, +with an expression of forced calm, asked with pale lips: +</p> + +<p> +“When?” +</p> + +<p> +“To-morrow morning,” answered Sergey, his lips also pale. +</p> + +<p> +The mother looked at the ground, chewing her lips, as if she did not hear +anything. And continuing to chew, she uttered these simple words, strangely, as +though they dropped like lead: +</p> + +<p> +“Ninochka told me to kiss you, Seryozhenka.” +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss her for me,” said Sergey. +</p> + +<p> +“Very well. The Khvostovs send you their regards.” +</p> + +<p> +“Which Khvostovs? Oh, yes!” +</p> + +<p> +The colonel interrupted: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, we must go. Get up, mother; we must go.” The two men lifted +the weakened old woman. +</p> + +<p> +“Bid him good-by!” ordered the colonel. “Make the sign of the +cross.” +</p> + +<p> +She did everything as she was told. But as she made the sign of the cross, and +kissed her son a brief kiss, she shook her head and murmured weakly: +</p> + +<p> +“No, it isn’t the right way! It is not the right way! What will I +say? How will I say it? No, it is not the right way!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-by, Sergey!” said the father. They shook hands, and kissed +each other quickly but heartily. +</p> + +<p> +“You—” began Sergey. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” asked the father abruptly. +</p> + +<p> +“No, no! It is not the right way! How shall I say it?” repeated the +mother weakly, nodding her head. She had sat down again and was rocking herself +back and forth. +</p> + +<p> +“You—” Sergey began again. Suddenly his face wrinkled +pitiably, childishly, and his eyes filled with tears immediately. Through the +sparkling gleams of his tears he looked closely into the white face of his +father, whose eyes had also filled. +</p> + +<p> +“You, father, are a noble man!” +</p> + +<p> +“What is that? What are you saying?” said the colonel, surprised. +And then suddenly, as if broken in two, he fell with his head upon his +son’s shoulder. He had been taller than Sergey, but now he became short, +and his dry, downy head lay like a white ball upon his son’s shoulder. +And they kissed silently and passionately: Sergey kissed the silvery white +hair, and the old man kissed the prisoner’s garb. +</p> + +<p> +“And I?” suddenly said a loud voice. +</p> + +<p> +They looked around. Sergey’s mother was standing, her head thrown back, +looking at them angrily, almost with contempt. +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, mother?” cried the colonel. +</p> + +<p> +“And I?” she said, shaking her head with insane intensity. +“You kiss—and I? You men! Yes? And I? And I?” +</p> + +<p> +“Mother!” Sergey rushed over to her. +</p> + +<p> +What took place then it is unnecessary and impossible to describe... . +</p> + +<p> +The last words of the colonel were: +</p> + +<p> +“I give you my blessing for your death, Seryozha. Die bravely, like an +officer.” +</p> + +<p> +And they went away. Somehow they went away. They had been there, they had +stood, they had spoken—and suddenly they had gone. Here sat his mother, +there stood his father—and suddenly somehow they had gone away. Returning +to the cell, Sergey lay down on the cot, his face turned toward the wall, in +order to hide it from the soldiers, and he wept for a long time. Then, +exhausted by his tears, he slept soundly. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +To Vasily Kashirin only his mother came. His father, who was a wealthy +tradesman, did not want to come. Vasily met the old woman, as he was pacing up +and down the room, trembling with cold, although it was warm, even hot. And the +conversation was brief, painful. +</p> + +<p> +“It wasn’t worth coming, mother. You’ll only torture yourself +and me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why did you do it, Vasya? Why did you do it? Oh, Lord!” The old +woman burst out weeping, wiping her face with the ends of her black, woolen +kerchief. And with the habit which he and his brothers had always had of crying +at their mother, who did not understand anything, he stopped, and, shuddering +as with cold, spoke angrily: +</p> + +<p> +“There! You see! I knew it! You understand nothing, mother! +Nothing!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well—well—all right! Do you feel—cold?” +</p> + +<p> +“Cold!” Vasily answered bluntly, and again began to pace the room, +looking at his mother askance, as if annoyed. +</p> + +<p> +“Perhaps you have caught cold?” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, mother what is a cold, when—” and he waved his hand +helplessly. +</p> + +<p> +The old woman was about to say: “And your father ordered wheat cakes +beginning with Monday,” but she was frightened, and said: +</p> + +<p> +“I told him: ‘It is your son, you should go, give him your +blessing.’ No, the old beast persisted—” +</p> + +<p> +“Let him go to the devil! What sort of father has he been to me? He has +been a scoundrel all his life, and remains a scoundrel!” +</p> + +<p> +“Vasenka! Do you speak of your father like this?” said the old +woman reproachfully, straightening herself. +</p> + +<p> +“About my father!” +</p> + +<p> +“About your own father?” +</p> + +<p> +“He is no father to me!” +</p> + +<p> +It was strange and absurd. Before him was the thought of death, while here +something small, empty and trivial arose, and his words cracked like the shells +of nuts under foot. And almost crying with sorrow—because of the eternal +misunderstanding which all his life long had stood like a wall between him and +those nearest to him, and which even now, in the last hour before death, peered +at him stupidly and strangely through small, widely opened eyes—Vasily +exclaimed: +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you +understand it? Hanged!” +</p> + +<p> +“You shouldn’t have harmed anybody and nobody would—” +cried the old woman. +</p> + +<p> +“My God! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your +son?” +</p> + +<p> +He began to cry, and seated himself in a corner. The old woman also burst out +crying in her corner. Powerless, even for an instant, to blend in a feeling of +love and to offset by it the horror of impending death, they wept their cold +tears of loneliness which did not warm their hearts. The mother said: +</p> + +<p> +“You ask whether I am a mother to you? You reproach me! And I have grown +completely gray during these days. I have become an old woman. And yet you +say—you reproach me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go. +Kiss my brothers for me.” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?” +</p> + +<p> +At last she went away. She wept bitterly, wiping her face with the edges of her +kerchief, and she did not see the road. And the farther she got from the prison +the more bitterly she wept. She retraced her steps to the prison, and then she +strangely lost her way in the city in which she had been born, in which she +lived to her old age. She strolled into a deserted little garden with a few +old, gnarled trees, and she seated herself upon a wet bench, from which the +snow had melted. +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow! +</p> + +<p> +The old woman jumped up, about to run, but suddenly her head began to swim +terribly and she fell to the ground. The icy path was wet and slippery, and she +could not rise. She turned about, lifted herself on her elbows and knelt, then +fell back on her side. The black kerchief had slipped down, baring upon the +back of her head a bald spot amid her muddy-gray hair; and then somehow it +seemed to her that she was feasting at a wedding, that her son was getting +married, and she had been drinking wine and had become intoxicated. +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t! My God! I can’t!” she cried, as though +declining something. Swaying her head, she crawled over the wet, frozen crust, +and all the time it seemed to her that they were pouring out more wine for her, +more wine! +</p> + +<p> +And her heart had already begun to pain her from her intoxicated laughter, from +the rejoicing, from the wild dancing—and they kept on pouring more wine +for her—pouring more wine! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap09"></a>CHAPTER VI<br/>THE HOURS ARE RUSHING</h3> + +<p> +On the fortress where the condemned terrorists were imprisoned there was a +steeple with an old-fashioned clock upon it. At every hour, at every half-hour, +and at every quarter-hour the clock rang out in long-drawn, mournful chimes, +slowly melting high in the air, like the distant and plaintive call of +migrating birds. In the daytime, this strange and sad music was lost in the +noise of the city, of the wide and crowded street which passed near the +fortress. The cars buzzed along, the hoofs of the horses beat upon the +pavements, the rocking automobiles honked in the distance, peasant izvozchiks +had come especially from the outskirts of the city for the Shrovetide season +and the tinkling of the bells upon the necks of their little horses filled the +air. The prattle of voices—an intoxicated, merry Shrovetide prattle of +voices arose everywhere. And in the midst of these various noises there was the +young thawing spring, the muddy pools on the meadows, the trees of the squares +which had suddenly become black. From the sea a warm breeze was blowing in +broad, moist gusts. It was almost as if one could have seen the tiny fresh +particles of air carried away, merged into the free, endless expanse of the +atmosphere—could have heard them laughing in their flight. +</p> + +<p> +At night the street grew quiet in the lonely light of the large, electric sun. +And then, the enormous fortress, within whose walls there was not a single +light, passed into darkness and silence, separating itself from the ever +living, stirring city by a wall of silence, motionlessness and darkness. Then +it was that the strokes of the clock became audible. A strange melody, foreign +to earth, was slowly and mournfully born and died out up in the heights. It was +born again; deceiving the ear, it rang plaintively and softly—it broke +off—and rang again. Like large, transparent, glassy drops, hours and +minutes descended from an unknown height into a metallic, softly resounding +bell. +</p> + +<p> +This was the only sound that reached the cells, by day and night, where the +condemned remained in solitary confinement. Through the roof, through the +thickness of the stone walls, it penetrated, stirring the silence—it +passed unnoticed, to return again, also unnoticed. Sometimes they awaited it in +despair, living from one sound to the next, trusting the silence no longer. +Only important criminals were sent to this prison. There were special rules +there, stern, grim and severe, like the corner of the fortress wall, and if +there be nobility in cruelty, then the dull, dead, solemnly mute silence, which +caught the slightest rustle and breathing, was noble. +</p> + +<p> +And in this solemn silence, broken by the mournful tolling of the departing +minutes, separated from all that lives, five human beings, two women and three +men, waited for the advent of night, of dawn and the execution, and all of them +prepared for it, each in his or her own way. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap10"></a>CHAPTER VII<br/>THERE IS NO DEATH</h3> + +<p> +Just as Tanya Kovalchuk had thought all her life only of others and never of +herself, so now she suffered and grieved painfully, but only for her comrades. +She pictured death, only as awaiting them, as something tormenting only to +Sergey Golovin, to Musya, to the others—as for herself, it did not +concern her. +</p> + +<p> +As a recompense for her firmness and restraint in the courtroom she wept for +long hours, as old women who have experienced great misery, or as very +sympathetic and kind-hearted young people know how to weep. And the fear that +perhaps Seryozha was without tobacco or Werner without the strong tea to which +he was accustomed, in addition to the fact that they were to die, caused her no +less pain than the idea of the execution itself. Death was something inevitable +and even unimportant, of which it was not worth while to think; but for a man +in prison, before his execution, to be left without tobacco—that was +altogether unbearable. She recalled and went over in her mind all the pleasant +details of their life together, and then she grew faint with fear when she +pictured to herself the meeting between Sergey and his parents. +</p> + +<p> +She felt particularly sorry for Musya. It had long seemed to her that Musya +loved Werner, and although this was not a fact, she still dreamed of something +good and bright for both of them. When she had been free, Musya had worn a +silver ring, on which was the design of a skull, bones, and a crown of thorns +about them. Tanya Kovalchuk had often looked upon the ring as a symbol of doom, +and she would ask Musya, now in jest, now in earnest, to remove the ring. +</p> + +<p> +“Make me a present of it,” she had begged. +</p> + +<p> +“No, Tanechka, I will not give it to you. But perhaps you will soon have +another ring upon your finger.” +</p> + +<p> +For some reason or other they all in turn had thought that she would doubtless +soon marry, and this had offended her—she wanted no husband. And +recalling these half-jesting conversations with Musya, and the fact that now +Musya was actually condemned to death, she choked with tears in her maternal +pity. And each time the clock struck she raised her tear-stained face and +listened—how were they in the other cells receiving this drawn-out, +persistent call of death? +</p> + +<p> +But Musya was happy. +</p> + +<p> +With her hands folded behind her back, dressed in a prisoner’s garb which +was much too large for her, and which made her look very much like a +man—like a stripling dressed in some one else’s clothes—she +paced her cell evenly and tirelessly. The sleeves of the coat were too long for +her, and she turned them up, and her thin, almost childish, emaciated hands +peeped out of the wide holes like a beautiful flower out of a coarse earthen +jug. The rough material of the coat rubbed her thin white neck, and sometimes +Musya would free her throat with both hands and would cautiously feel the spot +where the irritated skin was red and smarted. +</p> + +<p> +Musya paced the cell, and, blushing in agitation, she imagined that she was +justifying herself before the people. She tried to justify herself for the fact +that she, who was so young, so insignificant, who had done so little, and who +was not at all a heroine, was yet to undergo the same honorable and beautiful +death by which real heroes and martyrs had died before her. With unshakable +faith in human kindness, in their compassion, in their love, she pictured to +herself how people were now agitated on her account, how they suffered, how +they pitied her, and she felt so ashamed that she blushed, as if, by dying upon +the scaffold, she had committed some tremendous, awkward blunder. +</p> + +<p> +At the last meeting with their counsel she had asked him to bring her poison, +but suddenly she had changed her mind. What if he and the others, she thought, +should consider that she was doing it merely to become conspicuous, or out of +cowardice, that instead of dying modestly and unnoticed, she was attempting to +glorify herself. And she added hastily: +</p> + +<p> +“No, it isn’t necessary.” +</p> + +<p> +And now she desired but one thing—to be able to explain to people, to +prove to them so that they should have not the slightest doubt that she was not +at all a heroine, that it was not terrible to die, that they should not feel +sorry for her, nor trouble themselves about her. She wished to be able to +explain to them that she was not at all to blame that she, who was so young and +so insignificant, was to undergo such a martyr’s death, and that so much +trouble should be made on her account. +</p> + +<p> +Like a person who is actually accused of a crime, Musya sought justification. +She endeavored to find something that would at least make her sacrifice more +momentous, which might give it real value. She reasoned: +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, I am young and could have lived for a long time. +But—” +</p> + +<p> +And as a candle darkens in the glare of the rising sun, so her youth and her +life seemed dull and dark compared to that great and resplendent radiance which +would shine above her simple head. There was no justification. +</p> + +<p> +But perhaps that peculiar something which she bore in her soul—boundless +love, boundless eagerness to do great deeds, her boundless contempt for +herself—was a justification in itself. She felt that she was really not +to blame that she was hindered from doing the things she could have done, which +she had wished to do—that she had been smitten upon the threshold of the +temple, at the foot of the altar. +</p> + +<p> +But if that were so, if a person is appreciated not only for what he has done, +but also for what he had intended to do—then—then she was worthy of +the crown of the martyr! +</p> + +<p> +“Is it possible?” thought Musya bashfully. “Is it possible +that I am worthy of it? That I deserve that people should weep for me, should +be agitated over my fate, over such a little and insignificant girl?” +</p> + +<p> +And she was seized with sudden joy. There were no doubts, no +hesitations—she was received into their midst—she entered justified +the ranks of those noble people who always ascend to heaven through fires, +tortures and executions. Bright peace and tranquillity and endless, calmly +radiant happiness! It was as if she had already departed from earth and was +nearing the unknown sun of truth and life, and was incorporeally soaring in +its light. +</p> + +<p> +“And that is—Death? That is not Death!” thought Musya +blissfully. +</p> + +<p> +And if scientists, philosophers and hangmen from the world over should come to +her cell, spreading before her books, scalpels, axes and nooses, and were to +attempt to prove to her that Death existed, that a human being dies and is +killed, that there is no immortality, they would only surprise her. How could +there be no deathlessness, since she was already deathless? Of what other +deathlessness, of what other death, could there be a question, since she was +already dead and immortal, alive in death, as she had been dead in life? +</p> + +<p> +And if a coffin were brought into her cell with her own decomposing body in it, +and she were told: +</p> + +<p> +“Look! That is you!” +</p> + +<p> +She would look and would answer: +</p> + +<p> +“No, it is not I.” +</p> + +<p> +And if they should attempt to convince her, frightening her by the ominous +sight of her own decomposed body, that it was she—she, Musya, would +answer with a smile: +</p> + +<p> +“No. You think that it is I, but it isn’t. I am the one you are +speaking to; how can I be the other one?” +</p> + +<p> +“But you will die and become like that.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I will not die.” +</p> + +<p> +“You will be executed. Here is the noose.” +</p> + +<p> +“I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am +already—now—immortal?” +</p> + +<p> +And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat, +speaking—with a shudder: +</p> + +<p> +“Do not touch this place. It is holy.” +</p> + +<p> +What else was Musya thinking about? She was thinking of many things, for to her +the thread of life was not broken by Death, but kept winding along calmly and +evenly. She thought of her comrades, of those who were far away, and who in +pain and sorrow were living through the execution together with them, and of +those near by who were to mount the scaffold with her. She was surprised at +Vasily—that he should have been so disturbed—he, who had always +been so brave, and who had jested with Death. Thus, only on Tuesday morning, +when all together they had attached explosive projectiles to their belts, which +several hours later were to tear them into pieces, Tanya Kovalchuk’s +hands had trembled with nervousness, and it had become necessary to put her +aside, while Vasily jested, made merry, turned about, and was even so reckless +that Werner had said sternly: +</p> + +<p> +“You must not be too familiar with Death.” +</p> + +<p> +What was he afraid of now? But this incomprehensible fear was so foreign to +Musya’s soul that she ceased searching for the cause of it—and +suddenly she was seized with a desperate desire to see Seryozha Golovin, to +laugh with him. She meditated a little while, and then an even more desperate +desire came over her to see Werner and to convince him of something. And +imagining to herself that Werner was in the next cell, driving his heels into +the ground with his distinct, measured steps, Musya spoke, as if addressing +him: +</p> + +<p> +“No, Werner, my dear; it is all nonsense; it isn’t at all important +whether or not you are killed. You are a sensible man, but you seem to be +playing chess, and that by taking one figure after another the game is won. The +important thing, Werner, is that we ourselves are ready to die. Do you +understand? What do those people think? That there is nothing more terrible +than death. They themselves have invented Death, they are themselves afraid of +it, and they try to frighten us with it. I should like to do this—I +should like to go out alone before a whole regiment of soldiers and fire upon +them with a revolver. It would not matter that I would be alone, while they +would be thousands, or that I might not kill any of them. It is that which is +important—that they are thousands. When thousands kill one, it means that +the one has conquered. That is true, Werner, my dear....” +</p> + +<p> +But this, too, became so clear to her that she did not feel like arguing +further—Werner must understand it himself. Perhaps her mind simply did +not want to stop at one thought—just as a bird that soars with ease, +which sees endless horizons, and to which all space, all the depth, all the joy +of the soft and caressing azure are accessible. The bell of the clock rang +unceasingly, disturbing the deep silence. And into this harmonious, remote, +beautiful sound the thoughts of the people flowed, and also began to ring for +her; and the smoothly gliding images turned into music. It was just as if, on a +quiet, dark night, Musya was riding along a broad, even road, while the easy +springs of the carriage rocked her and the little bells tinkled. All alarm and +agitation had passed, the fatigued body had dissolved in the darkness, and her +joyously wearied fancy calmly created bright images, carried away by their +color and their peaceful tranquillity. Musya recalled three of her comrades who +had been hanged but a short time before, and their faces seemed bright and +happy and near to her—nearer than those in life. Thus does a man think +with joy in the morning of the house of his friends where he is to go in the +evening, and a greeting rises to his smiling lips. +</p> + +<p> +Musya became very tired from walking. She lay down cautiously on the cot and +continued to dream with slightly closed eyes. The clock-bell rang unceasingly, +stirring the mute silence, and bright, singing images floated calmly before +her. Musya thought: +</p> + +<p> +“Is it possible that this is Death? My God! How beautiful it is! Or is it +Life? I do not know. I do not know. I will look and listen.” +</p> + +<p> +Her hearing had long given way to her imagination—from the first moment +of her imprisonment. Inclined to be very musical, her ear had become keen in +the silence, and on this background of silence, out of the meagre bits of +reality, the footsteps of the guards in the corridors, the ringing of the +clock, the rustling of the wind on the iron roof, the creaking of the +lantern—it created complete musical pictures. At first Musya was afraid +of them, brushed them away from her as if they were the hallucinations of a +sickly mind. But later she understood that she herself was well, and that this +was no derangement of any kind—and she gave herself up to the dreams +calmly. +</p> + +<p> +And now, suddenly, she seemed to hear clearly and distinctly the sounds of +military music. In astonishment, she opened her eyes, lifted her +head—outside the window was black night, and the clock was striking. +“Again,” she thought calmly, and closed her eyes. And as soon as +she did so the music resounded anew. She could hear distinctly how the +soldiers, a whole regiment, were coming from behind the corner of the fortress, +on the right, and now they were passing her window. Their feet beat time with +measured steps upon the frozen ground: One—two! One—two! She could +even hear at times the leather of the boots creaking, how suddenly some +one’s foot slipped and immediately recovered its steps. And the music +came ever nearer—it was an entirely unfamiliar but a very loud and +spirited holiday march. Evidently there was some sort of celebration in the +fortress. +</p> + +<p> +Now the band came up alongside of her window and the cell was filled with +merry, rhythmic, harmoniously blended sounds. One large brass trumpet brayed +harshly out of tune, now too late, now comically running ahead—Musya +could almost see the little soldier playing it, a great expression of +earnestness on his face—and she laughed. +</p> + +<p> +Then everything moved away. The footsteps died out—One—two! +One—two! At a distance the music sounded still more beautiful and +cheerful. The trumpet resounded now and then with its merry, loud brass voice, +out of tune,—and then everything died away. And the clock on the tower +struck again, slowly, mournfully, hardly stirring the silence. +</p> + +<p> +“They are gone!” thought Musya, with a feeling of slight sadness. +She felt sorry for the departing sounds, which had been so cheerful and so +comical. She was even sorry for the departed little soldiers, because those +busy soldiers, with their brass trumpets and their creaking boots, were of an +entirely different sort, not at all like those at whom she had felt like firing +a revolver. +</p> + +<p> +“Come again!” she begged tenderly. And more came. The figures bent +over her, they surrounded her in a transparent cloud and lifted her up, where +the migrating birds were soaring and screaming, like heralds. On the right of +her, on the left, above and below her—they screamed like heralds. They +called, they announced from afar their flight. They flapped their wide wings +and the darkness supported them, even as the light had supported them. And on +their convex breasts, cleaving the air asunder, the city far below reflected a +blue light. Musya’s heart beat ever more evenly, her breathing grew ever +more calm and quiet. She was falling asleep. Her face looked fatigued and pale. +Beneath her eyes were dark circles, her girlish, emaciated hands seemed so +thin,—but upon her lips was a smile. To-morrow, with the rise of the sun, +this human face would be distorted with an inhuman grimace, her brain would be +covered with thick blood, and her eyes would bulge from their sockets and look +glassy,—but now she slept quietly and smiled in her great immortality. +</p> + +<p> +Musya fell asleep. +</p> + +<p> +And the life of the prison went on, deaf and sensitive, blind and +sharp-sighted, like eternal alarm itself. Somewhere people were walking. +Somewhere people were whispering. A gun clanked. It seemed as if some one +shouted. Perhaps no one shouted at all—perhaps it merely seemed so in the +silence. +</p> + +<p> +The little casement window in the door opened noiselessly. A dark, mustached +face appeared in the black hole. For a long time it stared at Musya in +astonishment—and then disappeared as noiselessly as it had appeared. +</p> + +<p> +The bells rang and sang, for a long time, painfully. It seemed as if the tired +Hours were climbing up a high mountain toward midnight, and that it was +becoming ever harder and harder to ascend. They fall, they slip, they slide +down with a groan—and then again, they climb painfully toward the black +height. +</p> + +<p> +Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. And they were +already harnessing the horses to the black carriages without lanterns. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap11"></a>CHAPTER VIII<br/>THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE</h3> + +<p> +Sergey Golovin never thought of death, as though it were something not to be +considered, something that did not concern him in the least. He was a strong, +healthy, cheerful youth, endowed with that calm, clear joy of living which +causes every evil thought and feeling that might injure life to disappear from +the organism without leaving any trace. Just as all cuts, wounds and stings on +his body healed rapidly, so all that weighed upon his soul and wounded it +immediately rose to the surface and disappeared. And he brought into every +work, even into his enjoyments, the same calm and optimistic +seriousness,—it mattered not whether he was occupied with photography, +with bicycling or with preparations for a terroristic act. Everything in life +was joyous, everything in life was important, everything should be done well. +</p> + +<p> +And he did everything well: he was an excellent sailor, an expert shot with the +revolver. He was as faithful in friendship as in love, and a fanatic believer +in the “word of honor.” His comrades laughed at him, saying that if +the most notorious spy told him upon his word of honor that he was not a spy, +Sergey would believe him and would shake hands with him as with any comrade. He +had one fault,—he was convinced that he could sing well, whereas in fact +he had no ear for music and even sang the revolutionary songs out of tune, and +felt offended when his friends laughed at him. +</p> + +<p> +“Either you are all asses, or I am an ass,” he would declare +seriously and even angrily. And all his friends as seriously declared: +“You are an ass. We can tell by your voice.” +</p> + +<p> +But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked more for +this little foible than for his good qualities. +</p> + +<p> +He feared death so little and thought of it so little that on the fatal +morning, before leaving the house of Tanya Kovalchuk, he was the only one who +had breakfasted properly, with an appetite. He drank two glasses of tea with +milk, and a whole five-copeck roll of bread. Then he glanced at Werner’s +untouched bread and said: +</p> + +<p> +“Why don’t you eat? Eat. We must brace up.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t feel like eating.” +</p> + +<p> +“Then I’ll eat it. May I?” +</p> + +<p> +“You have a fine appetite, Seryozha.” +</p> + +<p> +Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull voice, +out of tune: +</p> + +<p> +“Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us...” +</p> + +<p> +After the arrest he at first grew sad; the work had not been done well, they +had failed; but then he thought: “There is something else now that must +be done well—and that is, to die,” and he cheered up again. And +however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, +he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational +system of a certain German named Müller, which absorbed his interest. He +undressed himself completely and, to the alarm and astonishment of the guard +who watched him, he carefully went through all the prescribed eighteen +exercises. The fact that the guard watched him and was apparently astonished, +pleased him as a propagandist of the Müller system; and although he knew that +he would get no answer he nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little +window: +</p> + +<p> +“It’s a good system, my friend, it braces you up. It should be +introduced in your regiment,” he shouted convincingly and kindly, so as +not to frighten the soldier, not suspecting that the guard considered him a +harmless lunatic. +</p> + +<p> +The fear of death came over him gradually. It was as if somebody were striking +his heart a powerful blow with the fist from below. This sensation was rather +painful than terrible. Then the sensation was forgotten, but it returned again +a few hours later, and each time it grew more intense and of longer duration, +and thus it began to assume vague outlines of some great, even unbearable fear. +</p> + +<p> +“Is it possible that I am afraid?” thought Sergey in astonishment. +“What nonsense!” +</p> + +<p> +It was not he who was afraid,—it was his young, sound, strong body, which +could not be deceived either by the exercises prescribed by the Müller system, +or by the cold rub-downs. On the contrary, the stronger and the fresher his +body became after the cold water, the keener and the more unbearable became the +sensations of his recurrent fear. And just at those moments when, during his +freedom, he had felt a special influx of the joy and power of life,—in +the mornings after he had slept soundly and gone through his physical +exercises,—now there appeared this deadening fear which was so foreign to +his nature. He noticed this and thought: +</p> + +<p> +“It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body +and not strengthen it. It is foolish!” +</p> + +<p> +So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-downs. To the soldier he shouted, as +if to explain and justify himself: +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind that I have stopped. It’s a good thing, my +friend,—but not for those who are to be hanged. But it’s very good +for all others.” +</p> + +<p> +And, indeed, he began to feel somewhat better. He tried also to eat less, so as +to grow still weaker, but notwithstanding the lack of pure air and exercises, +his appetite was very good,—it was difficult for him to control it, and +he ate everything that was brought to him. Then he began to manage +differently—before starting to eat he would pour out half into the pail, +and this seemed to work. A dull drowsiness and faintness came over him. +</p> + +<p> +“I’ll show you what I can do!” he threatened his body, and at +the same time sadly, yet tenderly he felt his flabby, softened muscles with his +hand. +</p> + +<p> +Soon, however, his body grew accustomed to this regime as well, and the fear of +death appeared again—not so keen, nor so burning, but more disgusting, +somewhat akin to a nauseating sensation. “It’s because they are +dragging it out so long,” thought Sergey. “It would be a good idea +to sleep all the time till the day of the execution,” and he tried to +sleep as much as possible. At first he succeeded, but later, either because he +had slept too much, or for some other reason, insomnia appeared. And with it +came eager, penetrating thoughts and a longing for life. +</p> + +<p> +“I am not afraid of this devil!” he thought of Death. “I +simply feel sorry for my life. It is a splendid thing, no matter what the +pessimists say about it. What if they were to hang a pessimist? Ah, I feel +sorry for life, very sorry! And why does my beard grow now? It didn’t +grow before, but suddenly it grows—why?” +</p> + +<p> +He shook his head mournfully, heaving long, painful sighs. Silence—then a +sigh; then a brief silence again—followed by a longer, deeper sigh. +</p> + +<p> +Thus it went on until the trial and the terrible meeting with his parents. When +he awoke in his cell the next day he realized clearly that everything between +him and life was ended, that there were only a few empty hours of waiting and +then death would come,—and a strange sensation took possession of him. He +felt as though he had been stripped, stripped entirely,—as if not only +his clothes, but the sun, the air, the noise of voices and his ability to do +things had been wrested from him. Death was not there as yet, but life was +there no longer,—there was something new, something astonishing, +inexplicable, not entirely reasonable and yet not altogether without +meaning,—something so deep and mysterious and supernatural that it was +impossible to understand. +</p> + +<p> +“Fie, you devil!” wondered Sergey, painfully. “What is this? +Where am I? I—who am I?” +</p> + +<p> +He examined himself attentively, with interest, beginning with his large prison +slippers, ending with his stomach where his coat protruded. He paced the cell, +spreading out his arms and continuing to survey himself like a woman in a new +dress which is too long for her. He tried to turn his head, and it turned. And +this strange, terrible, uncouth creature was he, Sergey Golovin, and soon he +would be no more! +</p> + +<p> +Everything became strange. +</p> + +<p> +He tried to walk across the cell—and it seemed strange to him that he +could walk. He tried to sit down—and it seemed strange to him that he +could sit. He tried to drink some water—and it seemed strange to him that +he could drink, that he could swallow, that he could hold the cup, that he had +fingers and that those fingers were trembling. He choked, began to cough and +while coughing, thought: “How strange it is that I am coughing.” +</p> + +<p> +“Am I losing my reason?” thought Sergey, growing cold. “Am I +coming to that, too? The devil take them!” +</p> + +<p> +He rubbed his forehead with his hand, and this also seemed strange to him. And +then he remained breathless, motionless, petrified for hours, suppressing every +thought, all loud breathing, all motion,—for every thought seemed to him +but madness, every motion—madness. Time was no more; it appeared +transformed into space, airless and transparent, into an enormous square upon +which all were there—the earth and life and people. He saw all that at +one glance, all to the very end, to the mysterious abyss—Death. And he +was tortured not by the fact that Death was visible, but that both Life and +Death were visible at the same time. The curtain which through eternity has +hidden the mystery of life and the mystery of death was pushed aside by a +sacrilegious hand, and the mysteries ceased to be mysteries—yet they +remained incomprehensible, like the Truth written in a foreign tongue. There +were no conceptions in his human mind, no words in his human language that +could define what he saw. And the words “I am afraid” were uttered +by him only because there were no other words, because no other conceptions +existed, nor could other conceptions exist which would grasp this new, un-human +condition. Thus would it be with a man if, while remaining within the bounds of +human reason, experience and feelings, he were suddenly to see God Himself. He +would see Him but would not understand, even though he knew that it was God, +and he would tremble with inconceivable sufferings of incomprehension. +</p> + +<p> +“There is Müller for you!” he suddenly uttered loudly, with extreme +conviction, and shook his head. And with that unexpected break in his feelings, +of which the human soul is so capable, he laughed heartily and cheerfully. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, Müller! My dear Müller! Oh, you splendid German! After all you are +right, Müller, and I am an ass!” +</p> + +<p> +He paced the cell quickly several times and to the great astonishment of the +soldier who was watching him through the peephole, he quickly undressed himself +and cheerfully went through all the eighteen exercises with the greatest care. +He stretched and expanded his young, somewhat emaciated body, sat down for a +moment, drew deep breaths of air and exhaled it, stood up on tip-toe, stretched +his arms and his feet. And after each exercise he announced, with satisfaction: +</p> + +<p> +“That’s it! That’s the real way, Müller!” His cheeks +flushed; drops of warm, pleasant perspiration came from the pores of his body, +and his heart beat soundly and evenly. +</p> + +<p> +“The fact is, Müller,” philosophized Sergey, expanding his chest so +that the ribs under his thin, tight skin were outlined +clearly,—“the fact is, that there is a nineteenth exercise—to +hang by the neck motionless. That is called execution. Do you understand, +Müller? They take a live man, let us say Sergey Golovin, they swaddle him as a +doll and they hang him by the neck until he is dead. It is a foolish exercise, +Müller, but it can’t be helped,—we have to do it.” +</p> + +<p> +He bent over on the right side and repeated: +</p> + +<p> +“We have to do it, Müller.” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap12"></a>CHAPTER IX<br/>DREADFUL SOLITUDE</h3> + +<p> +Under the same ringing of the clock, separated from Sergey and Musya by only a +few empty cells, but yet so painfully desolate and alone in the whole world as +though no other soul existed, poor Vasily Kashirin was passing the last hours +of his life in terror and in anguish. +</p> + +<p> +Perspiring, his moist shirt clinging to his body, his once curly hair +disheveled, he tossed about in the cell convulsively and hopelessly, like a man +suffering from an unbearable physical torture. He would sit down for awhile, +then start to run again, he would press his forehead against the wall, stop and +seek something with his eyes—as if looking for some medicine. His +expression changed as though he had two different faces. The former, the young +face, had disappeared somewhere, and a new one, a terrible face that had seemed +to have come out of the darkness, had taken its place. +</p> + +<p> +The fear of death had come upon him all at once and taken possession of him +completely and forcibly. In the morning, while facing almost certain death, he +had been care-free and had scorned it, but toward evening when he was placed in +a cell in solitary confinement, he was whirled and carried away by a wave of +mad fear. So long as he went of his own free will to face danger and death, so +long as he had death, even though it seemed terrible, in his own hands, he felt +at ease. He was even cheerful; in the sensation of boundless freedom, of brave +and firm conviction of his fearless will, his little, shrunken, womanish fear +was drowned, leaving no trace. With an infernal machine at his girdle, he made +the cruel force of dynamite his own, also its fiery death-bearing power. And as +he walked along the street, amidst the bustling, plain people, who were +occupied with their affairs, who were hurriedly avoiding the dangers from the +horses of carriages and cars, he seemed to himself as a stranger from another, +unknown world, where neither death nor fear was known. +</p> + +<p> +And suddenly this harsh, wild, stupefying change. He can no longer go where he +pleases, but he is led where others please. He can no longer choose the place +he likes, but he is placed in a stone cage, and locked up like a thing. He can +no longer choose freely, like all people, between life and death, but he will +surely and inevitably be put to death. The incarnation of will-power, life and +strength an instant before, he has now become a wretched image of the most +pitiful weakness in the world. He has been transformed into an animal waiting +to be slaughtered, a deaf-mute object which may be taken from place to place, +burnt and broken. It matters not what he might say, nobody would listen to his +words, and if he endeavored to shout, they would stop his mouth with a rag. +Whether he can walk alone or not, they will take him away and hang him. And if +he should offer resistance, struggle or lie down on the ground—they will +overpower him, lift him, bind him and carry him, bound, to the gallows. And the +fact that this machine-like work will be performed over him by human beings +like himself, lent to them a new, extraordinary and ominous aspect—they +seemed to him like ghosts that came to him for this one purpose, or like +automatic puppets on springs. They would seize him, take him, carry him, hang +him, pull him by the feet. They would cut the rope, take him down, carry him +off and bury him. +</p> + +<p> +From the first day of his imprisonment the people and life seemed to him to +have turned into an incomprehensibly terrible world of phantoms and automatic +puppets. Almost maddened with fear, he attempted to picture to himself that +human beings had tongues and that they could speak, but he could not—they +seemed to him to be mute. He tried to recall their speech, the meaning of the +words that people used in their relations with one another—but he could +not. Their mouths seemed to open, some sounds were heard; then they moved their +feet and disappeared. And nothing more. +</p> + +<p> +Thus would a man feel if he were at night alone in his house and suddenly all +objects were to come to life, start to move and overpower him. And suddenly +they would all begin to judge him: the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table +and the divan. He would cry and toss about, entreating, calling for help, while +they would speak among themselves in their own language, and then would lead +him to the scaffold,—they, the cupboard, the chair, the writing-table and +the divan. And the other objects would look on. +</p> + +<p> +To Vasily Kashirin, who was condemned to death by hanging, everything now +seemed like children’s playthings: his cell, the door with the peephole, +the strokes of the wound-up clock, the carefully molded fortress, and +especially that mechanical puppet with the gun who stamped his feet in the +corridor, and the others who, frightening him, peeped into his cell through the +little window and handed him the food in silence. And that which he was +experiencing was not the fear of death; death was now rather welcome to him. +Death with all its eternal mysteriousness and incomprehensibility was more +acceptable to his reason than this strangely and fantastically changed world. +What is more, death seemed to have been destroyed completely in this insane +world of phantoms and puppets, having lost its great and enigmatic +significance, becoming something mechanical and only for that reason terrible. +He would be seized, taken, led, hanged, pulled by the feet, the rope would be +cut, he would be taken down, carried off and buried. +</p> + +<p> +And the man would have disappeared from the world. +</p> + +<p> +At the trial the nearness of his comrades brought Kashirin to himself. For an +instant he imagined he saw real people; they were sitting and trying him, +speaking like human beings, listening, apparently understanding him. But as he +mentally rehearsed the meeting with his mother he clearly felt with the terror +of a man who is beginning to lose his reason and who realizes it, that this old +woman in the black little kerchief was only an artificial, mechanical puppet, +of the kind that can say “pa-pa,” “ma-ma,” but somewhat +better constructed. He tried to speak to her, while thinking at the same time +with a shudder: +</p> + +<p> +“O Lord! That is a puppet. A mother doll. And there is a soldier-puppet, +and there, at home, is a father-puppet, and this is the puppet of Vasily +Kashirin.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to him that in another moment he would hear somewhere the creaking of +the mechanism, the screeching of unoiled wheels. When his mother began to cry, +something human again flashed for an instant, but at the very first words it +disappeared again, and it was interesting and terrible to see that water was +flowing from the eyes of the doll. +</p> + +<p> +Then, in his cell, when the terror had become unbearable, Vasily Kashirin +attempted to pray. Of all that had surrounded his childhood days in his +father’s house under the guise of religion only a repulsive, bitter and +irritating sediment remained; but faith there was none. But once, perhaps in +his earliest childhood, he had heard a few words which had filled him with +palpitating emotion and which remained during all his life enwrapped with +tender poetry. These words were: +</p> + +<p> +“The joy of all the afflicted...” +</p> + +<p> +It had happened, during painful periods in his life, that he whispered to +himself, not in prayer, without being definitely conscious of it, these words: +“The joy of all the afflicted”—and suddenly he would feel +relieved and a desire would come over him to go to some dear friend and +question gently: +</p> + +<p> +“Our life—is this life? Eh, my dearest, is this life?” +</p> + +<p> +And then suddenly it would appear laughable to him and he would feel like +mussing up his hair, putting forth his knee and thrusting out his chest as +though to receive heavy blows; saying: “Here, strike!” +</p> + +<p> +He did not tell anybody, not even his nearest comrades, about his “joy of +all the afflicted” and it was as though he himself did not know about +it,—so deeply was it hidden in his soul. He recalled it but rarely and +cautiously. +</p> + +<p> +Now when the terror of the insoluble mystery, which appeared so plainly before +him, enveloped him completely, even as the water in high-flood covers the +willow twigs on the shore,—a desire came upon him to pray. He felt like +kneeling, but he was ashamed of the soldier and, folding his arms on his chest, +he whispered softly: +</p> + +<p> +“The joy of all the afflicted!” +</p> + +<p> +And he repeated tenderly, in anguish: +</p> + +<p> +“Joy of all the afflicted, come to me, help Vaska Kashirin.” +</p> + +<p> +“Long ago, while he was yet in his first term at the university and used +to go off on a spree sometimes, before he had made the acquaintance of Werner +and before he had entered the organization, he used then to call himself +half-boastingly, half-pityingly, “Vaska Kashirin,”—and now +for some reason or other he suddenly felt like calling himself by the same name +again. But the words had a dead and toneless sound. +</p> + +<p> +“The joy of all the afflicted!” +</p> + +<p> +Something stirred. It was as though some one’s calm and mournful image +had flashed up in the distance and died out quietly, without illuminating the +deathly gloom. The wound-up clock in the steeple struck. The soldier in the +corridor made a noise with his gun or with his saber and he yawned, slowly, at +intervals. +</p> + +<p> +“Joy of all the afflicted! You are silent! Will you not say anything to +Vaska Kashirin?” +</p> + +<p> +He smiled patiently and waited. All was empty within his soul and about him. +And the calm, mournful image did not reappear. He recalled, painfully and +unnecessarily, wax candles burning; the priest in his vestments; the +<i>ikon</i> painted on the wall. He recalled his father, bending and stretching +himself, praying and bowing to the ground, while looking sidewise to see +whether Vaska was praying, or whether he was planning some mischief. And a +feeling of still greater terror came over Vasily than before the prayer. +</p> + +<p> +Everything now disappeared. +</p> + +<p> +Madness came crawling painfully. His consciousness was dying out like an +extinguishing bonfire, growing icy like the corpse of a man who had just died, +whose heart is still warm but whose hands and feet had already become stiffened +with cold. His dying reason flared up as red as blood again and said that he, +Vasily Kashirin, might perhaps become insane here, suffer pains for which there +is no name, reach a degree of anguish and suffering that had never been +experienced by a single living being; that he might beat his head against the +wall, pick his eyes out with his fingers, speak and shout whatever he pleased, +that he might plead with tears that he could endure it no longer,—and +nothing would happen. Nothing could happen. +</p> + +<p> +And nothing happened. His feet, which had a consciousness and life of their +own, continued to walk and to carry his trembling, moist body. His hands, which +had a consciousness of their own, endeavored in vain to fasten the coat which +was open at his chest and to warm his trembling, moist body. His body quivered +with cold. His eyes stared. And this was calm itself embodied. +</p> + +<p> +But there was one more moment of wild terror. That was when people entered his +cell. He did not even imagine that this visit meant that it was time to go to +the execution; he simply saw the people and was frightened like a child. +</p> + +<p> +“I will not do it! I will not do it!” he whispered inaudibly with +his livid lips and silently retreated to the depth of the cell, even as in +childhood he shrank when his father lifted his hand. +</p> + +<p> +“We must start.” +</p> + +<p> +The people were speaking, walking around him, handing him something. He closed +his eyes, he shook a little,—and began to dress himself slowly. His +consciousness must have returned to him, for he suddenly asked the official for +a cigarette. And the official generously opened his silver cigarette-case upon +which was a chased figure in the style of the decadents. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap13"></a>CHAPTER X<br/>THE WALLS ARE FALLING</h3> + +<p> +The unidentified man, who called himself Werner, was tired of life and +struggle. There was a time when he loved life very dearly, when he enjoyed the +theater, literature and social intercourse. Endowed with an excellent memory +and a firm will, he had mastered several European languages and could easily +pass for a German, a Frenchman or an Englishman. He usually spoke German with a +Bavarian accent, but when he felt like it, he could speak like a born Berliner. +He was fond of dress, his manners were excellent and he alone, of all the +members of the organization, dared attend the balls given in high society, +without running the risk of being recognized as an outsider. +</p> + +<p> +But for a long time, altogether unnoticed by his comrades, there had ripened in +his soul a dark contempt for mankind; contempt mingled with despair and +painful, almost deadly fatigue. By nature rather a mathematician than a poet, +he had not known until now any inspiration, any ecstasy and at times he felt +like a madman, looking for the squaring of a circle in pools of human blood. +The enemy against whom he struggled every day could not inspire him with +respect. It was a dense net of stupidity, treachery and falsehood, vile insults +and base deceptions. The last incident which seemed to have destroyed in him +forever the desire to live, was the murder of the provocateur which he had +committed by order of the organization. He had killed him in cold blood, but +when he saw that dead, deceitful, now calm, and after all pitiful, human face, +he suddenly ceased to respect himself and his work. Not that he was seized with +a feeling of repentance, but he simply stopped appreciating himself. He became +uninteresting to himself, unimportant, a dull stranger. But being a man of +strong, unbroken will-power, he did not leave the organization. He remained +outwardly the same as before, only there was something cold, yet painful in his +eyes. He never spoke to anyone of this. +</p> + +<p> +He possessed another rare quality: just as there are people who have never +known headaches, so Werner had never known fear. When other people were afraid, +he looked upon them without censure but also without any particular compassion, +just as upon a rather contagious illness from which, however, he himself had +never suffered. He felt sorry for his comrades, especially for Vasya Kashirin; +but that was a cold, almost official pity, which even some of the judges may +have felt at times. +</p> + +<p> +Werner understood that the execution was not merely death, that it was +something different,—but he resolved to face it calmly, as something not +to be considered; to live until the end as if nothing had happened and as if +nothing could happen. Only in this way could he express his greatest contempt +for capital punishment and preserve his last freedom of the spirit which could +not be torn away from him. At the trial—and even his comrades who knew +well his cold, haughty fearlessness would perhaps not have believed +this,—he thought neither of death nor of life,—but concentrated his +attention deeply and coolly upon a difficult chess game which he was playing. A +superior chess player, he had started this game on the first day of his +imprisonment and continued it uninterruptedly. Even the sentence condemning him +to death by hanging did not remove a single figure from his imaginary +chessboard. +</p> + +<p> +Even the knowledge that he would not be able to finish this game, did not stop +him; and the morning of the last day that he was to remain on earth he started +by correcting a not altogether successful move he had made on the previous day. +Clasping his lowered hands between his knees, he sat for a long time +motionless, then he rose and began to walk, meditating. His walk was peculiar: +he leaned the upper part of his body slightly forward and stamped the ground +with his heels firmly and distinctly. His steps usually left deep, plain +imprints even on dry ground. He whistled softly, in one breath, a simple +Italian melody, which helped his meditation. +</p> + +<p> +But this time for some reason or other the thing did not work well. With an +unpleasant feeling that he had made some important, even grave blunder, he went +back several times and examined the game almost from the beginning. He found no +blunder, yet the feeling about a blunder committed not only failed to leave +him, but even grew ever more intense and unpleasant. Suddenly an unexpected and +offensive thought came into his mind: Did the blunder perhaps consist in his +playing chess simply because he wanted to distract his attention from the +execution and thus shield himself against the fear of death which is apparently +inevitable in every person condemned to death? +</p> + +<p> +“No. What for?” he answered coldly and closed calmly his imaginary +chessboard. And with the same concentration with which he had played chess, he +tried to give himself an account of the horror and the helplessness of his +situation. As though he were going through a strict examination, he looked over +the cell, trying not to let anything escape. He counted the hours that remained +until the execution, made for himself an approximate and quite exact picture of +the execution itself and shrugged his shoulders. +</p> + +<p> +“Well?” he said to some one half-questioningly. “Here it is. +Where is the fear?” +</p> + +<p> +Indeed there was no fear. Not only was it not there, but something entirely +different, the reverse of fear, developed—a sensation of confused, but +enormous and savage joy. And the error, which he had not yet discovered, no +longer called forth in him vexation or irritation,—it seemed to speak +loudly of something good and unexpected, as though he had believed a dear +friend of his to be dead, and that friend turned out to be alive, safe and +sound and laughing. +</p> + +<p> +Werner again shrugged his shoulders and felt his pulse,—his heart was +beating faster than usual, but soundly and evenly, with a specially ringing +throb. He looked about once more, attentively, like a novice for the first time +in prison,—examined the walls, the bolts, the chair which was screwed to +the floor, and thought: +</p> + +<p> +“Why do I feel so easy, so joyous and free? Yes, so free? I think of the +execution to-morrow—and I feel as though it is not there. I look at the +walls—and I feel as though they are not here, either. And I feel so free, +as though I were not in prison, but had just come out of some prison where I +had spent all my life. What does this mean?” +</p> + +<p> +His hands began to tremble,—something Werner had not experienced before. +His thoughts fluttered ever more furiously. It was as if tongues of fire had +flashed up in his mind, and the fire wanted to burst forth and illumine the +distance which was still dark as night. Now the light pierced through and the +widely illuminated distance began to shine. +</p> + +<p> +The fatigue that had tormented Werner during the last two years had +disappeared; the dead, cold, heavy serpent with its closed eyes and mouth +clinched in death, had fallen away from his breast. Before the face of death, +beautiful Youth came back to him physically. Indeed, it was more than beautiful +Youth. With that wonderful clarity of the spirit which in rare moments comes +over man and lifts him to the loftiest peaks of meditation, Werner suddenly +perceived both life and death, and he was awed by the splendor of the +unprecedented spectacle. It seemed to him that he was walking along the highest +mountain-ridge, which was narrow like the blade of a knife, and on one side he +saw Life, on the other side—Death,—like two sparkling, deep, +beautiful seas, blending in one boundless, broad surface at the horizon. +</p> + +<p> +“What is this? What a divine spectacle!” he said slowly, rising +involuntarily and straightening himself, as if in the presence of a supreme +being. And destroying the walls, space and time with the impetuosity of his +all-penetrating look, he cast a wide glance somewhere into the depth of the +life he was to forsake. +</p> + +<p> +And life appeared to him in a new light. He did not strive, as before, to +clothe in words that which he had seen; nor were there such words in the still +poor, meager human language. That small, cynical and evil feeling which had +called forth in him a contempt for mankind and at times even an aversion for +the sight of a human face, had disappeared completely. Thus, for a man who goes +up in an airship, the filth and litter of the narrow streets disappear and that +which was ugly becomes beautiful. +</p> + +<p> +Unconsciously Werner stepped over to the table and leaned his right hand on it. +Proud and commanding by nature, he had never before assumed such a proud, free, +commanding pose, had never turned his head and never looked as he did +now,—for he had never yet been as free and dominant as he was here in the +prison, with but a few hours from execution and death. +</p> + +<p> +Now men seemed new to him,—they appeared amiable and charming to his +clarified vision. Soaring over time, he saw clearly how young mankind was, that +but yesterday it had been howling like a beast in the forests; and that which +had seemed to him terrible in human beings, unpardonable and repulsive, +suddenly became very dear to him,—like the inability of a child to walk +as grown people do, like a child’s unconnected lisping, flashing with +sparks of genius; like a child’s comical blunders, errors and painful +bruises. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear people!” Werner suddenly smiled and at once lost all that +was imposing in his pose; he again became a prisoner who finds his cell narrow +and uncomfortable under lock, and he was tired of the annoying, searching eye +staring at him through the peephole in the door. And, strange to say, almost +instantly he forgot all that he had seen a little while before so clearly and +distinctly; and, what is still stranger, he did not even make an effort to +recall it. He simply sat down as comfortably as possible, without the usual +stiffness of his body, and surveyed the walls and the bars with a faint and +gentle, strange, un-Werner-like smile. Still another new thing happened to +Werner,—something that had never happened to him before: he suddenly +started to weep. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear comrades!” he whispered, crying bitterly. “My dear +comrades!” +</p> + +<p> +By what mysterious ways did he change from the feeling of proud and boundless +freedom to this tender and passionate compassion? He did not know, nor did he +think of it. Did he pity his dear comrades, or did his tears conceal something +else, a still loftier and more passionate feeling?—His suddenly revived +and rejuvenated heart did not know this either. He wept and whispered: +</p> + +<p> +“My dear comrades! My dear, dear comrades!” +</p> + +<p> +In this man, who was bitterly weeping and smiling through tears, no one could +have recognized the cold and haughty, weary, yet daring Werner—neither +the judges, nor the comrades, nor even he himself. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap14"></a>CHAPTER XI<br/>ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD</h3> + +<p> +Before placing the condemned people in coaches, all five were brought together +in a large cold room with a vaulted ceiling, which resembled an office, where +people worked no longer, or a deserted waiting-room. They were now permitted to +speak to one another. +</p> + +<p> +Only Tanya Kovalchuk availed herself at once of the permission. The others +firmly and silently shook each other’s hands, which were as cold as ice +and as hot as fire,—and silently, trying not to look at each other, they +crowded together in an awkward, absent-minded group. Now that they were +together, they felt somewhat ashamed of what each of them had experienced when +alone; and they were afraid to look, so as not to notice or to show that new, +peculiar, somewhat shameful sensation that each of them felt or suspected the +others of feeling. +</p> + +<p> +But after a short silence they glanced at each other, smiled and immediately +began to feel at ease and unrestrained, as before. No change seemed to have +occurred, and if it had occurred, it had come so gently over all of them that +it could not be discerned in any one separately. All spoke and moved about +strangely: abruptly, by jolts, either too fast or too slowly. Sometimes they +seemed to choke with their words and repeated them a number of times; sometimes +they did not finish a phrase they had started, or thought they had +finished—they did not notice it. They all blinked their eyes and examined +ordinary objects curiously, not recognizing them, like people who had worn +eye-glasses and had suddenly taken them off; and all of them frequently turned +around abruptly, as though some one behind them was calling them all the time +and showing them something. But they did not notice this, either. Musya’s +and Tanya Kovalchuk’s cheeks and ears were burning; Sergey was at first +somewhat pale, but he soon recovered and looked as he always did. +</p> + +<p> +Only Vasily attracted everybody’s attention. Even among them, he looked +strange and terrible. Werner became agitated and said to Musya in a low voice, +with tender anxiety: +</p> + +<p> +“What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it possible that he—— +What? I must go to him.” +</p> + +<p> +Vasily looked at Werner from the distance, as though not recognizing him, and +he lowered his eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Vasya, what have you done with your hair? What is the matter with you? +Never mind, my dear, never mind, it will soon be over. We must keep up, we +must, we must.” +</p> + +<p> +Vasily was silent. But when it seemed that he would no longer say anything, a +dull, belated, terribly remote answer came—like an answer from the grave: +</p> + +<p> +“I’m all right. I hold my own.” +</p> + +<p> +Then he repeated: +</p> + +<p> +“I hold my own.” +</p> + +<p> +Werner was delighted. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the way, that’s the way. Good boy. That’s the +way.” +</p> + +<p> +But his eyes met Vasily’s dark, wearied glance fixed upon him from the +distance and he thought with instant sorrow: “From where is he looking? +From where is he speaking?” and with profound tenderness, with which +people address a grave, he said: +</p> + +<p> +“Vasya, do you hear? I love you very much.” +</p> + +<p> +“So do I love you very much,” answered the tongue, moving with +difficulty. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Musya took Werner by the hand and with an expression of surprise, she +said like an actress on the stage, with measured emphasis: +</p> + +<p> +“Werner, what is this? You said, ‘I love’? You never before +said ‘I love’ to anybody. And why are you all so—tender and +serene? Why?” +</p> + +<p> +“Why?” +</p> + +<p> +And like an actor, also accentuating what he felt, Werner pressed Musya’s +hand firmly: +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, now I love very much. Don’t tell it to the others,—it +isn’t necessary, I feel somewhat ashamed, but I love deeply.” +</p> + +<p> +Their eyes met and flashed up brightly, and everything about them seemed to +have plunged in darkness. It is thus that in the flash of lightning all other +lights are instantly darkened and the heavy yellow flame casts a shadow upon +earth. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” said Musya, “yes, Werner.” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” he answered, “yes, Musya, yes.” +</p> + +<p> +They understood each other and something was firmly settled between them at +this moment. And his eyes glistening, Werner again became agitated and quickly +stepped over to Sergey. +</p> + +<p> +“Seryozha!” +</p> + +<p> +But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. Almost crying with maternal pride, she tugged +Sergey frantically by the sleeve. +</p> + +<p> +“Listen, Werner! I am crying here for him, I am wearing myself to death, +and he is occupying himself with gymnastics!” +</p> + +<p> +“According to the Müller system?” smiled Werner. +</p> + +<p> +Sergey knit his brow confusedly. +</p> + +<p> +“You needn’t laugh, Werner. I have convinced myself +conclusively—” +</p> + +<p> +All began to laugh. Drawing strength and courage from one another, they +gradually regained their poise—became the same as they used to be. They +did not notice this, however, and thought that they had never changed at all. +Suddenly Werner interrupted their laughter and said to Sergey very earnestly: +</p> + +<p> +“You are right, Seryozha. You are perfectly right.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, but you must understand,” said Golovin gladly. “Of +course, we—” +</p> + +<p> +But at this point they were asked to start. And their jailers were so kind as +to permit them to ride in pairs, as they pleased. Altogether the jailers were +extremely kind; even too kind. It was as if they tried partly to show +themselves humane and partly to show that they were not there at all, but that +everything was being done as by machinery. But they were all pale. +</p> + +<p> +“Musya, you go with him.” Werner pointed at Vasily, who stood +motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“I understand,” Musya nodded. “And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I? Tanya will go with Sergey, you go with Vasya.... I will go alone. +That doesn’t matter, I can do it, you know.” +</p> + +<p> +When they went out in the yard, the moist, soft darkness rushed warmly and +strongly against their faces, their eyes, taking their breath away, then +suddenly it penetrated their bodies tenderly and refreshingly. It was hard to +believe that this wonderful effect was produced simply by the spring wind, the +warm, moist wind. And the really wonderful spring night was filled with the +odor of melting snow, and through the boundless space the noise of drops +resounded. Hastily and frequently, as though trying to overtake one another, +little drops were falling, striking in unison a ringing tune. Suddenly one of +them would strike out of tune and all was mingled in a merry splash in hasty +confusion. Then a large, heavy drop would strike firmly and again the fast, +spring melody resounded distinctly. And over the city, above the roofs of the +fortress, hung a pale redness in the sky reflected by the electric lights. +</p> + +<p> +“U-ach!” Sergey Golovin heaved a deep sigh and held his breath, as +though he regretted to exhale from his lungs the fine, fresh air. +</p> + +<p> +“How long have you had such weather?” inquired Werner. +“It’s real spring.” +</p> + +<p> +“It’s only the second day,” was the polite answer. +“Before that we had mostly frosty weather.” +</p> + +<p> +The dark carriages rolled over noiselessly one after another, took them in by +twos, started off into the darkness—there where the lantern was shaking +at the gate. The convoys like gray silhouettes surrounded each carriage; the +horseshoes struck noisily against the ground, or plashed upon the melting snow. +</p> + +<p> +When Werner bent down, about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme whispered +to him: +</p> + +<p> +“There is somebody else going along with you.” +</p> + +<p> +Werner was surprised. +</p> + +<p> +“Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes! Another one? Who is he?” +</p> + +<p> +The gendarme was silent. Indeed, in a dark corner a small, motionless but +living figure pressed close to the side of the carriage. By the reflection of +the lantern Werner noticed the flash of an open eye. Seating himself, Werner +pushed his foot against the other man’s knee. +</p> + +<p> +“Excuse me, comrade.” +</p> + +<p> +The man made no reply. It was only when the carriage started, that he suddenly +asked in broken Russian, speaking with difficulty: +</p> + +<p> +“Who are you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am Werner, condemned to hanging for the attempt upon N—. And +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am Yanson. They must not hang me.” +</p> + +<p> +They were riding thus in order to appear two hours later face to face before +the inexplicable great mystery, in order to pass from Life to Death—and +they were introducing each other. Life and Death moved simultaneously, and +until the very end Life remained life, to the most ridiculous and insipid +trifles. +</p> + +<p> +“What have you done, Yanson?” +</p> + +<p> +“I killed my master with a knife. I stole money.” +</p> + +<p> +It seemed from the tone of his voice that Yanson was falling asleep. Werner +found his flabby hand in the darkness and pressed it. Yanson withdrew it +drowsily. +</p> + +<p> +“Are you afraid?” asked Werner. +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be hanged.” +</p> + +<p> +They became silent. Werner again found the Esthonian’s hand and pressed +it firmly between his dry, burning palms. Yanson’s hand lay motionless, +like a board, but he made no longer any effort to withdraw it. +</p> + +<p> +It was close and suffocating in the carriage. The air was filled with the smell +of soldiers’ clothes, mustiness, and the leather of wet boots. The young +gendarme who sat opposite Werner breathed warmly upon him, and in his breath +there was the odor of onions and cheap tobacco. But some brisk, fresh air came +in through certain clefts, and because of this, spring was felt even more +intensely in this small, stifling, moving box, than outside. The carriage kept +turning now to the right, now to the left, now it seemed to turn back. At times +it seemed as though they had been turning around on one and the same spot for +hours for some reason or other. At first a bluish electric light penetrated +through the lowered, heavy window shades; then suddenly, after a certain turn +it grew dark, and only by this could they guess that they had turned into +deserted streets in the outskirts of the city and that they were nearing the S. +railroad station. Sometimes during sharp turns, Werner’s live, bent knee +would strike against the live, bent knee of the gendarme, and it was hard to +believe that the execution was approaching. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are we going?” Yanson asked suddenly. He was somewhat dizzy +from the continuous turning of the dark box and he felt slightly sick at his +stomach. +</p> + +<p> +Werner answered and pressed the Esthonian’s hand more firmly. He felt +like saying something especially kind and caressing to this little, sleepy man, +and he already loved him as he had never loved anyone in his life. +</p> + +<p> +“You don’t seem to sit comfortably, my dear man. Move over here, to +me.” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson was silent for awhile, then he replied: +</p> + +<p> +“Well, thank you. I’m sitting all right. Are they going to hang you +too?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes,” answered Werner, almost laughing with unexpected jollity, +and he waved his hand easily and freely, as though he were speaking of some +absurd and trifling joke which kind but terribly comical people wanted to play +on him. +</p> + +<p> +“Have you a wife?” asked Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +“No. I have no wife. I am single.” +</p> + +<p> +“I am also alone. Alone,” said Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +Werner’s head also began to feel dizzy. And at times it seemed that they +were going to some festival; strange to say, almost all those who went to the +scaffold experienced the same sensation and mingled with sorrow and fear there +was a vague joy as they anticipated the extraordinary thing that was soon to +befall them. Reality was intoxicated with madness and Death, united with Life, +brought forth apparitions. It seemed very possible that flags were waving over +the houses. +</p> + +<p> +“We have arrived!” said Werner gayly when the carriage stopped, and +he jumped out easily. But with Yanson it was a rather slow affair: silently and +very drowsily he resisted and would not come out. He seized the knob. The +gendarme opened the weak fingers and pulled his hand away. Then Yanson seized +the corner of the carriage, the door, the high wheel, but immediately let it go +upon the slightest effort on the part of the gendarme. He did not exactly seize +these things; he rather cleaved to each object sleepily and silently, and was +torn away easily, without any effort. Finally he got up. +</p> + +<p> +There were no flags. The railroad station was dark, deserted and lifeless; the +passenger trains were not running any longer, and the train which was silently +waiting for these passengers on the way needed no bright light, no commotion. +Suddenly Werner began to feel weary. It was not fear, nor anguish, but a +feeling of enormous, painful, tormenting weariness which makes one feel like +going off somewhere, lying down and closing one’s eyes very tightly. +Werner stretched himself and yawned slowly. Yanson also stretched himself and +quickly yawned several times. +</p> + +<p> +“I wish they’d be quicker about it,” said Werner wearily. +Yanson was silent, shrinking together. +</p> + +<p> +When the condemned moved along the deserted platform which was surrounded by +soldiers, to the dimly lighted cars, Werner found himself near Sergey Golovin; +Sergey, pointing with his hand somewhere aside, began to say something, but +only the word “lantern” was heard distinctly, and the rest was +drowned in slow and weary yawning. +</p> + +<p> +“What did you say?” asked Werner, also yawning. +</p> + +<p> +“The lantern. The lamp in the lantern is smoking,” said Sergey. +Werner looked around. Indeed, the lamp in the lantern was smoking very much, +and the glass had already turned black on top. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, it is smoking.” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly he thought: “What have I to do with the smoking of the lamp, +since——” +</p> + +<p> +Sergey apparently thought the same, as he glanced quickly at Werner and turned +away. But both stopped yawning. +</p> + +<p> +They all went to the cars themselves, only Yanson had to be led by the arms. At +first he stamped his feet and his boots seemed to stick to the boards of the +platform. Then he bent his knees and fell into the arms of the gendarmes, his +feet dangled like those of a very intoxicated man, and the tips of the boots +scraped against the wood. It took a long time until he was silently pushed +through the door. +</p> + +<p> +Vasily Kashirin also moved himself, unconsciously imitating the movements of +his comrades—he did everything as they did. But on boarding the platform +of the car, he stumbled, and a gendarme took him by the elbow to support him. +Vasily shuddered and screamed shrilly, drawing back his arm: +</p> + +<p> +“Ai!” +</p> + +<p> +“What is it, Vasya?” Werner rushed over to him. Vasily was silent, +trembling in every limb. The confused and even offended gendarme explained: +</p> + +<p> +“I wanted to keep him from falling, and he—” +</p> + +<p> +“Come, Vasya, let me hold you,” said Werner, about to take him by +the arm. But Vasily drew back his arm again and cried more loudly than before: +</p> + +<p> +“Ai!” +</p> + +<p> +“Vasya, it is I, Werner.” +</p> + +<p> +“I know. Don’t touch me. I’ll go myself.” +</p> + +<p> +And continuing to tremble he entered the car himself and seated himself in a +corner. Bending over to Musya, Werner asked her softly, pointing with his eyes +at Vasily: +</p> + +<p> +“How about him?” +</p> + +<p> +“Bad,” answered Musya, also in a soft voice. “He is dead +already. Werner, tell me, is there such a thing as death?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know, Musya, but I think that there is no such +thing,” replied Werner seriously and thoughtfully. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s what I have thought. But he? I was tortured with him in the +carriage—it was like riding with a corpse.” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know, Musya. Perhaps there is such a thing as death for +some people. Meanwhile, perhaps, but later there will be no death. For me death +also existed before, but now it exists no longer.” +</p> + +<p> +Musya’s somewhat paled cheeks flushed as she asked: +</p> + +<p> +“It did exist, Werner? It did?” +</p> + +<p> +“It did. But not now any longer. Just the same as with you.” +</p> + +<p> +A noise was heard in the doorway of the car. Mishka Tsiganok entered, stamping +noisily with his heels, breathing loudly and spitting. He cast a swift glance +and stopped obdurately. +</p> + +<p> +“No room here, gendarme!” he shouted to the tired gendarme who +looked at him angrily. “You make it so that I am comfortable here, +otherwise I won’t go—hang me here on the lamp-post. What a carriage +they gave me, dogs! Is that a carriage? It’s the devil’s belly, not +a carriage!” +</p> + +<p> +But suddenly he bent down his head, stretched out his neck and thus went +forward to the others. Out of the disheveled frame of hair and beard his black +eyes looked wildly and sharply with an almost insane expression. +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, gentlemen!” he drawled out. “So that’s what it is. +Hello, master!” +</p> + +<p> +He thrust his hand to Werner and sat down opposite him. And bending closely +over to him, he winked one eye and quickly passed his hand over his throat. +</p> + +<p> +“You, too? What?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes!” smiled Werner. +</p> + +<p> +“Are all of us to be hanged?” +</p> + +<p> +“All.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oho!” Tsiganok grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly felt +everybody with his eyes, stopping for an instant longer on Musya and Yanson. +Then he winked again to Werner. +</p> + +<p> +“The Minister?” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the Minister. And you?” +</p> + +<p> +“I am here for something else, master. People like me don’t deal +with ministers. I am a murderer, master, that’s what I am. An ordinary +murderer. Never mind, master, move away a little, I haven’t come into +your company of my own will. There will be room enough for all of us in the +other world.” +</p> + +<p> +He surveyed them all with one swift, suspicious, wild glance from under his +disheveled hair. But all looked at him silently and seriously, even with +apparent interest. He grinned, showing his teeth, and quickly clapped Werner on +the knee several times. +</p> + +<p> +“That’s the way, master! How does the song run? ‘Don’t +rustle, O green little mother forest....’” +</p> + +<p> +“Why do you call me ‘master,’ since we are all +going—” +</p> + +<p> +“Correct,” Tsiganok agreed with satisfaction. “What kind of +master are you, if you are going to hang right beside me? There is a master for +you”; and he pointed with his finger at the silent gendarme. “Eh, +that fellow there is not worse than our kind”; he pointed with his eyes +at Vasily. “Master! Eh there, master! You’re afraid, aren’t +you?” +</p> + +<p> +“No,” answered the heavy tongue. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind that ‘No.’ Don’t be ashamed; there’s +nothing to be ashamed of. Only a dog wags his tail and snarls when he is taken +to be hanged, but you are a man. Who is that dope? He isn’t one of you, +is he?” +</p> + +<p> +He darted his glance rapidly about, and hissing, kept spitting continuously. +Yanson, curled up into a motionless bundle, pressed closely into the corner. +The flaps of his outworn fur cap stirred, but he maintained silence. Werner +answered for him: +</p> + +<p> +“He killed his employer.” +</p> + +<p> +“O Lord!” wondered Tsiganok. “Why are such people allowed to +kill?” +</p> + +<p> +For some time Tsiganok had been looking sideways at Musya; now turning quickly, +he stared at her sharply, straight into her face. +</p> + +<p> +“Young lady, young lady! What about you? Her cheeks are rosy and she is +laughing. Look, she is really laughing,” he said, clasping Werner’s +knee with his clutching, iron-like fingers. “Look, look!” +</p> + +<p> +Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya also gazed straight into his sharp and +wildly searching eyes. +</p> + +<p> +The wheels rattled fast and noisily. The small cars kept hopping along the +narrow rails. Now at a curve or at a crossing the small engine whistled shrilly +and carefully—the engineer was afraid lest he might run over somebody. It +was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was +being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed +on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. +The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and +they rode as people usually ride; and then there would be a halt, as usual. +</p> + +<p> +“The train will stop for five minutes.” +</p> + +<p> +And there death would be waiting—eternity—the great mystery. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h3><a name="chap15"></a>CHAPTER XII<br/>THEY ARE HANGED</h3> + +The little cars ran on carefully. + +<p> +Sergey Golovin at one time had lived for several years with his relatives at +their country-house, along this very road. He had traveled upon it by day as +well as by night, and he knew it well. He closed his eyes, and thought that he +might now simply be returning home—that he had stayed out late in the +city with acquaintances, and was now coming back on the last train. +</p> + +<p> +“We will soon he there,” he said, opening his eyes and looking out +of the grated, mute window. +</p> + +<p> +Nobody stirred, nobody answered; only Tsiganok spat quickly several times and +his eyes ran over the car, as though feeling the windows, the doors, the +soldiers. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s cold,” said Vasily Kashirin, his lips closed tightly, +as though really frozen; and his words sounded strangely. +</p> + +<p> +Tanya Kovalchuk began to bustle about. +</p> + +<p> +“Here’s a handkerchief. Tie it about your neck. It’s a very +warm one.” +</p> + +<p> +“Around the neck?” Sergey asked suddenly, startled by his own +question. But as the same thing occurred to all of them, no one seemed to hear +him. It was as if nothing had been said, or as if they had all said the same +thing at the same time. +</p> + +<p> +“Never mind, Vasya, tie it about your neck. It will be warmer,” +Werner advised him. Then he turned to Yanson and asked gently: +</p> + +<p> +“And you, friend, are you cold?” +</p> + +<p> +“Werner, perhaps he wants to smoke. Comrade, perhaps you would like to +smoke?” asked Musya. “We have something to smoke.” +</p> + +<p> +“I do.” +</p> + +<p> +“Give him a cigarette, Seryozha,” said Werner delightedly. But +Sergey was already getting out a cigarette. All looked on with friendliness, +watching how Yanson’s fingers took the cigarette, how the match flared, +and then how the blue smoke issued from Yanson’s mouth. +</p> + +<p> +“Thanks,” said Yanson; “it’s good.” +</p> + +<p> +“How strange!” said Sergey. +</p> + +<p> +“What is strange?” Werner turned around. “What is +strange?” +</p> + +<p> +“I mean—the cigarette.” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, +and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed +their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like +a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, +turning black. The light went out. +</p> + +<p> +“The light’s out,” said Tanya. +</p> + +<p> +“Yes, the light’s out.” +</p> + +<p> +“Let it go,” said Werner, frowning, looking uneasily at Yanson, +whose hand, holding the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if dead. Suddenly +Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and +rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered: +</p> + +<p> +“Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we—eh? Shall we try?” +</p> + +<p> +“No, don’t do it,” Werner replied, also in a whisper. +“We shall drink it to the bitter end.” +</p> + +<p> +“Why not? It’s livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes +me, and you don’t even know how the thing is done. It’s just as if +you don’t die at all.” +</p> + +<p> +“No, you shouldn’t do it,” said Werner, and turned to Yanson. +“Why don’t you smoke, friend?” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Yanson’s wizened face became wofully wrinkled, as if somebody +had pulled strings which set all the wrinkles in motion. And, as in a dream, he +began to whimper, without tears, in a dry, strained voice: +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha! Why should I be hanged? Aha! +aha! aha!” +</p> + +<p> +They began to bustle about him. Tanya Kovalchuk, weeping freely, petted him on +the arm, and adjusted the drooping earlaps of his worn fur cap. +</p> + +<p> +“My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear! Poor, unfortunate little +fellow!” +</p> + +<p> +Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught her glance and grinned, showing his teeth. +</p> + +<p> +“What a queer fellow! He drinks tea, and yet feels cold,” he said, +with an abrupt laugh. But suddenly his own face became bluish-black, like +cast-iron, and his large yellow teeth flashed. +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the little cars trembled and slackened their speed. All, except Yanson +and Kashirin, rose and sat down again quickly. +</p> + +<p> +“Here is the station,” said Sergey. +</p> + +<p> +It seemed to them as if all the air had been suddenly pumped out of the car, it +became so difficult to breathe. The heart grew larger, making the chest almost +burst, beating in the throat, tossing about madly—shouting in horror with +its blood-filled voice. And the eyes looked upon the quivering floor, and the +ears heard how the wheels were turning ever more slowly—the wheels +slipped and turned again, and then suddenly—they stopped. +</p> + +<p> +The train had halted. +</p> + +<p> +Then a dream set in. It was not terrible, rather fantastic, unfamiliar to the +memory, strange. The dreamer himself seemed to remain aside, only his bodiless +apparition moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked noiselessly, suffered without +suffering. As in a dream, they walked out of the car, formed into parties of +two, inhaled the peculiarly fresh spring air of the forest. As in a dream, +Yanson resisted bluntly, powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently. +</p> + +<p> +They descended the steps of the station. +</p> + +<p> +“Are we to walk?” asked some one almost cheerily. +</p> + +<p> +“It isn’t far now,” answered another, also cheerily. +</p> + +<p> +Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along a +rough, wet and soft spring road. From the forest, from the snow, a fresh, +strong breath of air was wafted. The feet slipped, sometimes sinking into the +snow, and involuntarily the hands of the comrades clung to each other. And the +convoys, breathing with difficulty, walked over the untouched snow on each side +of the road. Some one said in an angry voice: +</p> + +<p> +“Why didn’t they clear the road? Did they want us to turn +somersaults in the snow?” +</p> + +<p> +Some one else apologized guiltily. +</p> + +<p> +“We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is thawing and it can’t be +helped.” +</p> + +<p> +Consciousness of what they were doing returned to the prisoners, but not +completely,—in fragments, in strange parts. Now, suddenly, their minds +practically admitted: +</p> + +<p> +“It is indeed impossible to clear the road.” +</p> + +<p> +Then again everything died out, and only their sense of smell remained: the +unbearably fresh smell of the forest and of the melting snow. And everything +became unusually clear to the consciousness: the forest, the night, the road +and the fact that soon they would be hanged. Their conversation, restrained to +whispers, flashed in fragments. +</p> + +<p> +“It is almost four o’clock.” +</p> + +<p> +“I said we started too early.” +</p> + +<p> +“The sun dawns at five.” +</p> + +<p> +“Of course, at five. We should have—” +</p> + +<p> +They stopped in a meadow, in the darkness. A little distance away, beyond the +bare trees, two small lanterns moved silently. There were the gallows. +</p> + +<p> +“I lost one of my rubbers,” said Sergey Golovin. +</p> + +<p> +“Really?” asked Werner, not understanding what he said. +</p> + +<p> +“I lost a rubber. It’s cold.” +</p> + +<p> +“Where’s Vasily?” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t know. There he is.” +</p> + +<p> +Vasily stood, gloomy, motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“And where is Musya?” +</p> + +<p> +“Here I am. Is that you, Werner?” +</p> + +<p> +They began to look about, avoiding the direction of the gallows, where the +lanterns continued to move about silently with terrible suggestiveness. On the +left, the bare forest seemed to be growing thinner, and something large and +white and flat was visible. A damp wind issued from it. +</p> + +<p> +“The sea,” said Sergey Golovin, inhaling the air with nose and +mouth. “The sea is there!” +</p> + +<p> +Musya answered sonorously: +</p> + +<p> +“My love which is as broad as the sea!” +</p> + +<p> +“What is that, Musya?” +</p> + +<p> +“The banks of life cannot hold my love, which is as broad as the +sea.” +</p> + +<p> +“My love which is as broad as the sea,” echoed Sergey, +thoughtfully, carried away by the sound of her voice and by her words. +</p> + +<p> +“My love which is as broad as the sea,” repeated Werner, and +suddenly he spoke wonderingly, cheerfully: +</p> + +<p> +“Musya, how young you are!” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly Tsiganok whispered warmly, out of breath, right into Werner’s +ear: +</p> + +<p> +“Master! master! There’s the forest! My God! what’s that? +There—where the lanterns are—are those the gallows? What does it +mean?” +</p> + +<p> +Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death. +</p> + +<p> +“We must bid each other good-by,” said Tanya Kovalchuk. +</p> + +<p> +“Wait, they have yet to read the sentence,” answered Werner. +“Where is Yanson?” +</p> + +<p> +Yanson was lying on the snow, and about him people were busying themselves. +There was a smell of ammonia in the air. +</p> + +<p> +“Well, what is it, doctor? Will you be through soon?” some one +asked impatiently. +</p> + +<p> +“It’s nothing. He has simply fainted. Rub his ears with snow! He is +coming to himself already! You may read the sentence!” +</p> + +<p> +The light of the dark lantern flashed upon the paper and on the white, +gloveless hands holding it. Both the paper and the hands quivered slightly, and +the voice also quivered: +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen, perhaps it is not necessary to read the sentence to you. You +know it already. What do you say?” +</p> + +<p> +“Don’t read it,” Werner answered for them all, and the little +lantern was soon extinguished. +</p> + +<p> +The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok said: +</p> + +<p> +“Stop your fooling, father—you will forgive me, but they will hang +me. Go to—where you came from.” +</p> + +<p> +And the dark, broad silhouette of the priest moved back silently and quickly +and disappeared. Day was breaking: the snow turned whiter, the figures of the +people became more distinct, and the forest—thinner, more melancholy. +</p> + +<p> +“Gentlemen, you must go in pairs. Take your places in pairs as you wish, +but I ask you to hurry up.” +</p> + +<p> +Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now standing, supported by two gendarmes. +</p> + +<p> +“I will go with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go ahead.” +</p> + +<p> +“Very well.” +</p> + +<p> +“You and I go together, Musechka, shall we not?” asked Tanya +Kovalchuk. “Come, let us kiss each other good-by.” +</p> + +<p> +They kissed one another quickly. Tsiganok kissed firmly, so that they felt his +teeth; Yanson softly, drowsily, with his mouth half open—and it seemed +that he did not understand what he was doing. +</p> + +<p> +When Sergey Golovin and Kashirin had gone a few steps, Kashirin suddenly +stopped and said loudly and distinctly: +</p> + +<p> +“Good-by, comrades.” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-by, comrade,” they shouted in answer. +</p> + +<p> +They went off. It grew quiet. The lanterns beyond the trees became motionless. +They awaited an outcry, a voice, some kind of noise—but it was just as +quiet there as it was among them—and the yellow lanterns were motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my God!” some one cried hoarsely and wildly. They looked +about. It was Tsiganok, writhing in agony at the thought of death. “They +are hanging!” +</p> + +<p> +They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was writhing, +catching at the air with his hands. +</p> + +<p> +“How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It’s livelier to die +together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?” +</p> + +<p> +He seized Werner by the hand, his fingers clutching and then relaxing. +</p> + +<p> +“Dear master, at least you come with me? Eh? Do me the favor? Don’t +refuse.” +</p> + +<p> +Werner answered painfully: +</p> + +<p> +“I can’t, my dear fellow. I am going with him.” +</p> + +<p> +“Oh, my God! Must I go alone, then? My God! How is it to be?” +</p> + +<p> +Musya stepped forward and said softly: +</p> + +<p> +“You may go with me.” +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok stepped back and rolled the whites of his eyes wildly. +</p> + +<p> +“With you!” +</p> + +<p> +“Yes.” +</p> + +<p> +“Just think of her! What a little girl! And you’re not afraid? If +you are, I would rather go alone!” +</p> + +<p> +“No, I am not afraid.” +</p> + +<p> +Tsiganok grinned. +</p> + +<p> +“Just think of her! But do you know that I am a murderer? Don’t you +despise me? You had better not do it. I shan’t be angry at you.” +</p> + +<p> +Musya was silent, and in the faint light of dawn her face was pale and +enigmatic. Then suddenly she walked over to Tsiganok quickly, and, throwing her +arms about his neck, kissed him firmly upon his lips. He took her by the +shoulders with his fingers, held her away from himself, then shook her, and, +with loud smacks, kissed her on the lips, on the nose, on the eyes. +</p> + +<p> +“Come!” +</p> + +<p> +Suddenly the soldier standing nearest them staggered forward, and opening his +hands, let his gun drop. He did not stoop down to regain it, but stood for an +instant motionless, turned abruptly and, like a blind man, walked toward the +forest over the untouched snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Where are you going?” called out another soldier in fright. +“Halt!” +</p> + +<p> +But the man continued walking through the deep snow silently and with +difficulty. Then he must have stumbled over something, for he waved his arms +and fell face downward. And there he remained lying on the snow. +</p> + +<p> +“Pick up the gun, you sour-faced gray-coat, or I’ll pick it +up,” said Tsiganok sternly to the other soldier. “You don’t +know your business!” +</p> + +<p> +The little lanterns began to move about busily again. Now it was the turn of +Werner and Yanson. +</p> + +<p> +“Good-by, master!” called Tsiganok loudly. “We’ll meet +each other in the other world, you’ll see! Don’t turn away from me. +When you see me, bring me some water to drink—it will be hot there for +me!” +</p> + +<p> +“Good-by!” +</p> + +<p> +“I don’t want to be hanged!” said Yanson drowsily. +</p> + +<p> +Werner took him by the hand, and then the Esthonian walked a few steps alone. +But later they saw him stop and fall down in the snow. Soldiers bent over him, +lifted him up and carried him on, and he struggled faintly in their arms. Why +did he not cry? He must have forgotten even that he had a voice. +</p> + +<p> +And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless. +</p> + +<p> +“And I, Musechka,” said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, “must I +go alone? We lived together, and now—” +</p> + +<p> +“Tanechka, dearest—” +</p> + +<p> +But Tsiganok took her part heatedly. Holding her by the hand, as though fearing +that some one would take her away from him, he said quickly, in a business-like +manner, to Tanya: +</p> + +<p> +“Ah, young lady, you can go alone! You are a pure soul—you can go +alone wherever you please! But I—I can’t! A murderer!... +Understand? I can’t go alone! Where are you going, you murderer? they +will ask me. Why, I even stole horses, by God! But with her it is just as +if—just as if I were with an infant, understand? Do you understand +me?” +</p> + +<p> +“I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once more, Musechka.” +</p> + +<p> +“Kiss! Kiss each other!” urged Tsiganok. “That’s a +woman’s job! You must bid each other a hearty good-by!” +</p> + +<p> +Musya and Tsiganok moved forward. Musya walked cautiously, slipping, and by +force of habit raising her skirts slightly. And the man led her to death +firmly, holding her arm carefully and feeling the ground with his foot. +</p> + +<p> +The lights stopped moving. It was quiet and lonely around Tanya Kovalchuk. The +soldiers were silent, all gray in the soft, colorless light of daybreak. +</p> + +<p> +“I am alone,” sighed Tanya Kovalchuk suddenly. “Seryozha is +dead, Werner is dead—and Vasya, too. I am alone! Soldiers! soldiers! I am +alone, alone—” +</p> + +<p> +The sun was rising over the sea. +</p> + +<p> +The bodies were placed in a box. Then they were taken away. With stretched +necks, with bulging eyes, with blue, swollen tongues, looking like some +unknown, terrible flowers between the lips, which were covered with bloody +foam—the bodies were hurried back along the same road by which they had +come—alive. And the spring snow was just as soft and fresh; the spring +air was just as strong and fragrant. And on the snow lay Sergey’s black +rubber-shoe, wet, trampled under foot. +</p> + +<p> +Thus did men greet the rising sun. +</p> + +<h5> +THE END +</h5> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + + +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg’s The Seven who were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED *** + +***** This file should be named 6722-h.htm or 6722-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/6/7/2/6722/ + +Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project +Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +http://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” + or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project +Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +“Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.” + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +“Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right +of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’ WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm’s +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws. + +The Foundation’s principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation’s web site and official +page at http://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit http://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. +To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + + +</pre> + +</body> + +</html> + diff --git a/6722-h/images/Andreyev.jpg b/6722-h/images/Andreyev.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..223972f --- /dev/null +++ b/6722-h/images/Andreyev.jpg diff --git a/6722-h/images/cover.jpg b/6722-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..89b3255 --- /dev/null +++ b/6722-h/images/cover.jpg |
