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+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: October, 2004  [EBook #6722]
+Posting Date: June 1, 2009
+[Last Updated: December 16, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eric Eldred
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED
+
+A STORY
+
+
+By Leonid Andreyev
+
+
+Authorized Translation From The Russian By Herman Bernstein.
+
+
+
+
+DEDICATION
+
+
+To Count Leo N. Tolstoy This Book is Dedicated, by Leonid Andreyev
+
+The Translation of this Story Is Also Respectfully Inscribed to Count
+Leo N. Tolstoy by Herman Bernstein
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+New York. HERMAN BERNSTEIN.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+[Translation of the Foregoing Letter in Russian]
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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?"
+
+In the story of "The Seven Who Were Hanged" I attempted to give a
+sincere and unprejudiced answer to some of these questions.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. ***
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Respectfully yours,
+
+LEONID ANDREYEV.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I AT ONE O'CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY!
+
+
+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, plans had already
+been betrayed by a provocateur, 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.
+
+"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?"
+
+The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug.
+
+"Exactly at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency," he said.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Molodtsi! Molodtsi! Molodtsi! (Good boys)!"
+
+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.
+
+"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:
+
+"At one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency!"
+
+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.
+
+"Well, what do you want?" asked the Minister angrily, muttering between
+his teeth.
+
+The gramophone shouted:
+
+"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.
+
+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. "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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+"Fools!" he said emphatically, with contempt.
+
+"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.
+
+"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!'"
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"No, not at one o'clock in the afternoon, your Excellency, but no one
+knows when. No one knows when! What?"
+
+"Nothing," answered Silence, "nothing."
+
+"But you did say something."
+
+"Nothing, nonsense. I say: to-morrow, at one o'clock in the afternoon!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. 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 Sevres 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.
+
+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.
+
+The judges pitied Sergey Golovin; her they despised.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Never mind!"
+
+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:
+
+"Never mind, Vasya. It will soon be over."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"The dear boy is looking at the sky. Look, look, my darling!" she
+thought about Golovin.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Never mind, Vasya. Everything will be over soon," said Werner.
+
+"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.
+
+"The devil take them; they've hanged us," Golovin cursed quaintly.
+
+"That was to be expected," replied Werner calmly.
+
+"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."
+
+Musya was silent. Then she resolutely moved forward.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Soon he would return to the station, and would quickly become
+intoxicated.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"It would kill me," he said, looking at his master sleepily with his
+glassy eyes, and the master waved his hand in despair.
+
+"You fool! Think of having to live with such workmen!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"He said that I should be hanged."
+
+"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:
+
+"You!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+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:
+
+"He said I should be hanged. Why must I be hanged?"
+
+"Take the prisoner away."
+
+But Yanson succeeded in repeating once more, convincingly and weightily:
+
+"Why must I be hanged?"
+
+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:
+
+"You are a fool, young man!"
+
+"Why must I be hanged?" repeated Yanson stubbornly.
+
+"They'll swing you up so quickly that you'll have no time to kick."
+
+"Keep still!" cried the other convoy angrily. But he himself could not
+refrain from adding:
+
+"A robber, too! Why did you take a human life, you fool? You must hang
+for that!"
+
+"They might pardon him," said the first soldier, who began to feel sorry
+for Yanson.
+
+"Oh, yes! They'll pardon people like him, will they? Well, we've talked
+enough."
+
+But Yanson had become silent again.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Well, my friend, they've hanged you!"
+
+"When are they going to hang me?" asked Yanson distrustfully. The warden
+meditated a moment.
+
+"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."
+
+"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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"Pshaw! The devil take you!" and he spat aside. "Why are you giggling
+here? This is no dramshop!"
+
+"And I don't want to be hanged--gaga-ga!" laughed Yanson.
+
+"Satan!" muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the sign of
+the cross.
+
+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?"
+
+"Satan!"
+
+But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly.
+
+"You had better look out!" said the warden, with an indefinite threat,
+and he walked away, glancing back of him.
+
+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.
+
+Every morning Yanson asked when he was to be hanged, and every morning
+the warden answered him angrily:
+
+"Take your time, you devil! Wait!" and he would walk off quickly before
+Yanson could begin to laugh.
+
+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.
+
+"Now she would have liked me," he thought of his master's wife. "Now I
+am stout--not worse-looking than the master." But he longed for a drink
+of vodka, to drink and to take a ride on horseback, to ride fast, madly.
+
+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:
+
+"It won't be long now!"
+
+He looked at Yanson calmly with an air of importance and repeated:
+
+"It won't be long now. I suppose in about a week."
+
+Yanson turned pale, and as though falling asleep, so turbid was the look
+in his glassy eyes, asked:
+
+"Are you joking?"
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"Aha!" said the warden with satisfaction, seeing him on the following
+day. "This is no dramshop for you, my dear!"
+
+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:
+
+"Do you want to meet somebody or not?"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Well, to say good-by! Have you no mother, for instance, or a brother?"
+
+"I must not be hanged," said Yanson softly, and looked askance at the
+warden. "I don't want to be hanged."
+
+The warden looked at him and waved his hand in silence.
+
+Toward evening Yanson grew somewhat calmer.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+"I must not be hanged," answered Yanson, in a dull voice, and his lower
+jaw again drooped.
+
+"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?"
+
+"He wants to kill human beings without paying for it. Fool! fool!" said
+another.
+
+"I don't want to be hanged," said Yanson.
+
+"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."
+
+"He has nothing. One shirt and a suit of clothes. And a fur cap! A
+sport!"
+
+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:
+
+"Well, get ready. We must go."
+
+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:
+
+"What a warm day this will be. Real spring."
+
+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:
+
+"Hey, there! Quicker! Have you fallen asleep?"
+
+Suddenly Yanson stopped.
+
+"I don't want to be hanged," said he.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV WE COME FROM ORYOL
+
+
+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:
+
+"Search for the wind of the fields!"
+
+When he was annoyed in cross-examination, Tsiganok assumed a serious and
+dignified air:
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+To all questions during the trial he answered shortly, firmly, jumping
+up quickly, and at times he seemed to answer even with pleasure.
+
+"Correct!" he would say.
+
+Sometimes he emphasized it.
+
+"Cor-r-rect!"
+
+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:
+
+"Will you allow me to whistle?"
+
+"What for?" asked the judge, surprised.
+
+"They said that I gave the signal to my comrades. I would like to show
+you how. It is very interesting."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"What a robber!" said one of the judges, rubbing his ear.
+
+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:
+
+"It is indeed interesting."
+
+With light hearts, without mercy, without the slightest pangs of
+conscience, the judges brought out against Tsiganok a verdict of death.
+
+"Correct!" said Tsiganok, when the verdict was pronounced. "In the open
+field and on a cross-beam! Correct!"
+
+And turning to the convoy, he hurled with bravado:
+
+"Well, are we not going? Come on, you sour-coat. And hold your gun--I
+might take it away from you!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+One day the chief warden, accompanied by a soldier, entered his cell. He
+looked askance at the floor and said gruffly:
+
+"Look! How dirty he has made it!"
+
+Tsiganok retorted quickly:
+
+"You've made the whole world dirty, you fat-face, and yet I haven't said
+anything to you. What brings you here?"
+
+The warden, speaking as gruffly as before, asked him whether he would
+act as executioner. Tsiganok burst out laughing, showing his teeth.
+
+"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!"
+
+"You'll save your neck if you do it."
+
+"Of course--I couldn't hang them if I were dead. Well said, you fool!"
+
+"Well, what do you say? Is it all the same to you?"
+
+"And how do you hang them here? I suppose they're choked on the sly."
+
+"No, with music," snarled the warden.
+
+"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.
+
+"You have lost your wits, my friend," said the warden. "What do you say?
+Speak sensibly."
+
+Tsiganok grinned.
+
+"How eager you are! Come another time and I'll tell you."
+
+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.
+
+"Ts-akh!"
+
+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.
+
+The warden came in twice again, and Tsiganok, showing his teeth, said:
+
+"How eager you are! Come in again!"
+
+Finally one day the warden shouted through the casement window as he
+passed rapidly:
+
+"You've let your chance slip by, you fool! We've found somebody else."
+
+"The devil take you! Hang yourself!" snarled Tsiganok, and he stopped
+dreaming of the execution.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"My darlings, my sweethearts!... My darlings, my sweethearts! have
+pity.... My darlings!... My sweethearts!"
+
+And it seemed again as if he were listening intently to his own voice.
+As he said each word he would listen.
+
+Then he would jump up and for a whole hour would curse continually.
+
+He cursed picturesquely, shouting and rolling his blood-shot eyes.
+
+"If you hang me--hang me!" and he would burst out cursing again.
+
+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:
+
+"I'll fire! I'll kill you as sure as I live! Do you hear?"
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Who is going to do the hanging? A new man? I suppose he hasn't learned
+his job yet."
+
+"You needn't worry about it," answered the official dryly.
+
+"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."
+
+"All right, all right! Keep quiet!"
+
+"This man here has eaten all your soap," said Tsiganok, pointing to the
+warden. "See how his face shines."
+
+"Silence!"
+
+"Don't be stingy!"
+
+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:
+
+"The carriage of the Count of Bengal!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V KISS-AND SAY NOTHING
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+But everything was far different from what he had anticipated.
+
+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:
+
+"How do you do, Sergey?"
+
+Behind him Sergey's mother entered with short steps, smiling strangely.
+But she also pressed his hands and repeated loudly:
+
+"How do you do, Seryozhenka?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+"I understand, Nikolay Sergeyevich," answered the mother, weeping.
+
+"And you must not weep. For God's sake, do not weep! You will kill him
+if you weep, old woman!"
+
+"Why do you weep?"
+
+"With women one cannot help weeping. But you must not weep, do you
+hear?"
+
+"Very well, Nikolay Sergeyevich."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Be seated, Seryozhenka," begged the mother.
+
+"Sit down, Sergey," repeated the father.
+
+They became silent. The mother smiled.
+
+"How we have petitioned for you, Seryozhenka! Father--"
+
+"You should not have done that, mother----"
+
+The colonel spoke firmly:
+
+"We had to do it, Sergey, so that you should not think your parents had
+forsaken you."
+
+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:
+
+"And how is sister? Is she well?" "Ninochka does not know anything," the
+mother answered hastily.
+
+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--"
+
+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.
+
+"Se--Se--Se-Ser--" she repeated without moving her lips. "Ser--"
+
+"Dear mother!"
+
+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:
+
+"Be silent! Don't torture him! Don't torture him! He has to die! Don't
+torture him!"
+
+Frightened, she had already become silent, but he still shook his
+clenched fists before him and repeated:
+
+"Don't torture him!"
+
+Then he stepped back, placed his trembling hands behind his back, and
+loudly, with an expression of forced calm, asked with pale lips:
+
+"When?"
+
+"To-morrow morning," answered Sergey, his lips also pale.
+
+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:
+
+"Ninochka told me to kiss you, Seryozhenka."
+
+"Kiss her for me," said Sergey.
+
+"Very well. The Khvostovs send you their regards."
+
+"Which Khvostovs? Oh, yes!"
+
+The colonel interrupted:
+
+"Well, we must go. Get up, mother; we must go." The two men lifted the
+weakened old woman.
+
+"Bid him good-by!" ordered the colonel. "Make the sign of the cross."
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+"Good-by, Sergey!" said the father. They shook hands, and kissed each
+other quickly but heartily.
+
+"You--" began Sergey.
+
+"Well?" asked the father abruptly.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+"You, father, are a noble man!"
+
+"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.
+
+"And I?" suddenly said a loud voice.
+
+They looked around. Sergey's mother was standing, her head thrown back,
+looking at them angrily, almost with contempt.
+
+"What is it, mother?" cried the colonel.
+
+"And I?" she said, shaking her head with insane intensity. "You kiss--and
+I? You men! Yes? And I? And I?"
+
+"Mother!" Sergey rushed over to her.
+
+What took place then it is unnecessary and impossible to describe... .
+
+The last words of the colonel were:
+
+"I give you my blessing for your death, Seryozha. Die bravely, like an
+officer."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"It wasn't worth coming, mother. You'll only torture yourself and me."
+
+"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:
+
+"There! You see! I knew it! You understand nothing, mother! Nothing!"
+
+"Well--well--all right! Do you feel--cold?"
+
+"Cold!" Vasily answered bluntly, and again began to pace the room,
+looking at his mother askance, as if annoyed.
+
+"Perhaps you have caught cold?"
+
+"Oh, mother what is a cold, when--" and he waved his hand helplessly.
+
+The old woman was about to say: "And your father ordered wheat cakes
+beginning with Monday," but she was frightened, and said:
+
+"I told him: 'It is your son, you should go, give him your blessing.'
+No, the old beast persisted--"
+
+"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!"
+
+"Vasenka! Do you speak of your father like this?" said the old woman
+reproachfully, straightening herself.
+
+"About my father!"
+
+"About your own father?"
+
+"He is no father to me!"
+
+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:
+
+"Don't you understand that I am to be hanged soon? Hanged! Do you
+understand it? Hanged!"
+
+"You shouldn't have harmed anybody and nobody would--" cried the old
+woman.
+
+"My God! What is this? Even beasts do not act like this! Am I not your
+son?"
+
+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:
+
+"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!"
+
+"Well, mother, it is all right. Forgive me. It is time for you to go.
+Kiss my brothers for me."
+
+"Am I not your mother? Do I not feel sorry?"
+
+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.
+
+And suddenly she understood. He was to be hanged upon the morrow!
+
+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.
+
+"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!
+
+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!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI THE HOURS ARE RUSHING
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII THERE IS NO DEATH
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"Make me a present of it," she had begged.
+
+"No, Tanechka, I will not give it to you. But perhaps you will soon have
+another ring upon your finger."
+
+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?
+
+But Musya was happy.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"No, it isn't necessary."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Of course, I am young and could have lived for a long time. But--"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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!
+
+"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?"
+
+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
+in-corporeally soaring in its light.
+
+"And that is--Death? That is not Death!" thought Musya blissfully.
+
+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?
+
+And if a coffin were brought into her cell with her own decomposing body
+in it, and she were told:
+
+"Look! That is you!"
+
+She would look and would answer:
+
+"No, it is not I."
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+"But you will die and become like that."
+
+"No, I will not die."
+
+"You will be executed. Here is the noose."
+
+"I will be executed, but I will not die. How can I die, when I am
+already--now--immortal?"
+
+And the scientists and philosophers and hangmen would retreat,
+speaking--with a shudder:
+
+"Do not touch this place. It is holy." 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:
+
+"You must not be too familiar with Death."
+
+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:
+
+"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...."
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"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.
+
+Musya fell asleep.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+Somewhere people were walking. Somewhere people were whispering. And
+they were already harnessing the horses to the black carriages without
+lanterns.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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."
+
+But, as is sometimes the case with good people, he was perhaps liked
+more for this little foible than for his good qualities.
+
+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:
+
+"Why don't you eat? Eat. We must brace up."
+
+"I don't feel like eating."
+
+"Then I'll eat it. May I?"
+
+"You have a fine appetite, Seryozha."
+
+Instead of answering, Sergey, his mouth full, began to sing in a dull
+voice, out of tune:
+
+"Hostile whirlwinds are blowing over us..."
+
+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 Mueller, 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 Mueller system; and although he knew that he would get no answer he
+nevertheless spoke to the eye staring in the little window:
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"Is it possible that I am afraid?" thought Sergey in astonishment. "What
+nonsense!"
+
+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
+Mueller 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:
+
+"It is foolish, Sergey! To die more easily, you should weaken the body
+and not strengthen it. It is foolish!"
+
+So he dropped his gymnastics and the rub-downs. To the soldier he
+shouted, as if to explain and justify himself:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"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?"
+
+He shook his head mournfully, heaving long, painful sighs. Silence--then
+a sigh; then a brief silence again--followed by a longer, deeper sigh.
+
+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.
+
+"Fie, you devil!" wondered Sergey, painfully. "What is this? Where am I?
+I--who am I?"
+
+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!
+
+Everything became strange.
+
+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."
+
+"Am I losing my reason?" thought Sergey, growing cold. "Am I coming to
+that, too? The devil take them!"
+
+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.
+
+"There is Mueller 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.
+
+"Oh, Mueller! My dear Mueller! Oh, you splendid German! After all you
+are right, Mueller, and I am an ass!"
+
+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:
+
+"That's it! That's the real way, Mueller!" His cheeks flushed; drops
+of warm, pleasant perspiration came from the pores of his body, and his
+heart beat soundly and evenly.
+
+"The fact is, Mueller," 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, Mueller? 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, Mueller, but it can't be helped,--we have to do it."
+
+He bent over on the right side and repeated:
+
+"We have to do it, Mueller."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX DREADFUL SOLITUDE
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+And the man would have disappeared from the world.
+
+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:
+
+"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."
+
+It seemed to him that in another moment he would hear somewhere the
+creaking of the mechanism, the screeching of un-oiled 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.
+
+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:
+
+"The joy of all the afflicted..."
+
+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:
+
+"Our life--is this life? Eh, my dearest, is this life?"
+
+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!"
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"The joy of all the afflicted!" And he repeated tenderly, in anguish:
+"Joy of all the afflicted, come to me, help Vaska Kashirin."
+
+"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. "The joy of all
+the afflicted!"
+
+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.
+
+"Joy of all the afflicted! You are silent! Will you not say anything to
+Vaska Kashirin?"
+
+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 ikon 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.
+
+Everything now disappeared.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"We must start."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE WALLS ARE FALLING
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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. 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.
+
+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?
+
+"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.
+
+"Well?" he said to some one half-questioningly. "Here it is. Where is
+the fear?"
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"My dear comrades!" he whispered, crying bitterly. "My dear comrades!"
+
+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:
+
+"My dear comrades! My dear, dear comrades!"
+
+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.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD
+
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"What does this mean, Musyechka? Is it possible that he---- What? I must
+go to him."
+
+Vasily looked at Werner from the distance, as though not recognizing
+him, and he lowered his eyes.
+
+"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."
+
+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:
+
+"I'm all right. I hold my own."
+
+Then he repeated:
+
+"I hold my own."
+
+Werner was delighted.
+
+"That's the way, that's the way. Good boy. That's the way."
+
+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:
+
+"Vasya, do you hear? I love you very much."
+
+"So do I love you very much," answered the tongue, moving with
+difficulty.
+
+Suddenly Musya took Werner by the hand and with an expression of
+surprise, she said like an actress on the stage, with measured emphasis:
+
+"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?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+And like an actor, also accentuating what he felt, Werner pressed
+Musya's hand firmly:
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"Yes," said Musya, "yes, Werner."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "yes, Musya, yes."
+
+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.
+
+"Seryozha!"
+
+But Tanya Kovalchuk answered. Almost crying with maternal pride, she
+tugged Sergey frantically by the sleeve.
+
+"Listen, Werner! I am crying here for him, I am wearing myself to death,
+and he is occupying himself with gymnastics!"
+
+"According to the Mueller system?" smiled Werner.
+
+Sergey knit his brow confusedly.
+
+"You needn't laugh, Werner. I have convinced myself conclusively--"
+
+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:
+
+"You are right, Seryozha. You are perfectly right."
+
+"No, but you must understand," said Golovin gladly. "Of course, we--"
+
+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.
+
+"Musya, you go with him." Werner pointed at Vasily, who stood
+motionless.
+
+"I understand," Musya nodded. "And you?"
+
+"I? Tanya will go with Sergey, you go with Vasya.... I will go alone.
+That doesn't matter, I can do it, you know."
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+"How long have you had such weather?" inquired Werner. "It's real
+spring."
+
+"It's only the second day," was the polite answer. "Before that we had
+mostly frosty weather."
+
+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.
+
+When Werner bent down, about to climb into the carriage, the gendarme
+whispered to him:
+
+"There is somebody else going along with you."
+
+Werner was surprised.
+
+"Where? Where is he going? Oh, yes! Another one? Who is he?"
+
+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.
+
+"Excuse me, comrade."
+
+The man made no reply. It was only when the carriage started, that he
+suddenly asked in broken Russian, speaking with difficulty:
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"I am Werner, condemned to hanging for the attempt upon N--. And you?"
+
+"I am Yanson. They must not hang me."
+
+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.
+
+"What have you done, Yanson?"
+
+"I killed my master with a knife. I stole money."
+
+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.
+
+"Are you afraid?" asked Werner.
+
+"I don't want to be hanged."
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"You don't seem to sit comfortably, my dear man. Move over here, to me."
+
+Yanson was silent for awhile, then he replied:
+
+"Well, thank you. I'm sitting all right. Are they going to hang you
+too?"
+
+"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.
+
+"Have you a wife?" asked Yanson.
+
+"No. I have no wife. I am single."
+
+"I am also alone. Alone," said Yanson.
+
+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.
+
+"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.
+
+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.
+
+"I wish they'd be quicker about it," said Werner wearily. Yanson was
+silent, shrinking together.
+
+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.
+
+"What did you say?" asked Werner, also yawning.
+
+"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.
+
+"Yes, it is smoking."
+
+Suddenly he thought: "What have I to do with the smoking of the lamp,
+since---"
+
+Sergey apparently thought the same, as he glanced quickly at Werner and
+turned away. But both stopped yawning.
+
+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.
+
+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:
+
+"Ai!"
+
+"What is it, Vasya?" Werner rushed over to him. Vasily was silent,
+trembling in every limb. The confused and even offended gendarme
+explained:
+
+"I wanted to keep him from falling, and he--"
+
+"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:
+
+"Ai!"
+
+"Vasya, it is I, Werner."
+
+"I know. Don't touch me. I'll go myself."
+
+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:
+
+"How about him?"
+
+"Bad," answered Musya, also in a soft voice. "He is dead already.
+Werner, tell me, is there such a thing as death?"
+
+"I don't know, Musya, but I think that there is no such thing," replied
+Werner seriously and thoughtfully.
+
+"That's what I have thought. But he? I was tortured with him in the
+carriage--it was like riding with a corpse."
+
+"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."
+
+Musya's somewhat paled cheeks flushed as she asked:
+
+"It did exist, Werner? It did?"
+
+"It did. But not now any longer. Just the same as with you."
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+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.
+
+"Ah, gentlemen!" he drawled out. "So that's what it is. Hello, master!"
+
+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.
+
+"You, too? What?"
+
+"Yes!" smiled Werner.
+
+"Are all of us to be hanged?"
+
+"All."
+
+"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.
+
+"The Minister?"
+
+"Yes, the Minister. And you?"
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"That's the way, master! How does the song run? 'Don't rustle, O green
+little mother forest....'"
+
+"Why do you call me 'master,' since we are all going--"
+
+"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! He there, master! You're afraid, aren't you?"
+
+"No," answered the heavy tongue.
+
+"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?"
+
+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:
+
+"He killed his employer."
+
+"O Lord!" wondered Tsiganok. "Why are such people allowed to kill?"
+
+For some time Tsiganok had been looking sideways at Musya; now turning
+quickly, he stared at her sharply, straight into her face.
+
+"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!"
+
+Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya also gazed straight into his sharp
+and wildly searching eyes.
+
+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.
+
+"The train will stop for five minutes."
+
+And there death would be waiting--eternity--the great mystery, 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.
+
+"Thanks," said Yanson; "it's good."
+
+"How strange!" said Sergey.
+
+"What is strange?" Werner turned around. "What is strange?"
+
+"I mean--the cigarette."
+
+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.
+
+"The light's out," said Tanya.
+
+"Yes, the light's out."
+
+"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:
+
+"Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we--we? Shall we try?"
+
+"No, don't do it," Werner replied, also in a whisper. "We shall drink it
+to the bitter end."
+
+"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."
+
+"No, you shouldn't do it," said Werner, and turned to Yanson. "Why don't
+you smoke, friend?"
+
+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:
+
+"I don't want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha! Why should I be hanged? Aha! aha!
+aha!"
+
+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.
+
+"My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear! Poor, unfortunate little fellow!"
+
+Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught her glance and grinned, showing his
+teeth.
+
+"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.
+
+Suddenly the little cars trembled and slackened their speed. All, except
+Yanson and Kashirin, rose and sat down again quickly.
+
+"Here is the station," said Sergey.
+
+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.
+
+The train had halted.
+
+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.
+
+They descended the steps of the station.
+
+"Are we to walk?" asked some one almost cheerily.
+
+"It isn't far now," answered another, also cheerily.
+
+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:
+
+"Why didn't they clear the road? Did they want us to turn somersaults in
+the snow?"
+
+Some one else apologized guiltily.
+
+"We cleaned it, your Honor. But it is thawing and it can't be helped."
+
+Consciousness of what they were doing returned to the prisoners, but not
+completely,--in fragments, in strange parts. Now, suddenly, their minds
+practically admitted:
+
+"It is indeed impossible to clear the road."
+
+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.
+
+"It is almost four o'clock."
+
+"I said we started too early."
+
+"The sun dawns at five."
+
+"Of course, at five. We should have--"
+
+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.
+
+"I lost one of my rubbers," said Sergey Golovin.
+
+"Really?" asked Werner, not understanding what he said.
+
+"I lost a rubber. It's cold."
+
+"Where's Vasily?"
+
+"I don't know. There he is."
+
+Vasily stood, gloomy, motionless.
+
+"And where is Musya?"
+
+"Here I am. Is that you, Werner?"
+
+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.
+
+"The sea," said Sergey Golovin, inhaling the air with nose and mouth.
+"The sea is there!"
+
+Musya answered sonorously:
+
+"My love which is as broad as the sea!"
+
+"What is that, Musya?"
+
+"The banks of life cannot hold my love, which is as broad as the sea."
+
+"My love which is as broad as the sea," echoed Sergey, thoughtfully,
+carried away by the sound of her voice and by her words.
+
+"My love which is as broad as the sea," repeated Werner, and suddenly he
+spoke wonderingly, cheerfully:
+
+"Musya, how young you are!"
+
+Suddenly Tsiganok whispered warmly, out of breath, right into Werner's
+ear:
+
+"Master! master! There's the forest! My God! what's that? There--where
+the lanterns are--are those the gallows? What does it mean?"
+
+Werner looked at him. Tsiganok was writhing in agony before his death.
+
+"We must bid each other good-by," said Tanya Kovalchuk.
+
+"Wait, they have yet to read the sentence," answered Werner. "Where is
+Yanson?"
+
+Yanson was lying on the snow, and about him people were busying
+themselves. There was a smell of ammonia in the air.
+
+"Well, what is it, doctor? Will you be through soon?" some one asked
+impatiently.
+
+"It's nothing. He has simply fainted. Rub his ears with snow! He is
+coming to himself already! You may read the sentence!"
+
+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:
+
+"Gentlemen, perhaps it is not necessary to read the sentence to you. You
+know it already. What do you say?"
+
+"Don't read it," Werner answered for them all, and the little lantern
+was soon extinguished.
+
+The services of the priest were also declined by them all. Tsiganok
+said:
+
+"Stop your fooling, father--you will forgive me, but they will hang me.
+Go to--where you came from."
+
+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.
+
+"Gentlemen, you must go in pairs. Take your places in pairs as you wish,
+but I ask you to hurry up."
+
+Werner pointed to Yanson, who was now standing, supported by two
+gendarmes.
+
+"I will go with him. And you, Seryozha, take Vasily. Go ahead."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"You and I go together, Musechka, shall we not?" asked Tanya Kovalchuk.
+"Come, let us kiss each other good-by."
+
+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.
+
+When Sergey Golovin and Kashirin had gone a few steps, Kashirin suddenly
+stopped and said loudly and distinctly:
+
+"Good-by, comrades."
+
+"Good-by, comrade," they shouted in answer.
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+They turned away from him, and again it became quiet. Tsiganok was
+writhing, catching at the air with his hands.
+
+"How is that, gentlemen? Am I to go alone? It's livelier to die
+together. Gentlemen, what does it mean?"
+
+He seized Werner by the hand, his fingers clutching and then relaxing.
+
+"Dear master, at least you come with me? Eh? Do me the favor? Don't
+refuse."
+
+Werner answered painfully:
+
+"I can't, my dear fellow. I am going with him."
+
+"Oh, my God! Must I go alone, then? My God! How is it to be?"
+
+Musya stepped forward and said softly:
+
+"You may go with me."
+
+Tsiganok stepped back and rolled the whites of his eyes wildly.
+
+"With you!"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Just think of her! What a little girl! And you're not afraid? If you
+are, I would rather go alone!"
+
+"No, I am not afraid."
+
+Tsiganok grinned.
+
+"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."
+
+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.
+
+"Come!"
+
+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.
+
+"Where are you going?" called out another soldier in fright. "Halt!"
+
+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.
+
+"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!"
+
+The little lanterns began to move about busily again. Now it was the
+turn of Werner and Yanson.
+
+"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!"
+
+"Good-by!"
+
+"I don't want to be hanged!" said Yanson drowsily.
+
+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.
+
+And again the little yellow lanterns became motionless.
+
+"And I, Musechka," said Tanya Kovalchuk mournfully, "must I go alone? We
+lived together, and now--"
+
+"Tanechka, dearest--"
+
+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:
+
+"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?"
+
+"I do. Go. Come, let me kiss you once more, Musechka."
+
+"Kiss! Kiss each other!" urged Tsiganok. "That's a woman's job! You must
+bid each other a hearty good-by!"
+
+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.
+
+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.
+
+"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--"
+
+The sun was rising over the sea.
+
+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.
+
+Thus did men greet the rising sun.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Seven who were Hanged, by Leonid Andreyev
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