[1] Written in 1899.
There were twenty-six of us--twenty-six living machines shut up in a
damp cellar, where from morning to evening, we kneaded dough to make
cakes and biscuits. The windows of our cellar looked upon a ditch
yawning open before them and crammed full of bricks, green with damp;
the window-frames were partly covered from the outside by an iron
grating, and the light of the sun could not reach us through the
window-panes covered with flour dust Our master had closed up the
windows with iron in order that we might not give away a morsel of his
bread to the poor, or to those of our comrades who were living without
work, and therefore starving; our master called us galley-slaves, and
gave us rotten entrails for dinner instead of butcher's meat.
It was a narrow, stuffy life we lived in that stone cage beneath the
low and heavy rafters covered with soot and cobwebs. It was a grievous
evil life we lived within those thick walls, plastered over with
patches of dirt and mould.... We rose at five o'clock in the morning,
without having had our sleep out, and--stupid and indifferent--at six
o'clock we were sitting behind the table to make biscuits from dough
already prepared for us by our comrades while we were still sleeping.
And the whole day, from early morning to ten o'clock at night, some of
us sat at the table kneading the yeasty dough and rocking to and fro so
as not to get benumbed, while the others mixed the flour with water.
And all day long, dreamily and wearily, the boiling water hummed in
the cauldron where the biscuits were steamed, and the shovel of the
baker rasped swiftly and evilly upon our ears from beneath the oven as
often as it flung down baked bits of dough on the burning bricks. From
morning to evening, in one corner of the stove, they burned wood, and
the red reflection of the flames flickered on the wall of the workshop
as if silently laughing at us. The huge stove was like the misshapen
head of some fairy-tale monster--it seemed to stick out from under the
ground, opening its wide throat full of bright fire, breathing hotly
upon us, and regarding our endless labour with its two black vent-holes
just over its forehead. Those two deep cavities were like eyes--the
passionless and pitiless eyes of a monster; they always regarded us
with one and the same sort of dark look, as if they were weary of
looking at their slaves and, not expecting anything human from us,
despised us with the cold contempt of worldly wisdom.
From day to day in tormenting dust, in dirt brought in by our feet
from the yard, in a dense malodorous steaming vapour, we kneaded dough
and made biscuits, moistening them with our sweat, and we hated our
work with a bitter hatred; we never ate of that which came forth from
our hands, preferring black bread to the biscuits. Sitting behind the
long table, face to face with each other, nine over against nine, we
mechanically used our arms and fingers during the long hours, and were
so accustomed to our work that we no longer noticed our own movements.
And we had examined one another so thoroughly that everyone of us
knew all the wrinkles in the faces of his comrades. We had nothing to
talk about, so we got accustomed to talking about nothing, and were
silent the whole time unless we quarrelled--there is always a way to
make a man quarrel, especially if he be a comrade. But it was rarely
that we even quarrelled--how can a man be up to much if he is half
dead, if he is like a figure-head, if his feelings are blunted by
grievous labour? But silence is only a terror and a torture to those
who have already said all they have to say and can say no more; but
for people who have not begun to find their voices, silence is simple
and easy.... Sometimes, however, we sang; it came about in this way.
One of us in the midst of his work would suddenly whinny like a tired
horse and begin to croon very softly one of those protracted ditties,
the sadly caressing _motif_ of which always lightens the heaviness of
the singer's soul. One of us would begin singing, I say, and the rest
would, at first, merely listen to his lonely song, and beneath the
heavy roof of the cellar his song would flicker and die out like a tiny
camp-fire in the steppe on a grey autumn night when the grey sky hangs
over the earth like a leaden roof. Presently the first singer would be
joined by another, and then two voices, softly and sadly, would float
upwards from the stifling heat of our narrow ditch. And then, suddenly,
several voices together would lay hold of the song, and the song would
swell forth like a wave, and become stronger and more sonorous, and
seem to amplify the heavy grey walls of our stony prison.
And so it came about that the whole six-and-twenty of us would find
ourselves singing--our sustained, sonorous concert would fill the
work-room, and the song would seem not to have room enough therein. It
would beat against the stone wall, wail, weep, stir within the benumbed
heart the sensation of a gentle tickling ache, re-open old wounds in
it, and awake it to anguish. The singers would sigh deeply and heavily;
one of them would unexpectedly break off his own song and listen to
the singing of his comrades, and then his voice would blend once more
with the common billow of sound. Another of us, perhaps, would utter
an anguished "Ah!" and then continue singing with fast-closed eyes. No
doubt the broad dense wave of sound presented itself to his mind as a
road stretching far, far away--a broad road lit up by the bright sun,
with he himself walking along that road.
And all the time the flame of the furnace was flickering and the
baker's shovel was harshly scraping the brick floor, and the boiling
water was humming in the cauldron, and the reflection of the fire was
quivering on the wall and laughing at us noiselessly.... And we were
wailing forth in the words of others our dull misery, the heavy anguish
of living beings deprived of the sun, the anguish of slaves. Thus we
lived, twenty-six of us, in the cellar of a large stone house, and life
was as grievous to us as if all the three upper storeys of this house
had been built right upon our very shoulders.
* * * * *
But, besides the singing, we had one other good thing--a thing we
set great store by and which, possibly, stood to us in the place of
sunshine. In the second storey of our house was a gold-embroidery
factory, and amongst the numerous factory girls employed there was
a damsel sixteen years old, Tanya by name. Every morning she would
come to the little window pierced through the door in the wall of our
workshop, and pressing against it her tiny rosy face, with its merry
blue eyes, would cry to us with a musical, friendly voice: "Poor little
prisoners! give me some little biscuits!"
All of us would instantly turn round at the familiar sound of that
bright voice, and gaze good-naturedly and joyously at the pure virginal
little face smiling upon us so gloriously. It became a usual and very
pleasant thing for us to see the little nose pressed against the
window-pane, to see the tiny white teeth gleaming from under the rosy
lips parted by a smile. There would then be a general rush to open the
door, each one trampling upon his fellows in his haste, and then in she
would come, always so bright and pleasant, and stand before us, her
head perched a little on one side, holding up her apron and smiling
all the time. The long thick locks of her chestnut hair, falling
across her shoulders, lay upon her breast. We dirty, grimy, misshapen
wretches stood there looking up at her--the threshold of the door was
four steps above the level of the floor--we had to raise our heads to
look at her, we would wish her good morning, and would address her in
especial language--the words seemed to come to us expressly for her
and for her alone. When we conversed with her our voices were gentler
than usual, and our jests were less rough. We had quite peculiar and
different manners--and all for her. The baker would take out of the
oven a shovelful of the ruddiest, best toasted biscuits, and skilfully
fling them into Tanya's apron.
"Take care you don't fall into the clutches of the master!" we would
always caution her. And she, roguishly laughing, would call to us:
"Good-bye, little prisoners," and vanish as quickly as a little mouse.
Only--long after her departure, we would talk pleasantly about her
among ourselves; we always said the same thing, and we said it late
and early, because she and we and everything around us was always the
same early and late. It is a heavy torment for a man to live where
everything around him is unchanging, and if this does not kill the soul
within him, the longer he lives the more tormenting will the immobility
of his environment become. We always spoke of women in such a way
that sometimes it went against the grain with us to listen to our own
coarse, shameful speeches, and it will be understood that the sort of
women we knew were unworthy to be alluded to in any other way. But we
never spoke ill of Tanya. None of us ever permitted himself to lay so
much as a finger upon her; nay, more, she never heard a loose jest from
any of us. Possibly this was because she never remained very long with
us: she twinkled before our eyes like a star falling from heaven and
vanished; but, possibly also, it was because she was so tiny and so
very pretty, and everything beautiful awakens respect for it even in
coarse people. And there was something else. Although our prison-like
labour had made dull brutes of us, for all that we were still human
beings, and, like all human beings, we could not live without
worshipping something or other. We had nothing better than she, and
nobody but she took any notice of us who lived in that vault; nobody,
though scores of people lived in that house. And finally--and that,
after all, was the chief thing--we all of us accounted her as in some
sort our own, as, in some sort, only existing thanks to our biscuits;
we looked upon it as our duty to give her biscuits piping hot, and
this became to us a daily sacrifice to our idol; it became almost a
sacred office, and every day bound us to her more and more. Besides
the biscuits we gave to Tanya a good deal of advice--she was to put
on warmer clothes, not run rapidly upstairs, not to carry heavy loads
of wood. She listened to our advice with a smile, responded to it with
laughter, and never followed it at all; but we were not offended with
her on that account, we only wanted to show her that we were taking
care of her.
Sometimes she asked us to do different things for her; such, for
instance, as to open the heavy cellar door, to chop up wood and so on,
and we joyfully, nay, with a sort of pride, did for her all that she
asked us to do.
But, once, when one of us asked her to mend his only shirt, she sniffed
contemptuously and said: "What next! do you think I've nothing better
to do."
We laughed heartily at the silly fellow--and never asked her to do
anything more. We loved her--and when that is said all is said. A man
always wants to lay his love upon someone, although sometime he may
crush her beneath the weight of it, and sometimes he may soil her; he
may poison the life of his neighbour with his love, because in loving
he does not revere the beloved. We were obliged to love Tanya because
we had none else to love.
At times one or other of us would begin to reason about it like this:
"Why are we spoiling the wench like this? What is there in her after
all? Eh? We are making a great deal of fuss about her!"
The fellow who ventured to use such language was pretty roughly
snubbed, I can tell you. We wanted something to love, we had found what
we wanted, and we loved it; and what we six-and-twenty loved was bound
to be inviolate, because it was our holy shrine, and everyone who ran
contrary to us in this matter was our enemy. No doubt people often love
what is not really good--but here we were, all twenty-six of us, in the
same boat, and therefore what we considered dear we would have others
regard as sacred.
* * * * *
Besides the biscuit factory our master had a fancy-bakery; it was
located in the same house, and only separated from our hole by a wall;
but the fancy-bakers--there were four of them--kept us at arm's-length,
considering their work as cleaner than ours, and for that reason
considering themselves as better than we. So they did not come into
our workshop, and laughed contemptuously at us when they met us in the
yard. We, too, did not go to them; our master had forbidden us to
do so for fear we should steal the milk scones. We did not like the
fancy-bakers because we envied them. Their work was lighter than ours;
they got more than we did and were better fed; they had a spacious,
well-lighted workshop, and they were all so clean and healthy--quite
the opposite to us. We indeed, the whole lot of us, looked greyish
or yellowish; three of us were suffering from disease, others from
consumption, one of us was absolutely crippled by rheumatism. They, on
feast-days and in their spare time, put on pea-jackets and boots that
creaked; two of them had concertinas, and all of them went strolling
in the Park--we went about in little better than dirty rags, with
down-at-heel slippers or bast shoes on our feet, and the police would
not admit us into the Park--how could we possibly love the fancy-bakers?
Presently we heard that their overseer had taken to drink, that the
master had dismissed him and hired another, and that this other was
a soldier who went about in a rich satin waistcoat, and on great
occasions wore a gold chain. We were curious to see such a toff, and,
in the hope of seeing him, took it in turns to run out into the yard
one after the other.
But he himself appeared in our workshop. He kicked at the door, it flew
open, and, keeping it open, he stood on the threshold, smiled, and said
to us: "God be with you! I greet you, my children!"
The frosty air, rushing through the door in thick smoky clouds,
whirled round his feet, and there he stood on the threshold looking
down upon us from his eminence, and from beneath his blonde, skilfully
twisted moustaches gleamed his strong yellow teeth. His vest really
was something quite out of the common--it was blue, embroidered with
flowers, and had a sort of sparkle all over it, and its buttons were
made of pretty little pearls. And the gold chain _was_ there....
He was handsome, that soldier was, quite tall, robust, with ruddy
cheeks, and his large bright eyes looked good and friendly and clear.
On his head was a white stiffly starched cap, and from beneath his
clean spotless spats appeared the bright tops of his modish brilliantly
polished boots.
Our baker asked him, respectfully, to shut the door. He did so, quite
deliberately, and began asking us questions about our master. We
outdid each other in telling him that our master was a blood-sucker, a
slave-driver, a malefactor, and a tormentor; everything in short that
we could and felt bound to say about our master, but it is impossible
to write it down here. The soldier listened, twirled his moustache, and
regarded us with a gentle, radiant look.
"And I suppose now you've a lot of little wenches about here?" he
suddenly said.
Some of us laughed respectfully, others made languishing grimaces; one
of us made it quite clear to the soldier that there _were_ wenches
here--a round dozen of them.
"Do you amuse yourselves?" asked the soldier, blinking his eyes.
Again we laughed, not very loudly, and with some confusion of face....
Many of us would have liked to show the soldier that they were as
dashing fellows as himself, but none dared to do so; no, not one. One
of us indeed hinted as much by murmuring: "Situated as we are...."
"Yes, of course, it would be hard for you!" observed the soldier
confidentially, continuing to stare at us. "You ought to be--well, not
what you are. You're down on your luck--there's a way of holding one's
self--there's the look of the thing--you know what I mean! And women
you know like a man with style about him. He must be a fine figure
of a man--everything neat and natty you know. And then, too, a woman
respects strength. Now what do you think of that for an arm, eh?"
The soldier drew his right arm from his pocket, with the shirt-sleeve
stripped back, bare to the elbow, and showed it to us It was a strong,
white arm, bristling with shiny, gold-like hair.
"Legs and breast the same--plenty of grit there, eh? And then, too,
a man must be stylishly dressed, and must have nice things. Now look
at me--all the women love me! I neither call to them nor wink at
them--they come falling on my neck by the dozen."
He sat down on a flour-basket and discoursed to us for a long time
about how the women loved him, and how valiantly he comported himself
with them. After he had gone, and when the creaking door had closed
behind him, we were silent for a long time, thinking of him and of
his yarns. And after a bit we suddenly all fell a-talking at once,
and agreed unanimously that he was a very pleasant fellow. He was so
straightforward and jolly--he came and sat down and talked to us just
as if he were one of us. No one had ever come and talked to us in such
a friendly way before. And we talked of him and of his future successes
with the factory girls at the gold-embroiderer's, who, whenever they
met us in the yard, either curled their lips contemptuously, or gave us
a wide berth, or walked straight up to us as if we were not in their
path at all. And as for us, we only feasted our eyes upon them when
we met them in the yard, or when they passed by our window, dressed
in winter in peculiar little fur caps and fur pelisses, and in summer
in hats covered with flowers, and with sunshades of various colours
in their hands. But, on the other hand, among ourselves, we talked of
these girls in such a way that, had they heard it, they would have gone
mad with rage and shame.
"But how about little Tanya--I hope he won't spoil her!" said our chief
baker suddenly with a gloomy voice.
We were all silent, so greatly had these words impressed us. We had
almost forgotten about Tanya: the soldier had shut her out from us,
as it were, with his fine burly figure. Presently a noisy dispute
began. Some said that Tanya would not demean herself by any such
thing; others maintained that she would be unable to stand against the
soldier; finally, a third party proposed that if the soldier showed any
inclination to attach himself to Tanya, we should break his ribs. And,
at last, we all resolved to keep a watch upon the soldier and Tanya,
and warn the girl to beware of him.... And so the dispute came to an
end.
* * * * *
A month passed by. The soldier baked his fancy-rolls, walked out with
the factory girls, and frequently paid us a visit in our workshop,
but of his victories over the wenches he said never a word, but only
twirled his moustaches and noisily smacked his lips.
Tanya came to us every morning for her "little biscuits," and was
always merry, gentle, and friendly with us. We tried to talk to her
about the soldier--she called him "the goggle-eyed bull-calf," and
other ridiculous names, and that reassured us. We were proud of our
little girl when we saw how the factory girls clung to the soldier.
Tanya's dignified attitude towards him seemed to raise the whole lot of
us, and we, as the directors of her conduct, even began to treat the
soldier himself contemptuously. But her we loved more than ever, her we
encountered each morning more and more joyfully and good-humouredly.
But one day the soldier came to us a little the worse for liquor,
he sat him down, began laughing, and when we asked him what he was
laughing about, he explained:
"Two of the wenches have been quarrelling about me, Liddy and Gerty,"
said he. "How they did blackguard each other! Ha, ha, ha! They caught
each other by the hair, and were down on the floor in a twinkling, one
on the top of the other; ha, ha, ha! And they tore and scratched like
anything, and I was nearly bursting with laughter. Why can't women
fight fair? Why do they always scratch, eh?"
He was sitting on the bench; there he sat so healthy, clean, and
light-hearted, and roared with laughter. We were silent. Somehow, or
other, he was disagreeable to us at that moment.
"No, I can't make it out. What luck I do have with women, it is
ridiculous. I've but to wink, and--she is ready. The d-deuce is in
it."
His white arms, covered with shining gold down, rose in the air and
fell down again on his knees with a loud bang. And he regarded us with
such a friendly look of amazement, just as if he himself were frankly
puzzled by the felicity of his dealings with women. His plump, ruddy
face regularly shone with happiness and self-complacency, and he kept
on noisily smacking his lips.
Our chief baker scraped his shovel along the hearth violently and
angrily, and suddenly remarked, with a sneer:
"It is no great feat of strength to fell little fir-trees, but to fell
a full-grown pine is a very different matter.
"Is that meant for me, now?" queried the soldier.
"It _is_ meant for you."
"What do you mean?"
"Nothing ... Never mind."
"Nay, stop a bit! What's your little game? What pine-tree do you mean?"
Our master-baker didn't answer, he was busily working with his shovel
at the stove, shovelled out the well-baked biscuits, sifted those that
were ready, and flung them boisterously on to the floor to the lads who
were arranging them in rows on the bast wrappings. He seemed to have
forgotten the soldier and his talk with him. But the soldier suddenly
became uneasy. He rose to his feet and approached the stove, running
the risk of a blow in the chest from the handle of the shovel which was
whirling convulsively in the air.
"Come, speak--what _she_ did you mean? You have insulted me. Not a
single she shall ever get the better of me, n-no--I say. And then, too,
you used such offensive words to me...."
He really seemed to be seriously offended. No doubt he had but a poor
opinion of himself except on this one point: his ability to win women.
Possibly, except this one quality, there was nothing really vital
in the man at all, and only this single quality allowed him to feel
himself a living man.
There are people who look upon some disease, either of the body, or of
the soul, as the best and most precious thing in life. They nurse it
all their lives, and only in it do they live at all. Though they suffer
by it, yet they live upon it. They complain of it to other people, and
by means of it attract to themselves the attention of their neighbours.
They use it as a means of obtaining sympathy, and without it--they
are nothing at all. Take away from them this disease, cure them, and
they will be unhappy because they are deprived of the only means of
living--there they stand empty. Sometimes the life of a man is poor to
such a degree that he is involuntarily obliged to put a high value on
some vice, and live thereby; indeed, we may say straight out that very
often people become vicious from sheer ennui.
The soldier was offended, rushed upon our master-baker, and bellowed:
"Come, I say--speak out! Who was it?"
"Speak out, eh?"--and the master-baker suddenly turned round upon him.
"Yes!--Well?"
"Do you know Tanya?"
"Well!"
"Well, there you are!--try her!"
"I?"
"You."
"Pooh! That's nothing."
"Let us see!"
"You shall see. Ha-ha-ha!"
"She look at you!"
"Give me a month!"
"What a braggart you are, soldier!"
"A fortnight! I'll show you. Who's she? Little Tanya! Pooh!"
"And now be off!--you're in the way."
"A fortnight, I say--and the thing's done. Poor you, I say!"
"Be off, I say."
Our baker suddenly grew savage; and flourished his shovel. The soldier
backed away from him in astonishment, and observed us in silence.
"Good!" he said at last with ominous calmness--and departed.
During the dispute we all remained silent, we were too deeply
interested in it to speak. But when the soldier departed, there arose
from among us a loud and lively babble of voices.
Someone shrieked at the baker: "A pretty business you've set a-going,
Paul!"
"Go on working, d'ye hear!" replied the master-baker fiercely.
We felt that the soldier would make the assault, and that Tanya was in
danger. We felt this, and yet at the same time we were all seized by
a burning curiosity that was not unpleasant--what would happen? Would
Tanya stand firm against the soldier? And almost all of us cried, full
of confidence:
"Little Tanya? She'll stand firm enough!"
We had all of us a frightful longing to put the fortitude of our little
idol to the test. We excitedly proved to each other that our little
idol was a strong little idol, and would emerge victorious from this
encounter. It seemed to us, at last, that we had not egged on our
soldier enough, that he was forgetting the contest, and that we ought
to spur his vanity just a little bit. From that day forth we began to
live a peculiar life, at high nervous tension, such as we had never
lived before. We quarrelled with each other for days together, just
as if we had all grown wiser, and were able to talk more and better.
It seemed to us as if we were playing a sort of game with the Devil,
and the stake on our part was--Tanya. And when we heard from the
fancy-bread-bakers that the soldier had begun "to run after our little
Tanya," it was painfully well with us, and so curious were we to live
it out, that we did not even observe that our master, taking advantage
of our excitement, had added 14 poods[2] of paste to our daily task.
We practically never left off working at all. The name of Tanya never
left our tongues all day. And every morning we awaited her with a
peculiar sort of impatience.
[2] 560 lbs.
Nevertheless we said not a word to her of the contest actually
proceeding. We put no questions to her, and were kind and affectionate
to her as before. Yet in our treatment of her there had already crept
in something new and strangely different to our former feeling for
Tanya--and this new thing was a keen curiosity, keen and cold as a
steel knife.
"My friends, the time's up to-day," said the master-baker one morning
as he set about beginning his work.
We knew that well enough without any reminder from him, but we trembled
all the same.
"Look at her well, she'll be here immediately," continued the baker.
Someone exclaimed compassionately:
"As if eyes could see anything!"
And again a lively, stormy debate arose among us. To-day we were to
know at last how clean and inviolable was the vessel in which we had
placed our best. That morning, all at once and as if for the first
time, we began to feel that we were really playing a great game,
and that this test of the purity of our divinity might annihilate
it altogether so far as we were concerned. We had all heard during
the last few days that the soldier was obstinately and persistently
persecuting Tanya, yet how was it that none of us asked her what her
relations with him were? And she used to come to us regularly, every
morning, for her little biscuits, and was the same as ever.
And this day also we very soon heard her voice.
"Little prisoners, I have come...."
We crowded forward to meet her, and when she came in, contrary to our
usual custom, we met her in silence. Looking at her with all our eyes,
we knew not what to say to her, what to ask her. We stood before her
a gloomy, silent crowd. She was visibly surprised at this unusual
reception--and all at once we saw her grow pale, uneasy, fidget in her
place, and inquire in a subdued voice:
"What's the matter with you?"
"And how about yourself?" the master-baker sullenly said, never taking
his eyes off her.
"Myself? What do you mean?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing."
"Come, give me the biscuits!--quick!"
Never before had she been so sharp with us.
"You're in a hurry," said the baker, not moving and never taking his
eyes from her face.
Then she suddenly turned round and disappeared through the door.
The baker caught up his shovel and, turning towards the stove, remarked
quietly:
"It means--she's all ready for him. Ah, that soldier ... the scoundrel
... the skunk!"
We like a flock of sheep, rubbing shoulders with each other, went to
our table, sat down in silence, and wearily began to work. Presently,
someone said: "Yet is it possible...?"
"Well, well, what's the good of talking?" screeched the baker.
We all knew that he was a wise man, far wiser than we. And we
understood his exclamation as a conviction of the victory of the
soldier.... We felt miserable and uneasy.
At twelve o'clock--dinner-time--the soldier arrived. He was as usual
spruce and genteel and--as he always did--looked us straight in the
eyes. But we found it awkward to look at _him._
"Well, my worthy gentlemen, if you like, I'll show you a bit of martial
prowess," said he, laughing proudly. "Just you come out into the
outhouse and look through the crevices--do you understand?"
Out we went, elbowing each other on the way, and glued our faces to
the crevices in the boarded-up wall of the outhouse looking upon the
courtyard. We had not long to wait. Very soon, at a rapid pace, and
with a face full of anxiety, Tanya came tearing through the yard,
springing over the puddles of stale snow and mud. Shortly afterwards,
in not the least hurry and whistling as he went, appeared the soldier,
making his way in the same direction as Tanya, evidently they had
arranged a rendezvous. His arms were thrust deep down in his pockets,
and his moustaches were moving up and down.... He also disappeared....
Then the rain came, and we watched the raindrops falling into the
puddles, and the puddles wrinkle beneath their impact. The day was
damp and grey--a very wearying day. Snow still lay upon the roofs,
and on the earth dark patches of mud were already appearing. And the
snow on the roofs also got covered with dirty dark-brown smuts. The
rain descended slowly with a melancholy sound. We found it cold and
unpleasant to stand waiting there, but we were furious with Tanya for
having deserted us, her worshippers, for the sake of a common soldier,
and we waited for her with the grim delight of executioners.
After a while--we saw Tanya returning. Her eyes--yes, _her_ eyes,
actually sparkled with joy and happiness, and her lips--were smiling.
And she was walking as if in a dream, rocking a little to and fro, with
uncertain footsteps....
We could not endure this calmly. The whole lot of us suddenly burst
through the door, rushed into the yard, and hissed and yelled at her
with evil, bestial violence.
On perceiving us she trembled--and stood as if rooted in the mud
beneath her feet. We surrounded her and, maliciously, without any
circumlocution, we reviled her to our hearts' content, and called her
the most shameful things.
We did not raise our voices, we took our time about it. We saw that
she had nowhere to go, that she was in the midst of us, and we might
vent our rage upon her as much as we liked. I don't know why, but we
did not beat her. She stood in the midst of us, and kept turning her
head now hither, now thither, as she listened to our insults. And
we--bespattered her, more and more violently, with the mud and the
venom of our words.
The colour quitted her face, her blue eyes, a minute before so radiant
with happiness, opened widely, her bosom heaved heavily, and her lips
trembled.
And we, surrounding her, revenged ourselves upon her, for she had
robbed us. She had belonged to us, we had expended our best upon
her, and although that best was but a beggar's crumb, yet we were
six-and-twenty and she was but one, therefore we could not devise
torments worthy of her fault. How we did abuse her! She was silent all
along--all along she looked at us with the wild eyes of a hunted beast,
she was all of a tremble.
We ridiculed, we reviled, we baited her.... Other people came running
up to us.... One of us plucked Tanya by the sleeve.
Suddenly her eyes sparkled, she leisurely raised her hands to her head
and, tidying her hair, looked straight into our faces, and cried loudly
but calmly:
"Ugh! you wretched prisoners!"
And she walked straight up to us, walked as simply as if we were not
standing there before her at all, as if we were not obstructing her
way. And for that very reason not one of us was actually standing in
her way when she came up to us.
And proceeding out of our midst and, without so much as turning towards
us, loudly, and with indescribable contempt, she kept on saying:
"Ugh! you wretches! you vermin!"
And--off she went.
We remained standing in the yard, in the midst of the mud, beneath the
pouring rain and the grey, sunless sky.
Presently we returned in silence to our grey, stony dungeon. As before,
the sun never once looked through our window, and--there was no Tanya
now.