An accident happened at home. Dorimedont appeared late at night in torn
clothes, without hat or cane, his face bruised and smeared with blood.
His bulky body shook, tears ran down his swollen cheeks. He sobbed, and
said in a hollow voice:
"It's all over! I must go away--to another city--the minute I can."
Rayisa silently, without haste, wiped his face with a towel dipped in
brandy and water. He started and groaned.
"Not so rough! Not so rough! The beasts! How they beat me--with clubs.
To beat a man with clubs! _Please_ be more careful. Don't you
understand?"
Yevsey handed the water, removed the spy's shoes, and listened to his
groans. He took secret satisfaction in his tears and blood. Accustomed
as he was to see people beaten until blood was drawn, their outcries did
not touch him even though he remembered the pain of the pummelings he
had received in his childhood.
"Who did it to you?" asked Rayisa when the spy was settled in bed.
"They trapped me, surrounded me, in a suburb near a thread factory. Now
I must go to another city. I will ask for a transfer."
When Yevsey lay down to sleep, the spy and Rayisa began to quarrel
aloud.
"I won't go," said the woman in a loud and unusually firm voice.
"Keep quiet! Don't excite a sick man!" the spy exclaimed with tears in
his voice.
"I won't go!"
"I will make you."
In the morning Yevsey understood by Rayisa's stony face and the spy's
angry excitement that the two did not agree. At supper they began to
quarrel again. The spy, who had grown stronger during the day, cursed
and swore. His swollen blue face was horrible to look upon, his right
hand was in a sling, and he shook his left hand menacingly. Rayisa, pale
and imperturbable, rolled her round eyes, and followed the swinging of
his red hand.
"Never, I'll never go," she stubbornly repeated, scarcely varying her
words.
"Why not?"
"I don't want to."
"But you know I can ruin you."
"I don't care."
"No, you'll go."
"I won't."
"We shall see. Who are you anyway? Have you forgotten?"
"It's all the same to me."
"All right."
After supper the spy wrapped his face in his scarf, and departed without
saying anything. Rayisa sent Yevsey for whiskey. When he had brought her
a bottle of table whiskey and another bottle of some dark liquid, she
poured a portion of the contents of each into a cup, sipped the entire
draught, and remained standing a long time with her eyes screwed up and
wiping her neck with the palm of her hand.
"Do you want some?" she asked, nodding over the bottle. "No? Take a
drink. You'll begin to drink some time or other anyway."
Yevsey looked at her high bosom, which had already begun to wither, at
her little mouth, into her round dimmed eyes, and remembering how she
had been before, he pitied her with a melancholy pity. He felt heavy and
gloomy in the presence of this woman.
"Ah, Yevsey," she said, "if one could only live his whole life with a
clean conscience."
Her lips twitched spasmodically. She filled a cup and offered it to him.
"Drink!"
He shook his head in declination.
"You little coward!" she laughed quietly. "Life is hard for you--I
understand. But why you live I don't understand. Why? Tell me."
"Just so," answered Yevsey gloomily. "I live. What else is one to do?"
Rayisa looked at him, and said tenderly:
"I think you are going to choke yourself."
Yevsey was aggrieved and sighed. He settled himself more firmly in his
chair.
Rayisa paced through the room, stepping lazily and inaudibly. She
stopped before a mirror, and looked at her face long without winking.
She felt her full white neck with her hands, her shoulders quivered, her
hands dropped heavily, and she began again to pace the room, her hips
moving up and down. She hummed without opening her mouth. Her voice was
stifled like the groan of one who suffers from toothache.
A lamp covered with a green shade was burning on the table. Through the
window the round disk of the moon could be seen in the vacant heavens.
The moon, too, looked green, as it hung there motionless like the
shadows in the room, and it augured ill.
"I am going to bed," said Yevsey rising from his chair.
Rayisa did not answer, and did not look at him. Then he stepped to the
door, and repeated in a lower voice:
"Good-night. I am going to sleep."
"Go, I'm not keeping you. Go."
Yevsey understood that Rayisa felt nauseated. He wanted to tell her
something.
"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired, stopping at the door.
She looked into his face with her weary sleepy eyes.
"No, nothing," she answered quietly after a pause.
She walked up and down in the room for a long time. Yevsey heard the
rustle of her skirt and the doleful sound of her song, and the clinking
of the bottles. Occasionally she coughed dully.
Rayisa's composed words stood motionless in Yevsey's heart, "I think you
are going to choke yourself." They lay upon him heavily, pressing like
stones.
In the middle of the night the spy awoke Klimkov rudely.
"Where is Rayisa?" he asked in a loud whisper. "Where did she go? Has
she been gone long? You don't know? You fool!"
Dorimedont left the room hastily, then thrust his head through the door,
and asked sternly:
"What was she doing?"
"Nothing."
"Was she drinking?"
"Yes."
"The pig!"
The spy pulled his ear, and disappeared.
"Why did he speak in a whisper?" Yevsey wondered.
The light in the lamp flickered and went out. The spy uttered an oath,
then began to strike matches, which flared up, frightening the darkness,
and went out. Finally a pale ray from the room reached Yevsey's bed. It
quivered timidly, and seemed to seek something in the narrow ante-room.
Dorimedont entered again. One of his eyes was closed from the swelling,
the other, light and restless, quickly looked about the walls, and
halted at Yevsey's face.
"Didn't Rayisa say anything to you?"
"No."
"Such a stupid woman!"
Yevsey felt awkward to be lying down in the presence of the spy, and he
raised himself.
"Stay where you are! Stay where you are!" said Dorimedont hastily, and
sat down on the bed at Yevsey's feet.
"If you were a year older," he began in an unusually kind, quiet, and
thoughtful tone, "I would get you into the Department of Safety as a
political agent. It's a very good position. The salary is not large, but
if you are successful, you get rewarded. And it's a free life. You can
go wherever you want, have a good time, yes, indeed. Rayisa is a
beautiful woman, isn't she?"
"Yes, beautiful," agreed Yevsey.
"Yes, ahem," said the spy, with a sigh and a strange smile. He kept
stroking the bandage on his head with his left hand, and pinching his
ear. "Woman you can never have enough of--the mother of temptation and
sin.--Where did she go? What do you think?"
"I don't know," answered Yevsey quietly, beginning to be afraid of
something.
"Of course. She has no paramour. No men came to her. Do you know what,
Yevsey? Don't be in a hurry with women. You have time enough for that.
They cost dear, brother. Here am I, who have made thousands and
thousands of rubles, and what's become of them?"
Heavy, cumbersome, bound with rags, he shook before Yevsey's eyes, and
seemed ready to fall to pieces. His dull voice sounded uneasy. His left
hand constantly felt of his head and his breast.
"Ah, I got mixed up with them a great deal!" he said peering
suspiciously around the dark corners of the room. "It's troublesome, but
you can't get along without them. Nothing better in the world. Some say
cards are better, but card-players can't get along without women either.
Nor does hunting make you proof against women. Nothing does."
In the morning Klimkov saw the spy sleeping on the sofa with his clothes
on. The room was filled with smoke and the smell of kerosene from the
lamp, which had not been extinguished. Dorimedont was snoring, his large
mouth wide open, his sound hand dangling over the floor. He was
repulsive and pitiful.
It grew light, and a pale square piece of sky peeped into the little
window. The flies awoke, and buzzed plaintively, darting about on the
grey background of the window. Besides the smell of kerosene the room
was penetrated with some other odor, thick and irritating.
After putting out the lamp Yevsey for some reason washed himself in a
great hurry, dressed, and started for the office.