Something strange, like a dream, grew in the city, rushing onward with
irresistible rapidity. People lost their fear completely. On the faces
which only a short time ago had been flat and humble, an expression of
conscious power and preoccupation now appeared sharply and clearly. All
recalled builders preparing to pull down an old structure, and busily
considering the best way of beginning the work.
Almost every day the workingmen in the factory suburb openly arranged
meetings, at which known revolutionists appeared, who in the very
presence of the police and officials of the Department of Safety sharply
censured the order of life, and pointed out that the manifesto of the
minister convoking the Duma was an attempt of the administration to
pacify the people, who were stirred up by misfortune, in order to
deceive them in the end, as always. The speakers urged their listeners
not to believe anybody except their own reason.
Once when a rebel orator shouted, "The people alone are the true and
legal masters of life; to them belong the whole earth and all freedom,"
a triumphant roar came in reply, "True, brother!"
Yevsey deafened by the shouts turned away, and met Melnikov who had been
standing in back of him. His eyes burned, he was black and dishevelled.
He flapped his arms, as a crow flaps its wings, and bawled:
"Tr-r-r-ue!"
Klimkov pulled the skirt of his coat in amazement, and whispered in a
low voice:
"What ails you? The speaker is a Socialist. He's under surveillance."
Melnikov blinked his eyes, and asked:
"He?" Without awaiting a reply, he shouted again, "Hurray! True!" Then
to Yevsey very angrily, "Get out! It's all the same who speaks the
truth."
Yevsey smiled timidly at the new speeches. He looked around helplessly
for some person in the crowd with whom he might speak openly; but on
finding a pleasant face that inspired confidence, he sighed and thought:
"I'll begin to talk with him, and he'll at once understand that I'm a
spy."
He frequently heard the revolutionists speak of the necessity of
arranging another life upon earth. Dreams of his childhood returned,
broadened and filled with a clear content. He believed in the hot
fearless words. But the faith grew feebly and lazily upon the shaky,
slimy soil of his soul, choked with impressions, poisoned by fear, and
exhausted by violence. His faith was like a child suffering with
rachitis, bow-legged, with large eyes always gazing into the distance.
Yevsey admired the beautiful growth of the rebellion. But he lacked the
power to fall in love with it. He believed words. He did not believe
people. The dreams stirring his heart died the instant they touched it.
A timorous spectator he walked along the shore of a stream without the
desire to plunge into its soul-refreshing waves. At the same time he
longed wistfully for someone to triumph, for someone to make life calm
and pleasing, and point out a comfortable place in it where he might
find repose.
At first he could not comprehend why both the revolutionists and the
officers of the spies censured the administration, why both asserted
that someone wanted to deceive the people. When the people themselves,
however, came out into the street, and began to speak, Yevsey stopped to
think about this question.
The spies walked about slowly, indolently; they all grew strange to one
another, maintaining sullen silence, and looking into the eyes of their
comrades suspiciously, as if expecting something dangerous from one
another. The officials ceased to talk, and sank into the background.
They gave out no plans of action, and said nothing new.
"Has nothing been heard in regard to this St. Petersburg league of
princes?" Krasavin asked almost every day.
Once Piotr joyously announced:
"Boys, Sasha has been summoned to St. Petersburg. He'll fix up a game
there, you'll see."
Viakhirev, the hook-nosed, reddish spy, remarked lazily:
"The League of Russian People has been permitted to organize fighting
bands to kill the revolutionists. I'll go there, I'm a good shot."
"A pistol is a fine thing," said someone. "You shoot, and then run
away."
"How simply they speak about everything," thought Yevsey. He
involuntarily recalled other conversations--Olga and Makarov--which he
impatiently pushed away from himself.
Sasha returned from St. Petersburg, as it were stronger. Concentrated
green sparks gleamed in his dim eyes. His voice had become deeper, his
entire body seemed to have straightened and grown sounder.
"What are we going to do?" asked Piotr.
"You'll soon find out," answered Sasha, showing his teeth.
Autumn came as always quiet and melancholy. But the people did not
remark its advent. Yesterday bold and noisy, to-day they came out into
the streets still bolder, still more confident, and upheld Yevsey's
faith in their victory, in the nearness, of a calm, peaceful,
comfortable life.
Then came the fabulously terrible and marvellous days, when all the
people ceased to work, and the customary life that for so long had held
oppressive sway, oppressive in its cruelty and aimless play, suddenly
ceased, as if crushed by a giant embrace. The people refused the city,
their ruler, bread, fire, and water. And for a number of nights it stood
in darkness, hungry, thirsty, sullen, and affronted. During those dark,
insulting nights, the working-people walked through the streets with
song, childish joy shining in their eyes. For the first time they
clearly saw their power, and themselves were amazed at its significance.
They understood their might over life, and good-naturedly exulted,
looking at the blinded houses, the motionless dead machines, the
dumbfounded police, the closed, ever-hungry jaws of the shops and
restaurants, the frightened faces, the humble figures of those persons
who had never learned to work, but only to eat much, and who therefore
considered themselves the best blood in the city. Their power over
people had been torn from their impotent hands in these days, yet their
cruelty and cunning remained. Klimkov looked at the men accustomed to
command now silently submitting to the will of the hungry, poor, and
unwashed. He understood that it had become a shame for the lords to
live. So trying to cover up their shame, they smiled approvingly upon
the working-people, and lied to them. They were afraid of the workers.
In spite of the lords, however, it seemed to Yevsey that the past would
not return. He felt that new masters had arisen, and if they had been
able all of a sudden to stop the course of life, then they would now be
able to arrange it differently, more freely, and more easily for
themselves and for all.
The old, the cruel, and the malicious abandoned the city. It melted away
in the darkness. The people perceptibly grew better, and though the city
remained without illumination, yet the nights were stirring, merry as
the days.
Everywhere crowds of people gathered and spoke animatedly, in free,
bold, human speech, of the approaching days of the triumph of truth.
They believed in it hotly. The unbelievers were silent, but looked into
the new faces, impressing the new speech upon their minds.
Often Klimkov observed the spies in the crowds. Not wishing to be seen
by them, he walked away. He met Melnikov more frequently than the
others. This man roused his particular interest. A dense crowd always
gathered around him, and his thick voice flowed from the centre of the
group like a dark stream.
"There, you see! The people wanted it, and everything is up. If the
people want it, they will take everything into their own hands. They're
a power, the people are. Remember this--don't let what you have obtained
slip from your grasp. Take care! More than everything, guard against the
cunning of various gentlemen. Away with them. Drive them off! If they
dispute, beat them to death."
When Klimkov heard this, he thought:
"For such talk people used to be put in prison. What numbers have been
put in prison! And now they speak that way themselves."
He wandered about in the crowd alone from morning until late at night.
Sometimes he had an irresistible yearning to speak; but as soon as he
felt the desire coming upon him, he immediately walked off into empty
by-streets and dark corners.
"If I speak, they'll recognize me," he thought with importunate dread.
And he comforted himself by reflecting, "No hurry. I'll have time enough
yet to speak."
One night while walking along the street, he saw Maklakov hidden in a
gateway, looking up to a lighted window on the opposite side of the
street like a hungry dog waiting for a sop.
"Keeps at his work," thought Yevsey, then said to Maklakov: "Do you want
me to take your place, Timofey Vasilyevich?"
"You, me, Yevsey?" exclaimed the spy in a subdued voice, and Klimkov
felt that something was wrong, for it was the first time that the spy
had ever addressed him by the first name. Moreover Maklakov's voice was
not his own. "No, go," he said.
The spy always so smooth and decorous now had a shabby appearance. His
hair, as a rule carefully and prettily combed behind his ears, lay in
disorder over his forehead and temples. He smelt of whiskey.
"Good-by," said Yevsey raising his hat and walking off slowly. He had
taken only a few steps, however, when he heard a call behind him.
"Listen!"
Yevsey turned back noiselessly, and stood beside Maklakov.
"Let's walk together."
"He must be very drunk," thought Yevsey.
"Do you know who lives in that house?" asked Maklakov, looking back.
"No."
"Mironov, the writer. Do you remember him?"
"I do."
"Well, I should think you would. He made you out a fool so simply."
"Yes," agreed Yevsey.
They walked slowly with noiseless tread. The narrow street was quiet,
deserted, and cold.
"Let's go back," continued Maklakov. Then he adjusted his hat on his
head, buttoned his overcoat, and declared thoughtfully, "Brother, I am
going away--to Argentine. That's in America."
Klimkov heard something hopeless, dismal in his words, and he, too,
began to feel gloomy and awkward.
"Why--so far?"
"I must."
Maklakov again stopped opposite the illuminated window, and looked up to
it silently. Like a huge, solitary eye on the black face of the house,
it cast a peaceful beam of light into the darkness--a small island amid
black and heavy waters.
"That's his window, Mironov's," said Maklakov quietly. "That's the way
he sits at night all by himself and writes. Come."
Some people advanced toward them singing softly:
"It comes, it comes, the last decisive fight!"
"We ought to cross to the other side," Yevsey proposed in a whisper.
"Are you afraid?" asked Maklakov, though he was the first to step from
the pavement to cross the frozen dirt of the middle of the street. "No
reason to be afraid. These fellows with their songs of war and all such
things are peaceful people. The wild beasts are not among _them_, no. It
would be good to sit down now in some warm place, in a café, but
everything is closed, everything is suspended, brother."
"Come home," Klimkov suggested.
"Home? No thank you. You can go if you want to."
Yevsey remained, submissively yielding to the sad expectation of
something inevitable. From the other side of the street came the sound
of the people's talk.
"Misha, is it possible you don't believe?" one asked in a ringing,
joyous voice.
A soft bass answered:
"I do believe, but I say it won't happen so soon."
"Listen! What the devil of a spy are you, eh?" Maklakov suddenly
demanded nudging Yevsey with his elbow. "I've been watching you a long
time. Your face always looks as if you had just taken an emetic."
Yevsey grew glad at the possibility of speaking about himself openly.
"I am going away, Timofey Vasilyevich," he quickly mumbled. "Just as
soon as everything is arranged, I am going away. I'll gradually settle
myself in business, and I'm going to live quietly by myself--"
"As soon as what is arranged?"
"Why, all this about the new life. When the people start out all for
themselves."
"Eh, eh," drawled the spy, waving his hand and smiling. His smile robbed
Yevsey of the desire to speak about himself.
They walked in silence again, and turned again. Both were gloomy.
"There, now," Maklakov exclaimed with unexpected roughness and acerbity
as they once more approached the author's house. "I'm really going away,
forever, entirely from Russia. Do you understand? And I must hand over
some papers to this--this author. You see this package?"
He waved a white parcel before Yevsey's face, and continued quickly, in
a low growl. "I won't go to him myself. This is the second day I've been
on the watch for him, waiting for him to come out. But he's sick, and he
won't come out. I would have given it to him in the street. I can't send
it by mail. His letters are opened and stolen in the Post Office and
given over to the Department of Safety. And it's absolutely impossible
for me to go to him myself. Do you understand?"
The spy pressing the package to his breast bent his head to look into
Yevsey's eyes.
"My life is in this package. I have written about myself--my story--who
I am, and why. I want him to read it--he loves people."
Taking Yevsey's shoulder in a vigorous clutch the spy shook him, and
commanded:
"You go and give it to him, into his own hands--go, tell him that one--"
Maklakov broke off, and continued after a pause--"tell him that a
certain agent of the Department of Safety sent him these papers, and
begs him most humbly--tell him that way, 'begs him most humbly' to read
them. I'll wait here for you, on the street. Go. But look out, don't
tell him I'm here. If he asks, say I've escaped, went to Argentine.
Repeat what I've told you."
"Went to Argentine."
"And don't forget, 'begs most humbly.'"
"No, I won't."
"Go on, quick!"
Giving Klimkov a gentle shove on the back he escorted him to the door of
the house, walked away, and stopped to observe him.
Yevsey agitated and seized with a fine tremor, lost consciousness of his
own personality crushed by the commanding words of Maklakov. He pushed
the electric button, and felt ready to crawl through the door in the
desire to hide himself from the spy as quickly as possible. He struck it
with his knee, and it opened. A dark figure loomed in the light, a voice
asked testily:
"What do you want?"
"The writer, Mr. Mironov--him personally. I have been told to deliver a
package into his own hands. Please, quick!" said Yevsey, involuntarily
imitating the rapid and incoherent talk of Maklakov. Everything became
confused in his brain. But the words of the spy lay there, white and
cold as dead bones. And when a somewhat dull voice reached him, "What
can I do for you, young man?" Yevsey said in an apathetic voice, like an
automaton, "A certain agent of the Department of Safety sent you these
papers, and begs you most humbly to read them. He has gone off to
Argentine." The strange name embarrassed Yevsey, and he added in a lower
voice, "Argentine, which is in America."
"Yes, but where are the papers?"
The voice sounded kind. Yevsey raised his head, and recognized the
soldierly face with the reddish mustache. He pulled the package from his
pocket, and handed it to him.
"Sit down."
Klimkov seated himself, keeping his head bowed. The sound of the tearing
of the wrapping made him start. Without raising his head, he looked at
the writer warily from under lowered lids. Mironov stood before him
regarding the package, his mustache quivering.
"You say he's gone off?"
"Yes."
"And you yourself are also an agent?"
"Yes," said Yevsey quietly, and thought, "Now, he'll scold me."
"Your face seems familiar to me."
Yevsey tried not to look at him. But he felt the writer was smiling.
"Yes, I suppose it is familiar to you," said Yevsey sighing.
"Have you, too, been tracking me?"
"Once. You saw me from the window. You came out into the street, and
gave me a letter."
"Yes, yes. I remember. The devil! So that was you? Well, excuse me, my
dear man. I think I must have offended you, eh?"
Yevsey rose from the chair, looked into his laughing face incredulously,
and glanced around.
"That's nothing," he said.
He felt unbearably awkward as he listened to the somewhat rude yet
kindly voice. He was afraid that after all the writer would abuse him
and drive him out.
"There, you see how strangely we meet this time, eh?"
"Nothing else?" asked Yevsey confused.
"Nothing else. But I believe you are tired. Sit down. Rest."
"I must be going."
"Very well. As you please. Well, thank you. Good-by."
He extended his large hand with reddish wool on the fingers. Yevsey
touched it cautiously.
"Permit me also to tell you my life," he requested unexpectedly to
himself. The instant he had distinctly uttered these words, he thought,
"This is the very man to whom I ought to speak, if Timofey Vasilyevich
himself, such a wise person and better than everybody, respects him."
Recalling Maklakov, Yevsey looked at the window, and for a moment grew
anxious.
"No matter," he said to himself. "It's not the first time he's had to
freeze."
"Well, why not? Tell me, if you want to. Won't you take off your
overcoat? And perhaps you will have a glass of tea. It's cold."
Yevsey wanted to smile, but he restrained himself. In a few minutes, his
eyes half closed, he told the writer monotonously and minutely about the
village, about Yakov, and about the blacksmith. He spoke in the same
voice in which he reported his observations in the Department of Safety.
The writer, whom Yevsey observed from under his lashes, was sitting on a
broad, heavy taborette, his elbows on the table, over which he bent,
twirling his mustache with a quick movement of his fingers. His eyes
gazed sharply and seriously into the distance above Klimkov's head.
"He doesn't hear me," thought Yevsey, and raised his voice a little,
continuing to examine the room without himself being observed, and
jealously watching the face of the author.
The room was dark and gloomy. The shelves crammed with books, which
increased the thickness of the walls, apparently kept out the sounds of
the street. Between the shelves the glass of the windows glistened
dully, pasted over with the cold darkness of the night, and the white
narrow stain of the door obtruded itself on the eye. In the middle of
the room was a table, whose covering of grey cloth seemed to lend a dark
grey tone to everything around it.
Yevsey was ensconced in a corner of a chair covered with a smooth skin.
For some reason he propped his head hard against its high back, then
slid down a little. The flames of the candles disturbed him; the yellow
tongues slowly inclining toward each other, seemed to be holding a
conversation. They trembled, and straightened themselves out, struggling
upward. Back of the author over the sofa, hung a large portrait, from
which a yellow face with a sharp little beard looked out sternly.
The author began to twirl his mustache more slowly, but his look as
before travelled beyond the confines of the room. All this disturbed
Yevsey, breaking the thread of his recollections. He be-thought himself
of closing his eyes. When he did so, and darkness closely enveloped him,
he sighed lightly. Suddenly he beheld himself divided in two--the man
who had lived, and the other being who was able to tell about the first
as about a stranger. His speech flowed on more easily, his voice grew
stronger, and the events of his life drew themselves connectedly one
after the other, unrolling easily like a ball of grey thread. They freed
the little feeble soul from the dirty and cumbersome rags of its
experiences. It was pleasant to Yevsey to tell about himself. He
listened to his own voice with quiet astonishment. He spoke truthfully,
and clearly saw that he had not been guilty of anything, for he had
lived all his days not as he had wanted to, but as he had been compelled
to do; and he had been compelled to do what was unpleasant and
unnecessary to him. Filled with a sense of sincere self-pity, he was
almost ready to weep and to fall in love with himself.
Whenever the author asked him a question, which Yevsey did not
understand, he would say without opening his eyes, sternly and quietly:
"Wait, I'm telling it in order."
He spoke without wearying, but when he came to the moment of his meeting
with Maklakov, he suddenly stopped as before a pit. He opened his eyes,
and saw at the window the dull look of the autumn morning, the cold grey
depth of the sky. Heaving a deep sigh, he straightened himself up. He
felt washed within, unusually light, unpleasantly empty. His heart was
ready submissively to receive new orders, fresh violence.
The author rose noisily from his seat, tall and strong. He pressed his
hands together, cracking his fingers disagreeably.
"What do you think of doing now?" he asked, as he turned to the window
without looking at Klimkov.
Yevsey also rose, and repeated with assurance what he had told Maklakov.
"As soon as the new life is arranged, I'll quietly go into some
business--I'll go to another city--I've saved about one hundred and
fifty rubles."
The author turned to him slowly.
"So?" he said. "You have no other desire whatsoever?"
Klimkov thought, and answered:
"No."
"And you believe in the new life? You think it will arrange itself?"
"Of course. How else? If all the people want it. Why won't it arrange
itself?"
"I'm not saying anything."
Mironov keeping silent turned to the window again, and straightened out
his mustache with both hands. Yevsey stood motionless, awaiting
something and listening to the emptiness in his breast.
"Tell me," said the writer softly and slowly, "aren't you sorry for
those people, that girl, your cousin, and his comrade?"
Klimkov bowed his head, and drew the skirts of his coat together.
"You found out that they were right, didn't you?"
"At first I was sorry for them. I must have been ashamed, I suppose. But
now I'm not sorry any more."
"No? Why not?"
Klimkov did not answer at once. At the end of a few moments he said:
"Well, they are good people, and they attained to what they wanted."
"And didn't it occur to you that you were in a bad business?"
Yevsey sighed.
"Why, I don't like it. I do what I'm told to do."
The author stepped up to him, then turned aside. Klimkov saw the door
through which he had entered, saw it because the author's glance was
turned to it.
"I ought to go," he thought.
"Do you want to ask me anything?" inquired the author.
"No, I am going."
"Good-by." And the host moved to let him pass. Yevsey walking on tip-toe
went into the ante-chamber, where he began to put on his overcoat. From
the door of the room he heard a question:
"Listen, why did you tell me about yourself?"
Squeezing his hat in his hands Yevsey thought, and answered:
"Just so. Timofey Vasilyevich respects you very much, the one who sent
me."
The writer smiled.
"Aha! Is that all?"
"Why _did_ I tell him?" Klimkov suddenly wondered. Blinking his eyes, he
looked fixedly into the author's face.
"Well, good-by," said the host, rubbing his hands. He moved away from
his visitor.
Yevsey nodded to him politely.
"Good-by."
When he came out of the house, he looked around, and immediately
observed the black figure of a man at the end of the street in the grey
twilight of the morning. The man was quietly striding along the pavement
holding his head bent.
"He's waiting," Klimkov thought. He shrank back. "He'll scold me. He'll
say it was too long."
The spy must have heard the resonant sound of steps on the frozen paving
in the stillness of the morning. He raised his head, and fairly ran to
meet Yevsey.
"Did you give it to him? Yes?"
"I did."
"Why were you so long? Did he speak to you? What did he ask?"
Maklakov shivered. His cheeks were blue, his nose red. He seized the
lapels of Yevsey's overcoat, and instantly released him, blew on his
fingers, as if he had burned them, and began to tramp his feet on the
ground. Thus, chilled through and through, and pitiful, he was not
awe-inspiring.
"I, too, told him all my life," Yevsey declared aloud. It was pleasant
to tell Maklakov about it.
"Well, didn't he ask about me?"
"He asked whether you had gone away."
"What did you say?"
"I said you had."
"Yes. Nothing else?"
"Nothing."
"Well, let's go. I'm frozen, brother." Maklakov darted forward,
thrusting his hands in his overcoat pockets, and hunching his back. "So
you told him your life?"
"The whole of it, completely, to the very moment of my last meeting with
you," answered Yevsey, again experiencing a pleasant sensation, which
raised him to the same level as the spy whom he respected.
"What did he say to you then?"
For some reason confused and embarrassed Klimkov waited before he
replied.
"He didn't say anything."
Maklakov stopped, seized him by the sleeve, and asked in a stern though
quiet tone:
"Did you give him my papers?"
"Search me, Timofey Vasilyevich," Yevsey cried sincerely.
"I won't," said Maklakov, after reflecting. "Well, now good-by. I'll
disappear this very day. Take my advice. I'm giving it, because I pity
you. Get out of this service and be quick about it. It's not for you,
you know it yourself. Go away now. Now is the time to leave. You see
what days these are. The dead are coming to life, people trust one
another, they can forgive much in a period like this; they can forgive
everything, I think. And above all, avoid Sasha. He's sick and insane.
He's made you deliver up your cousin, he--he ought to be killed, like a
mangy dog. Well, good-by, brother." He seized Yevsey's hand in his cold
fingers, and pressed it firmly. "So you gave him my papers?" he asked
once more. "You're sure of it, are you?"
"I did--by God! The moment I caught sight of him I at once remembered
him."
"All right. I believe you. Don't speak about me there for a few days, I
beg you."
"I'm not going there. On the twentieth I'll call for my salary."
"Tell them then. By that time I'll be far away. Good-by."
He turned the corner quickly. Yevsey looked after him, thinking
suspiciously:
"He's going off. Probably he did something against the authorities, and
got frightened. How he looks, just as if he had gotten a beating."
He grew sorry for himself at the thought that he would never again see
Maklakov. Nevertheless, it was agreeable to recall how weak, chilled
through, and troubled the spy had looked, the spy who had always borne
himself so calmly and firmly.
"He spoke boldly even with the officers of the Department of Safety,
spoke to them as if he were their equal. But apparently he was all the
time afraid of the author who was under surveillance. And here am I, a
little man," thought Yevsey, as he strode down the street, "a little
man, afraid of everybody, yet the author didn't frighten me. I was
drinking tea at his house, while Maklakov was shivering on the street."
Klimkov content with himself smiled. "He couldn't say anything, the
author couldn't." Yevsey was suddenly seized with a mingled feeling of
sadness and insult. He slackened his pace, and sank into reflections as
to why this was. He sought the cause of the grief that unexpectedly rose
within him.
"Why did I speak to him?" he thought again on the way. "Instead, I
should have told it that time to Olga."
The city awoke, and Yevsey wanted to sleep. He felt uneasiness,
discomfort in his breast again. His heart was like a little room from
which all the furniture has been removed, and which is left bare and
empty, with green stains of dampness on the torn wall-paper, showing the
dumb patterns made by the chinks in the plastering.
He wanted to sleep, but it was pleasant to stroll the streets, and he
walked homeward with reluctant steps.