Produced by Eric Eldred, and David Widger
cover
The Seven who were Hanged
A STORY
by Leonid Andreyev
Authorized Translation From The Russian By Herman Bernstein.
Contents
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION
THE SEVEN WHO WERE HANGED
CHAPTER I AT ONE O’CLOCK, YOUR EXCELLENCY!
CHAPTER II CONDEMNED TO BE HANGED
CHAPTER III WHY SHOULD I BE HANGED?
CHAPTER IV WE COME FROM ORYOL
CHAPTER V KISS—AND SAY NOTHING
CHAPTER VI THE HOURS ARE RUSHING
CHAPTER VII THERE IS NO DEATH
CHAPTER VIII THERE IS DEATH AS WELL AS LIFE
CHAPTER IX DREADFUL SOLITUDE
CHAPTER X THE WALLS ARE FALLING
CHAPTER XI ON THE WAY TO THE SCAFFOLD
CHAPTER XII THEY ARE HANGED
Andreyev
Leonid Andreyev
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, whose
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.