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 unoiled 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.