That night the streets of Skorodozh were alive with noises--which
gradually died away. The frightened townsmen sprang from their warm
beds, and peering through the half-opened blinds into the dark streets
saw those who had been caught in the woods led away in the custody of
the Cossacks. Then when the stamp of horses’ hoofs and the hum of
human voices subsided, the residents quietly went back to their beds,
and were soon asleep. Lady Godiva would have been highly pleased with
such modest people: they looked, yet did not show themselves, and did
not hinder.
They went to bed again, and muttered something to their wives. The
freedom-loving bourgeois grumbled:
“They won’t let you sleep. The horses’ hoofs make such a noise. They
might employ bicycles instead of horses.”
The night passed like a nightmare for many. It seemed to grip all life
with a cold apprehensiveness, and burdened one’s soul with a hate
towards the earthly life which suffered agony from its bondage to the
flaming, exultant Dragon. Why did he exult? Was it because we beings
of the earth are evil and cruel, and love to torment, to see drops of
blood and tears?
Our dark, earthly nature is suffused with a cruel voluptuousness. Such
is the imperfection of the human breed that a single human vessel
contains all the deepest ecstasies of love and all the lowest delights
of lust, and the mixture is poisoned with shame and with pain--and
with the desire for shame and pain. From one fountain come both the
gladdening raptures and the gladdening lusts of the passions. We
torment others only because it gives us joy.
After the agonies on the way from the wood, after a search had been
made, many of the prisoners were dispatched to prison. Others were set
free.
* * * * *
A restless, sluggish, and unfriendly morning rose over the city. From
the wood, just beyond the town, came the half-pleasant,
half-disagreeable odour of a forest fire.
The news about the two dead victims, Kiril and another workman,
Kliukin, a family man, soon spread. Their comrades were excited.
The corpses had been taken to the mortuary of the town hospital. A
large crowd, grave, silent, and resolute in mood, had gathered quite
early near the mortuary. It mostly consisted of labouring men, and
their wives and children. The large square in front of the hospital,
with its dirty, unpaved spots, its trampled grass, its grey, gloomy
little shops, appeared oppressed by an atmosphere of early morning
fatigue. The slant rays of the rising Dragon, veiled with a light
mist, fell upon the scowling faces of the crowd as indifferently as
upon the fence or the closed gates. The Ancient Dragon is not our sun.
The faces of those who stood near the closed gates were scowling. No
one was permitted to enter the hospital. Within, preparations were
going on for a secret burial of the victims. Tumultuous voices of
anger rose in the crowd.
A detachment of Cossacks soon appeared on the scene. They came on
quickly, and paused near the crowd. The beautiful smooth horses
trembled sensitively. The riders were handsome, sun-burnt, black-eyed,
and black-browed; their black hair, not cut in the military fashion,
was visible from under their high hats. The women in the crowd looked
at them now and then with involuntary admiration.
The tumult increased, the crowd continued to grow. The whole square
was alive with people. There seemed to be imminent danger of a bloody
collision.
Trirodov went that morning to the chief of the rural police and to the
officer of the gendarmerie. He wished to convince them that a secret
burial would only add to the workers’ excitement. The chief listened
to him in a dull way, and kept on repeating:
“Impossible. I can’t....”
He gazed down persistently. This caused his neck to look tight, poured
out like copper. And he kept on turning his ring round his finger as
if it were a talisman protecting him from hostile calumny.
The colonel of the gendarmes proved easier to deal with. In the end
Trirodov succeeded in obtaining an order for the surrender of the
bodies of the dead men to their families.
The chief of the rural police arrived in the square. The crowd greeted
him with discordant and angry cries. He stood up in his trap and
motioned with his hand. Every one grew silent. He addressed them:
“Would you like to bury them yourselves? Very well, you shall have
them. Only be careful that nothing happens which shouldn’t happen. In
any case, the Cossacks will be present, in an emergency. And now I
will see that the bodies of your comrades are delivered to you.”