Midday. It was quiet, innocent, and fresh in the depth of the wood, at
the edge of the hollow--and the outer heat penetrated hither only by
an infinite coiling as of a scaly serpent impotent at last and
deprived of its poison.
Trirodov had found this place for himself and Elisaveta. More than
once they came here together--to read, to talk, and to sit a while at
the moss-covered stone, out of which, like a strange corporeal ghost,
grew up all awry a slender quaking ash. Elisaveta, dressed in her
simple short skirt, her long sunburnt arms and part of her legs
showing, seemed so tall, so erect, and so graceful at this
moss-covered stone.
Elisaveta was reading aloud--poems! How golden her voice sounded with
its seductive, sun-like sonorousness! Trirodov listened with a
slightly ironical smile to these familiar, infinitely deep and lovely
words, so seemingly meaningless in life. When she finished Trirodov
said:
“A man’s whole life is barely enough to think out a single idea
properly.”
“You mean to say that each should choose for himself but a single
idea.”
“Yes. If people could but grasp this fact human knowledge would take
an unprecedented step forward. But we are afraid to venture.”
And coarse life already hovered near them behind their backs, and was
about to intrude upon them. Elisaveta gave a sudden faint outcry at
the unexpectedness of an unseemly apparition. A dirty, rough-looking
man, all in tatters, was almost upon them; he had approached them upon
the mossy ground as softly as a wood fairy. He stretched out a dirty,
horny hand, and asked, not at all in a begging voice:
“Give a hungry man something to buy bread with.”
Trirodov frowned in annoyance, and without looking at the beggar took
a silver coin out of the pocket of his waistcoat. He always kept a
trifle about him to provide for unexpected meetings. The ragged one
smiled, turned the coin, threw it upward, caught it, and hid it
adroitly in his pocket.
“I thank your illustrious Honour most humbly,” he said. “May God give
you good health, a rich wife, and assured success. Only I want to say
something to you.”
He grew silent, and assumed a grave, important air. Trirodov frowned
even more intensely than before, and asked stiffly:
“What is it you wish to tell me?”
The ragged one said with frank derision in his voice:
“It’s this. You were reading a book, my good people, but not the right
one.”
He laughed a pathetic, insolent laugh. It was as if a timorous dog
suddenly began to whine hoarsely, insolently, and cautiously.
Trirodov asked again in astonishment:
“Not the right one, why not?”
The ragged one began to speak with awkward gestures, and he gave the
impression that he was able to speak well and eloquently, and that he
merely assumed his stupid, unpolished manner of speaking.
“I had been listening to you a long time. I was behind the bush there.
I was asleep, I must confess--then you came--chattered away, and waked
me. The young lady read well. Clearly and sympathetically. One could
see at once that it was from the heart. Only I don’t like the
contents, and all that’s in this book.”
“Why don’t you like it?” asked Elisaveta quietly.
“In my opinion,” said the ragged one, “it isn’t your style. It doesn’t
fit you somehow.”
“What sort of book ought we to read?” asked Elisaveta.
She gave a light, forced smile. The ragged one sat down on a near-by
stump, and answered in no undue haste:
“I am not thinking of you alone, honourable folk, but of all those who
parade in fancy gaiters and in velvet dresses, and look scornfully at
our brothers.”
“What book?” again asked Elisaveta.
“It’s the gospels that you ought to read,” he replied, as he looked
attentively and austerely at Elisaveta, his glance taking in her
entire figure from her flushed face down to her feet.
“Why the gospels?” asked Trirodov, who suddenly grew morose. He
appeared to be pondering over something, and unable to decide; his
indecision seemed to torment him.
The ragged one replied slowly:
“I will tell you why; you’ll find the true facts there. We will take
it easy in paradise, while the devils will be pulling the veins out of
you in hell. And we shall look on coolly, and applaud gaily with our
hands. It ought to prove entertaining.”
He burst out into loud, hoarse laughter--but it seemed more assumed
than joyous, and rather abject and hideous. Elisaveta shivered.
“What a wicked person you are! Why do you think that?” said Elisaveta
reproachfully.
The ragged one glanced at her crossly, and looked fixedly into her
deep blue eyes; then he said with a broad smile:
“Why am I wicked? And are you two good? Wicked or not, the thing is to
be just. But I may tell you, sir, that I like you,” he said as he
turned suddenly to Trirodov.
“Thank you for your good opinion,” said Trirodov with a slightly
ironical smile, “but why should you like me?”
He looked attentively at the ragged one. Then suddenly he felt
depressed and apprehensive, and he lowered his eyes. The other slowly
lit his foul-smelling pipe, stretched himself, and began after a brief
silence:
“Other gentlemen’s mugs are mostly gay, as if they had gorged
themselves on a pancake with cream, or had successfully forged their
uncle’s will. But you, sir, seem to have the same lean mug always. I
have been observing you some time now. It’s evident that you have
something on your soul. At least a capital crime.”
Trirodov was silent. He lifted himself on his elbow and looked
straight into the man’s eyes with such a fixed, strange expression in
his unblinking, commanding, wilful eyes.
The ragged one grew silent, as if he had been congealed for a moment.
Then, as if frightened, he suddenly shook himself. He shrank and
stooped, and as he took his cap off he revealed an unkempt, tousled
head of hair; he mumbled something, slipped away among the bushes, and
disappeared quietly--like a fairy of the wood.
Trirodov looked gloomily after him--and was silent. Elisaveta thought
that he deliberately avoided looking at her. She was intensely
embarrassed, but made an effort to control herself. She laughed, and
said with assumed gaiety:
“What a strange creature!”
Trirodov turned upon her his melancholy glances and said quietly:
“He talks like one who knows. He talks like one who sees. But no one
can know what happened.”
Oh, if one could only know! If one could only change that which once
had happened!
Trirodov recalled again during these days the dark history of Piotr
Matov’s father. Trirodov had carelessly entangled himself in this
affair, and now it compelled him to have dealings with the blackmailer
Ostrov.
Piotr’s father, Dmitry Matov, had fallen into a trap which he had set
for others. He had joined a secret revolutionary circle. There they
soon discovered his relations with the police, and they decided to
detect him and kill him.
One of the members of the circle, the young physician Lunitsin, took
the role of betrayer upon himself. He promised to obtain for Dmitry
Matov important documents involving many of the members. They made a
bargain at a moderate figure. The meeting at which the documents were
to be exchanged for the money was designated to take place in a small
borough close to the town in which Trirodov then lived.
At the appointed hour Dmitry Matov got out of his train at a little
station. It was late in the evening. Matov wore blue spectacles and a
false beard, as was agreed upon. Lunitsin waited for him a few yards
from the station, and led him to a very solitary spot where was
situated the house hired for the purpose.
A supper had been prepared there. Matov ate heartily and drank much
wine. His companion began to invent stories about certain suspicious
movements he had heard of lately. Little by little Matov grew candid,
and began to boast of his connexions with the police, and of the great
number of people he had skilfully betrayed.
The door leading to the next room was hung with draperies. Three
people were hiding in that room--Trirodov, Ostrov, and the young
working man Krovlin. They were listening. Krovlin was intensely
excited. He kept on repeating in indignant whispers:
“Oh, the scoundrel! The wretch!”
Ostrov and Trirodov managed to restrain him with great difficulty.
“Be silent. Let him babble out everything,” they said to him.
At last Matov’s impudent boastfulness was too much for Krovlin, who
jumped out from his hiding-place, and shouted:
“So that’s how it is! You’ve betrayed our men to the police! And you
have the face to confess it!”
Dmitry Matov grew green with fear. He shouted to his companion:
“Kill him! He has been listening to us! Shoot quick! He mustn’t live.
He will give us both up!”
At this moment two other men appeared from the same place. Lunitsin
aimed his revolver straight at Matov’s forehead, and asked:
“Who ought to be killed, traitor?”
Matov then understood that he had been caught in a trap. But he still
made efforts to wriggle out of it, and called all his skill and his
insolence to his assistance. They tried him for treachery. At first he
defended himself. He said that he had deceived the police, and that he
had entered into relations with them merely to get important
information for his comrades. But his protestations soon grew weaker.
Then he began to beg for mercy. He spoke of his wife and of his
children.
Matov’s entreaties failed to impress any one. His judges were adamant.
His fate was decided. The sentence of hanging was passed unanimously.
Matov was bound. The noose was already thrown about his neck. Then
Trirodov intervened:
“What are you going to do with him? It will be difficult to take him
away, and it is dangerous to leave him here.”
“Who will come here?” said Lunitsin. “At best only by chance. Let him
hang here until he’s found.”
“Let us bury him here in the garden, like a dog,” suggested Krovlin.
“Give him to me,” said Trirodov. “I will dispose his body in such a
way that no one will find it.”
The others assented eagerly. Ostrov said with a scornful smile:
“Will you try your chemistry on him, Giorgiy Sergeyevitch? Well, it’s
all the same to us. A bad man ought to be punished--make even a
skeleton of him for your use if you like.”
Trirodov drew a flagon containing a colourless liquid from his pocket.
“Now this will put him to sleep,” he said.
He injected with a small syringe several drops of the liquid under
Dmitry Matov’s skin. Matov gave a feeble cry and fell heavily to the
floor. In a few moments the body lay before them, blue and apparently
lifeless. Lunitsin examined Matov and said:
“He’s done for.”
The men left one by one. Trirodov alone remained with Matov’s body.
Trirodov took off Matov’s clothes and burned them in the stove. He
made several more injections of the same colourless liquid.
The night passed slowly. Trirodov lay on the sofa without taking his
clothes off. He slept badly, tormented by oppressive dreams. He awoke
several times.
Dmitry Matov lay in the next room on the floor. The liquid, injected
into his blood, acted strangely. The body contracted in proper
proportion, and wasted very quickly. Within several hours it lost more
than half of its weight, and assumed very small dimensions; it became
very soft and pliant. But all its proportions were faithfully
preserved.
Trirodov made up the body into a large parcel, covered it over with
plaid, and bound it with straps. It resembled a pillow wrapped up in
plaid. Trirodov left by the morning train for home, carrying with him
Dmitry Matov’s body.
At home Trirodov put the body into a vessel containing a greenish
liquid compounded by himself. Matov’s body shrunk in it even more. It
had become barely more than seven inches long. But as before all its
proportions remained inviolate.
Then Trirodov prepared a special plastic substance, in which he
wrapped Matov’s body. He pressed it compactly into the form of a cube,
and placed it on his writing-table. And thus a thing that once had
been a man remained there a thing among other things.
Nevertheless Trirodov was right when he told Ostrov that Matov had not
been killed. Yes, notwithstanding his strange form and his distressing
immobility, Dmitry Matov was not dead. The potentiality of life slept
dormant in that solid object. Trirodov thought more than once as to
whether the time had not come to rehabilitate Matov and return him to
the world of the living.
He had not decided upon this before. But he was confident that he
would succeed in doing this without hindrance. The process of
rehabilitation required a tranquil and isolated place.
In a little more than a year at the beginning of the summer Trirodov
decided to begin the process of rehabilitation. He prepared a large
vat over six feet in length. He filled it with a colourless liquid,
and lowered into it the cube containing Matov’s body.
The slow process of rehabilitation began. Unperceived by the eye, the
cube began to thaw and to swell. It needed a half-year before it would
thaw out sufficiently to permit the body to peer through.