silence, merely looking on. Liuba, full of her happiness, sat quietly
beside him on the bed, one arm about his neck, herself drinking little,
but constantly plying him, and from time to time whispering in his ear,
»Darling!«
He drank heavily, but it did not make him tipsy; what was happening
in him was something different, something which strong alcohol
often secretly effects. Whilst he drank and sat there silent, the
work was going on in him, vast, destructive, swift, and numbing. It
was as though all he had known in his past life, all he had loved
and meditated--talks with companions, books, perilous and alluring
tasks--was noiselessly being burned, annihilated without a trace, and
he himself not injured in the process, but rather made stronger and
harder. With every glass he drank he seemed to return to some earlier
self of his, to some primitive rebel ancestor, for whom rebellion was
religion and religion rebellion. Like a colour being washed away in
boiling water, his foreign bookish wisdom was fading and was being
replaced by something of his very own, wild and dark as the black
earth--from whose bleak stretches, from the infinitudes of slumbrous
forest and boundless plain, blew the wind that was the life-breath of
this ultimate blind wisdom of his; and in this wind could be heard
the tumultuous jangling of bells, and through it could be seen the
blood-red dawn of great fires, and the clank of iron fetters, and the
rapture of prayer, and the Satanic laughter of myriad giant throats;
and above his uncovered head the murky dome of the sky.
Thus he sat. Broad cheeked, pallid, already quite at home with these
miserable creatures racketing around him. And, in his soul, laid waste
by the conflagration of a desolated world, there glowed and gleamed,
like a white fire of incandescent steel, one thing alone--his flaming
will; blind now and purposeless, it was still greedily reaching out
afar, while his body, undisturbed, was secretly being steeled in the
feeling of limitless power and ability to create all things or to
shatter all things at will.
Suddenly he hammered on the table with his fist.
»Drink, Liubka! Drink!«
And when, radiant and smiling, she had poured herself out a glass, he
lifted his, and cried aloud.
»Here's to our Brotherhood!«
»You mean Them?« whispered Liuba.
»No, these. To our Brotherhood! To the blackguards, brutes and cowards,
to those who are crushed by life, to those perishing from syphilis,
to....«
The other girls laughed, the fat one indolently objecting:
»Oh, come, that's going a bit too far, my dear!«
»Hush!« said Liuba, turning very pale, »He is my betrothed.«
»To those who are blind from birth! Ye who can see, pluck out your
eyes! For it is shameful«--and he banged on the table--»it is shameful
for those who have sight to look upon those who are blind from birth!
If with our light we cannot illumine all the darkness, then let us
put out the signal fires, let us all crawl in the dark! If there be not
paradise for all, then I will have none for myself! And this, girls,
this is no part of paradise, but simply and plainly a piggery! A toast,
girls! That all the signal fires be extinguished. Drink! To the Dark!«
He staggered a little as he drank off his glass. He spoke rather
thickly, but firmly, precisely, with pauses, enunciating every
syllable. Nobody understood his wild speech, but they found him
pleasing in himself, his pale figure and his peculiar quality of
wickedness. Then Liuba suddenly took up the word, stretching out her
hands.
»He is my betrothed. He will stay with me. He was virtuous and had
comrades, and now he will stay with me!«
»Come and take Markusha's place,« the fat woman drawled.
»Shut up, Manka, or I'll smash your face! He will stay with me. He was
virtuous....«
»We were all virtuous once,« the evil old woman grumbled. And the
others joined in: »I was straight four years ago ... I'm an honourable
woman still ... I swear to God....«
Liuba was nearly weeping.
»Silence, you sluts! You had your honour taken from you; but he gives
it me himself. He takes it and gives it for my honour. But I don't want
honour! You're a lot of ... and he's still an innocent boy!«
She broke into sobs. There was a general outburst of laughter. They
guffawed as only the drunken can, without any restraint; the little
room, saturated with sounds, and unable to absorb any more, threw it
all back in a deafening roar. They laughed until the tears fell; they
rolled together and groaned with it. The fat woman clucked in a little
thin voice and tumbled exhausted from her chair.
And, last of all, he laughed out loud at the sight of them.
It was as though the Satanic world itself had foregathered there to
laugh to its grave that little sprig of virtue, the dead innocence
itself joining in the laughter.
The only one who did not laugh was Liuba. Trembling with agitation, she
wrung her hands and shouted at them, and finally flung herself with her
fists on the fat woman, who even with her beam-like arms could hardly
ward off her blows.
»So be it!« he shouted in his laughter. But the others could hear
nothing.
At last the noise died down a little.
»So be it!« he cried, a second time. »But, peace! Silence!--I have
something to show you!«
»Leave them alone,« said Liuba, wiping her tears away with her fist.
»We must get rid of them.«
Still shaking with laughter he turned round to face her.
»Are you frightened?« he asked. »Was it honour you wanted after all?
You fool! It's the only thing you ever have wanted! Leave me alone!«
Without taking any more notice of her, he addressed himself to the
others, rising and holding his closed hands above his head.
»Listen! I'll show you something! Look here, at my hands!«
Merry and curious, they looked at his hands, and waited obediently,
like children, with gaping mouths.
»Here! Here! See?« He shook his hands. »I hold my life in my hands! Do
you see?«
»Yes! Yes! Go on!«
»My life was noble, it was! It was pure and beautiful. Yes, it was!
It was like those pretty porcelain vases. And now, look! I fling it
away....« He let fall his hands, almost with a groan, and all their
eyes looked downwards as though there really lay something down
there, something delicate and brittle, that had been shattered into
fragments--a beautiful human life.
»Trample on it, now, girls! Trample it to pieces until not a bit of it
is left!«
Like children enjoying a new game, with a whoop and a laugh, they leapt
up and began trampling on the spot where lay the fragments of that
invisible dainty porcelain, a beautiful human life. Gradually a new
frenzy overcame them. The laughter and shrieks died away, and nothing
but their heavy breathing was audible above the continuous stamping and
clatter of feet--rabid, unrelenting, implacable.
Liuba, like an affronted queen, watched it a moment over his shoulder
with savage eyes; then suddenly, as though she had only just understood
and been driven mad, with a wild groan of elation she burst into the
midst of the jostling women and joined the trampling in a faster
measure. But for the earnestness of the drunken faces, the ferocity of
the bleary eyes, the wickedness of the depraved and twisted mouths, it
might all have been taken for some new kind of dance without music,
without rhythm.
With his fingers gripping into his hard bristly skull, the man looked
on, calm and grim.
* * * * *
Two voices were speaking in the dark--Liuba's, intimate, tentative,
sensitive, with delicate intonations of private apprehension such as a
woman's voice always gains in the dark, and his hard, quiet, distant.
He spoke his words too precisely, too harshly--the only sign of
intoxication not quite passed away.
»Are your eyes open?« she asked.
»Yes.«
»Are you thinking about something?«
»Yes.«
Silence--and the dark. Then again the thoughtful, vigilant voice of the
woman.
»Tell me something more about your comrades, will you?«
»What for?... They--they were.«
He said WERE as the living speak of the dead, or as the dead might
speak of the living, and through the even course of his calm and almost
indifferent narration it resounded like a funeral knell, as though he
were an old man telling his children the heroic tale of a long departed
past. And, in the darkness, before the girl's enchanted eyes, there
rose the image of a little group of young men, pitifully young, bereft
of father and mother, and hopelessly hostile both to the world they
were fighting and to the world they were fighting for. Having travelled
by dream to the distant future, to the land of brotherly men as yet
unborn, they lived their short lives like pale blood-stained shadows
or spectres, the scarecrows of humanity. And their lives were stupidly
short--the gallows awaited every one of them, or penal servitude, or
insanity--nothing else to look forward to but prison, the scaffold, or
the madhouse. And there were women among them....
Liuba started and raised herself on her elbows.
»Women? What do you mean, darling?«
»Young, gentle girls, still in their teens. They follow in the steps of
the men, manfully, daringly, die with them....«
»Die! Oh my God!« she cried, clutching his shoulder.
»What? Are you touched by this?«
»Never mind, darling. I sometimes.... Go on with your story! Go on!«
And he went on with his story, and there happened a wonderful thing.
Ice was turned into fire. Through the funeral notes of hi requiem
speech, suddenly rang for the girl, her eyes wide open now and burning,
the gospel of a new, joyous, and mighty life. Tears rose in her eyes
and dried there as in a furnace; she was excited to the pitch of
rebellion, eager for every word. Like a hammer upon glowing iron, his
words were forging in her a new responsive soul Steadily, regularly, it
fell--beating the soul ever to a finer temper--and suddenly, in the
suffocating stench of that room, there spoke aloud a new and unknown
voice, the voice of a human being.
»Darling, am I not also a woman?«
»What do you mean?«
»I also might go with Them?«
He did not reply, and in his silence he seemed to her so remarkable and
so great (he had been Their comrade, had lived with Them) that it felt
uncomfortable to be lying beside him, embracing him. She moved away a
little and left only a hand touching him, so that the contact might
be less; and forgetting her hatred of the Fine, her tears and curses,
and the long years of inviolable solitude in the depths--overcome by
the beauty and self-denial of Their lives--her face flushed with
excitement, and she was ready to weep at the terrible thought that They
might not accept her.
»Dear, but will they take me? My God, if they won't! What do you think?
Tell me they'll take me--they won't be squeamish! They won't say: You
are impossible, you are vile, you have sold yourself! Answer me!«
Silence--and then a reply that rejoiced.
»Yes, they will! Why not, indeed?«
»Oh, my darling. But....«
»Fine people, they are!« The man's voice had the finality of a big
fat full stop, but the girl triumphantly repeated, with a touching
confidence:
»Yes! They are fine!«
And so radiant was her smile that it seemed as if the very darkness
smiled in sympathy and some little stars strayed in as well, little
blue points of light. For a new truth had reached her--one that brought
not fear, but joy.
Then the shy suppliant voice.
»Let us go to them, dear? You'll take me with you? You won't be ashamed
of having such a companion? For they'll accept me, won't they? Just
as you did when you came here? Surely you were driven here for some
purpose! But--to stay here--you would simply drop into the cesspool. As
for me, I--I--I will try. Why don't you say anything?«
Grim silence again, in which could be heard the beating of two
hearts--one rapid, hurried, excited; the other hard and slow, strongely
slow.
»Would you be shamed to go back with such as me?«
A stern prolonged silence, and then a reply, solid and inflexible as
unpolished rock:
»I am not going back. I don't want to be fine.«
Silence. Then presently:
»They are gentlemen,« he said, and his voice sounded solitary and
strained.
»Who?« she asked, dully.
»They--Those who were.«
A long silence--this time as though a bird had thrown itself down and
was falling, whirling through the air on its pliant wings, but unable
to reach the earth, unable to strike the ground and lie at rest.
In the dark he knew that Liuba, silently, carefully, making the least
stir possible, passed over him; was busying herself with something.
»What are you doing?«
»I don't like lying there like that. I want to get dressed.«
Then she must have put something on and sat down; for the chair creaked
ever so little; and it became so still--as silent as though the room
were empty. The stillness lasted a long time; and then the calm,
serious voice spoke:
»I think, Liuba, there is still one cognac left on the table. Take a
drink and come and lie down again.«
* * * * *
Day was already dawning, and in the house all was as quiet as in
any other house, when the police appeared. After long arguments and
hesitations Mark had been dispatched to the police station with the
revolver and cartridges and a circumstantial account of the strange
visitor. The police at once guessed who he was. For three days they
had had him on their nerves. They had been seeing him here, there,
and everywhere; but finally, all trace of him had been lost. Somebody
had suggested searching the brothels of the district; but just then
somebody else got another false clue, so the public resorts were
forgotten.
The telephone tinkled excitedly. Half an hour later, in the chill
of the October morning, heavy boots were scrunching the hoar-frost
and along the empty streets moved in silence a company of policemen
and detectives. In front of them, feeling in every inch of his body
what a mistake it was to take the risks of such exposure, marched the
district superintendent, an elderly man, very tall, in a thick official
overcoat, the shape of a sack. He was yawning, burying his flabby red
nose in his grey whiskers; and he was thinking that he ought to wait
for the military; that it was nonsense to go for such a man without
soldiers, with nothing but stupid drowsy policemen who didn't know how
to shoot. More than once he reached the point of calling himself the
slave of duty, yawning every time long and heavily.
The superintendent was a drunkard, a regular debauchee of the resorts
of his district; and they paid him heavily for the right to exist.
He had no desire to die. When they called him from his bed, he had
nursed his revolver for a long time from one greasy palm to the other,
and although there was little time to spare he had ordered them to
clean his jacket, as though for a review. That very night at the
police station, he remembered, conversation had turned on this same
man who had been dodging them all, and the superintendent, with the
cynicism of an old sot, had called the man a hero and himself an old
police trollop. When his assistants laughed, he had assured them that
such heroes must exist, if only to be hanged. »You hang him--and it
pleases you both: him because he is going straight to the Kingdom of
Heaven, and you as a demonstration that brave men still exist. Don't
snigger--it's true.«
On that chill October morning, marching along the cold streets, he
appreciated clearly that the talk of yesterday was lies; that the man
was nothing but a rascal. He was ashamed of his own boyish extravagance.
»A hero, indeed!« the superintendent prayerfully recanted. »Lord, if he
so much as stirs a finger, the blackguard, I'll kill him like a dog. By
God, I will!«
And that set him thinking why he, the superintendent, an old man full
of gout, so much desired to live. Because there was hoar frost on the
streets? He turned round and shouted savagely: »Quick march, there!
Don't go like sheep!«
The wind blew into his overcoat. His jacket was too wide and his whole
body quivered in it like the yolk of an egg in a stirring basin. He
felt as if he was suddenly shrinking. The palms of his hands, despite
the cold, were still sweaty.
They surrounded the house as though they had come to take not one
sleeper but a host in ambush. Then some of them crept along the dark
corridor on tiptoe to the fearsome door.
A desperate knock--a shout--threats to shoot through the door. And
when, almost knocking Liuba, half naked, off her feet, they burst into
the little room in close formation and filled it with their boots
and cloaks and rifles--then they saw him--sitting on the bed in his
shirt, with his bare hairy legs hanging down--sitting there silent. No
bomb--nothing terrible--nothing but the ordinary room of a prostitute,
filthy and repulsive in the early morning light, with its stretch of
tattered carpet and scattered clothes, the table smeared and stained
with liquor--and sitting on the bed a man, clean shaven and with drowsy
eyes, high cheekbones, a swollen face, hairy legs--silent.
»Hands up!« shouted the superintendent, holding his revolver tighter in
his damp hand.
But the man neither raised his arms nor made any answer.
»Search him!« the superintendent ordered.
»There's nothing to search! I took his revolver away. Oh, my God!«
Liuba cried, her teeth chattering with fear. She had nothing on but a
crumpled chemise; among the others, all wrapped in their cloaks, the
two, man and woman, both half naked, roused feelings of shame, disgust,
and contempt.
They searched his clothing, ransacked the carpet, peered into the
corners, into the cupboard, and found nothing.
»I took his revolver from him,« Liuba thoughtlessly insisted.
»Silence Liubka!« the superintendent shouted. He knew the girl well,
had spent two or three nights with her. He believed her; but his relief
was so unexpected that out of sheer pleasure he wanted to shout and
command and show his authority.
»Your name?«
»I shall not say. I shall not answer any questions at all.«
»All right, sir, all right,« the superintendent replied ironically, but
somewhat abashed. Then he looked again at the naked hairy feet and at
the girl shuddering in the corner, and suddenly became suspicious.
»Is this the right man?« he said, taking a detective aside. »Something
seems....«
The detective went and stared closely in the man's face, then nodded
his head decisively.
»Yes. It's he. He's only shaved his beard. You can recognise him by his
cheekbones.«
»A brigand's cheekbones, sure enough.«
»And look at the eyes, too. I could pick him out of a thousand by his
eyes.«
»His eyes? Let me see the photograph.«
He took a long look at the unfinished proof photograph of a man, very
handsome, wonderfully pure and young, with a long bushy Russian beard.
The expression on the face was the same. Not grim, but very calm and
bright. The cheekbones were not markedly prominent.
»You see! His cheekbones don't stand out like....«
»They are concealed by the beard, but if you feel under it with the
eye....«
»It may be, but.... Is he a hard drinker?«
The detective, tall and thin, with a yellow face and sparse beard,
himself a hard drinker, smiled patronizingly.
»There's no drinking among them.«
»I know there isn't but still....« The superintendent approached the
man. »Listen! Were you an accomplice in the murder of N----?«
It was a very important and well known name.
But the man remained silent and only smiled and fidgeted with one hairy
leg; the toes were bent and distorted by boots.
»You are being examined!«
»You may as well leave him alone. He won't reply. We'd better wait for
the captain and prosecutor. They'll make him talk.«
The superintendent smiled, but in his heart for some reason he felt the
shrinking again.
They had been tearing up the carpet; they had upset something, and
there was a very unpleasant smell in the ill-ventilated room.
»What filth!« thought the superintendent, though in the matter of
cleanliness he was by no means nice. And he looked with disgust at
that naked swinging foot. »So he is still fidgeting with his foot,« he
thought.
He turned round; a young policeman, with pure white eye-lashes and
eyebrows, was sneering at Liuba, holding his rifle with both hands as a
village night watchman holds his staff.
»Well, Liubka,« the superintendent cried, approaching her. »Why didn't
you report at once who you had with you, you bitch?«
»Oh, I was....«
The superintendent smacked her face twice, quite neatly, first on one
cheek then on the other.
»Take that then! I'll show you!«
The man's brows went up and the foot ceased swinging.
»So you don't like that, young fellow?« The contempt of the
superintendent was growing apace. »What are you going to do about it?
You kissed this face, didn't you, and we'll do what we damn well....«
He laughed, and the policeman smiled in some agitation. And what was
more surprising, even the downtrodden Liuba laughed. She looked at the
old superintendent in a friendly way, as though she enjoyed his jokes
and jollity.
From the moment of the arrival of the police she had never looked at
the man, betraying him naturally and openly; and this he saw, and was
silent and smiled half scoffingly, a strange smile--as a gray stone in
the forest, sunk into the ground and mossgrown, might smile.
Half dressed women were crowding about the door, amongst them some of
those who had visited them. But they looked at him indifferently, with
a dull curiosity, as though this was the first time they had seen him.
Apparently they remembered nothing of the night. They were soon hustled
away.
It was now daylight, and the room was more bleak and repulsive than
ever. Two officers who evidently had not had their full sleep came in,
their faces ruffled, but properly dressed and clean.
»It's no good, gentlemen, really,« the superintendent said with a
spiteful glance at the man. The officers approached, looked him up and
down from his crown to his naked feet with those bent toes, surveyed
Liuba, and casually exchanged observations.
»Yes--he's good looking,« said the young one, the one who had invited
them all to the cotillion. He had splendid white teeth and silky
whiskers and soft eyes with girlish lashes. He looked at the arrested
man with disdainful compassion, and wrinkled his eyes as if he were
going to cry. There was a corn on the left little toe ... somehow it
was horrible and disgusting to see that little yellow mound. And the
legs were dirty. »This is a fine pass for you to come to, sir,« he
said, shaking his head and painfully contracting his brows.
»So that's how it is, Mr. Anarchist? You're no better than us sinners
with the girls? The flesh was weak, eh?« jeered the other, the elder.
»Why did you give up your revolver? You might at least have had a shot
for it. I understand that you found yourself here, as anyone might find
himself; but why did you give up your revolver? A poor example to set
your comrades!« said the little officer, hotly; and then explained to
the elder: »He had a Browning with three cartridge clips. Just think of
it! Stupid!«
But the man, smiling contemptuously from the height of his new,
unmeasured, and terrible truth, looked on the little excited officer
and indifferently kept on swinging his leg. The fact of his being
nearly naked, of having dirty hairy legs with bent and crooked toes,
gave him no sense of shame. Had they taken him just as he was and
planted him in the most populous square of the city, in front of all
the men and women and children, he would have gone on dangling that
hairy leg with the same equanimity, smiling the same disdainful smile.
»Do they know what comradeship is?« said the superintendent. He was
savagely looking askance at that swaying leg, and indolently trying
to dissuade the officers. »It's no good talking to him, gentlemen, I
swear! No good! You know the kind of thing--instructions!«
Other officers entered quite freely, surveyed the scene and chatted
together. One of them, evidently an old acquaintance of the
superintendent, shook hands with him. Liuba was already coquetting with
the officers.
»Just imagine! A Browning with three clips and, like a fool, he gave it
up!« the little officer was relating. »I can't understand that!«
»You, Misha, will never understand this.«
»For, after all, they are no cowards!«
»You, Misha, are an idealist, and the milk has not yet dried on your
lips.«
»Samson and Delilah,« one short snuffling officer said ironically; he
had a little drooping nose and thin whiskers combed back and upwards.