Becker lived in the suburbs, in a lonely house that stood in a
neglected garden. He received her in a tumbled room that was as big as
a public hall. Two candles burned on the table.
He looked emaciated, and moved about restlessly, even after he had
bidden Eva welcome.
She told him with some haste of her engagement in Russia, which she was
about to fulfil, and asked whether he had any commissions to give her.
He said that he had not.
“The Grand Duke was attentive to me,” she said, and looked at him
expectantly.
He nodded. After a little he sat down and said: “I must tell you a
dream I had; or, rather, a hallucination, for I lay with my eyes wide
open. Listen!
“About a richly laid board there sat five or six young women. They were
in evening dress, with very deep décolletage, and laughed wildly and
drank champagne. With frivolous plays on words and seductive gestures,
they turned to one who sat at the head of the table. But that one had
no form: he was like a lump of dough or clay. The footmen trembled
when they approached him, and the women grew pale under their rouge
when he addressed them. In the middle of the gleaming cloth there lay,
unnoticed by any one, a corpse. It was covered with fruits, and from
its breast, between the peaches and the grapes, projected the handle of
a dagger. Blood trickled through the joints of the table and tapped in
dull drops on the carpet.
“The meal came to an end. All were in a wildly exuberant mood. Then
that formless one arose, grasped one of the women, drew her close to
him, and demanded music. And while the thunderous music resounded, that
lump expanded and grew, and a skull appeared on it, and eyes within
that skull, and these eyes blazed in a measureless avidity. The woman
that he held became paler and paler, and sought to free herself from
his embrace. But long, thin arms grew out of his trunk. And with these
he pressed her so silently and so cruelly that she began to moan and
turn blue. And her body snapped in two in the middle. Lifeless she lay
in his arms, and nothing seemed left of her but her dress. Then the
corpse, that lay with pierced breast amid the fruit and sweets, raised
its head, and said with closed eyes: ‘Give her back to me.’
“Suddenly many people streamed into that room--peasants and factory
workers, soldiers and ragged women, Jews and Jewesses. An old man with
a white beard said to the formless one: ‘Give me back my daughter.’
Others who stood behind screamed frantically: ‘Give us our daughters,
our brides, our sisters.’ Then peasants pressed forward, and bent to
the earth their melancholy faces, and said: ‘Give us our lands and
our forests.’ Over all rose the piercing voices of mothers: ‘Give us
our sons, our sons.’ The formless one receded step by step into empty
space. But even as he receded he assumed a more clearly defined shape.
The face, the hands, and the garments were brown as though encrusted
with rust or dried slime. The features of the face gave not the least
notion of that being’s character, and precisely this circumstance
heightened the despair of all beyond endurance. They cried without
ceasing: ‘Our brothers! Our sons! Our sisters! Our lands! Our forests,
O thou accursed unto all eternity!’”
Eva said no word.
Ivan Becker rested his head upon his hand. “One thing is certain. He
has caused so many tears to be shed, that were they gathered into one
lake, that lake were deeper than the Kremlin is tall; the blood that he
has caused to flow would be a sea in which all Moscow could be drowned.”
He walked to and fro a few times. Then he sat down again and continued:
“He is the creator and instigator of an incomparable reign of terror.
Our living souls are his victims. Wherever there is a living soul among
us, it becomes his prey. Six thousand intellectuals were deported
during the past year. Where he sets his foot, there is death. Ruins
and fields full of murdered men mark his path. These expressions are
not to be taken metaphorically but quite, quite literally. It was
he who created the organization of the united nobility, which holds
the country in subjection, and is a modern instrument of torture on
the hugest scale. The pogroms, the murderous Finnish expedition, the
torturing of the imprisoned, the atrocities of the Black Hundreds--all
these are his work. He wastes untold millions from the public treasury;
he pardons the guilty and condemns the innocent. He throttles the
spirit of man and extinguishes all light. He is all-powerful. He is
God’s living adversary. I bow before him.”
Eva looked up in astonishment. But Becker did not observe her.
“There is no one who knows him. No one is able to see through him. I
believe he is satiated. Nothing affects him any longer except some
stimulus of the epidermis. The story is told that sometimes he has two
beautiful naked women fight in his presence. They have daggers and must
lacerate each other. One must bow down before that.”
“I do not understand,” Eva whispered wide-eyed. “Why bow?”
Becker shook his head warningly, and his monotonous voice filled the
room once more. “He has found everything between heaven and earth to
be for sale--friendship, love, the patience of a people, justice, the
Church, peace and war. First he commands or uses force; that goes
without saying. What these cannot conquer he buys. It seems, to be
sure, that pressure and force can accomplish things that would defy
and wreck ordinary mortals. While hunting bears in the Caucasus his
greatest favourite, Prince Szilaghin, fell ill. His fever was high and
he was carried into the hut of some Circassians. Szilaghin, by the way,
is a creature of incredible corruption--only twenty years old and of
astonishing though effeminate beauty. To win a bet he once disguised
himself as a cocotte, and spent a night in the streets and amusement
resorts of Petrograd. In the morning he brought back a handful of
jewels, including a magnificent bracelet of emeralds, that had been
given him as tributes to his mere beauty. It was he who fell ill in
the mountains. A mounted messenger was sent to the nearest village,
and dragged back with him an old, ignorant country doctor. The Grand
Duke pointed to his favourite writhing in delirium, and said to the old
man: ‘If he dies, you die too.’ Every hour the physician administered
a draught to the sick man. In the intervals he kneeled trembling
by the bed and prayed. As fate would have it, Szilaghin recovered
consciousness toward morning, and gradually became well. The Grand Duke
was convinced that the inexorable alternative which he had offered
the old physician had released mysterious forces in him and worked
something like a miracle. Thus he does not feel nature as a barrier to
his power.”
A swift vividness came into Eva’s features. She got up and walked to
the window and opened it. A storm was shaking the trees. The ragged
clouds in the sky, feebly illuminated by moonlight and arching the
darkness, were like a picture of Ruysdael. Without turning she said:
“You say no one can penetrate him. There is nothing to penetrate. There
is an abyss, dark and open.”
“It may be that you are right and that he is like an abyss,” Ivan
Becker answered softly, “but who will have the courage to descend into
it?”
Another silence fell upon them. “Speak, Ivan, speak out at last the
thought in your mind!” Eva cried out into the night. And every fibre of
her, from the tips of her hair to the hem of her gown, was tense with
listening.
But Becker did not answer. Only a terrible pallor came over his face.
Eva turned around. “Shall I throw myself into his arms in order to
create a new condition in the world?” she asked proudly and calmly.
“Shall I increase his opinion of the things that can be bought among
men by the measure of my worth? Or do you think that I could persuade
him to exchange the scaffold for the confessional and the hangman’s axe
for a flute?”
“I have not spoken of such a thing; I shall not speak of it,” said Ivan
Michailovitch with solemnly raised hand.
“A woman can do many things,” Eva continued. “She can give herself
away, she can throw herself away, she can sell herself, she can conceal
indifference and deny her hatred. But against horror she is powerless;
that tears the heart in two. Show me a way; make me insensitive to the
horror of it; and I shall chain your tiger.”
“I know of no way,” answered Ivan Michailovitch. “I know none, for
horror is upon me too. May God, the Eternal, enlighten you.”
The loneliness of the room, of the house, of the storm-ploughed garden,
became as the thunder of falling boulders.