by Maxim Gorky
“Well?” asked Yevsey in a whisper.
“Well, I strangled him. That’s all. Only ever since, when I see or hear that a man has been killed, I recollect him—always. In my opinion he was the only man who knew the truth. That was why he was not afraid. And the main thing is, he knew what would be tomorrow—which no one knows. I tell you what, Yevsey, come to me to sleep, eh? Come, please.”
“All right,” said Yevsey quietly.
He was glad of the offer. He could not walk to his room alone—along the streets in the darkness. He felt a tightness in his breast and a heavy pressure on his bones, as if he were creeping under ground, and the earth were squeezing his back, his chest, his sides, and his head: while in front of him gaped a deep pit, which he could not escape, into which he must soon descend—a silent bottomless abyss down which he would drop endlessly.
“That’s good,” said Melnikov. “I would feel bored alone.”
“If you would kill Sasha—” Yevsey advised him sadly.
“There you are!” Melnikov fended off the idea. “What do you think—that I love to kill? They asked me twice again to hang people, a woman and a student. I declined. I might have had two to remember instead of one. The killed appear again. They come back.”
“Often?”
“Sometimes, sometimes not. When often, it’s every night. How can you defend yourself against them? I can’t pray to God. I’ve forgotten my prayers. Have you?”
“I remember mine.”
They entered a court, and were long in penetrating to its depths, stumbling as they walked over boards, stones, and rubbish. Then they descended a flight of steps, which Klimkov, feeling the walls with his hands, thought would never come to an end. When he found himself at last in the lodging of the spy, and had examined it in the light of the lamp, he was amazed to see the mass of gay pictures and paper flowers with which the walls were almost entirely covered. Melnikov at once became a stranger in this comfortable little room, with a broad bed in a corner behind white curtains.
“All this was contrived by the woman with whom I lived,” said Melnikov, starting to undress. “She ran away, the hussy! A gendarme, a quartermaster, decoyed her. I can’t understand it. He’s a grey-haired widower, while she’s young and greedy for a male. Nevertheless she went away. The third one that’s left me already. Come, let’s go to bed.”
They lay side by side in the same bed, which rocked under Yevsey like a tossing sea, and all the time descended lower and lower. His heart sank with it. The spy’s words laid themselves heavily upon his breast.
“One was Olga.”
“What!”
“Olga. Why?”
“Nothing.”
“A little one, thin and jolly. She used to hide my hat, or something else, and I would say, ‘Olga, where’s my hat?’ And she would say, ‘Look for it. You’re a spy.’ She liked to joke, but she was a loose woman. I hardly had my head turned, before she was with somebody else. I was afraid to beat her. She was frail. Still I pulled her hair. You’ve got to do something.”
“Lord!” quietly exclaimed Klimkov. “What am I going to do?”
His comrade was silent for a while, then said dully and slowly:
“That’s the way I howl, too, sometimes.”
Klimkov buried his head in the pillow, compressing his lips tightly, to restrain the stubborn need to utter cries and complaints.
CHAPTER XXVIII
Yevsey awoke with a certain secret resolution, which held his bosom as with a broad invisible belt. It stifled him. The ends of this band, he felt, were held by some insistent being, who obstinately led him on to an inescapable something. He harkened to this desire and tested it carefully with an awkward, timorous thought. At the same time he did not want it to define itself.
Melnikov dressed and washed, but uncombed, was sitting at the table next to the samovar, munching his bread lazily like an ox.
“You sleep well,” he said. “I drowsed a little, then awoke, while it was still night, and suddenly saw a body beside me. I remembered that Tania wasn’t here, but I had forgotten about you. Then it seemed to me that that person was lying there. He came and lay down—wanted to warm himself.” Melnikov laughed a stupid laugh, which, apparently, embarrassed him the next instant. “However, it’s not a joke. I lighted a match and looked at you. It’s my idea you’re not well. Your face is blue like—” He broke off with a cough, but Yevsey guessed the unspoken word, and thought gloomily:
“Rayisa, too, said I would choke myself.”
The thought frightened him, clearly alluding to something he did not want to remember. Then he tried insistently to evoke some desire which might help him to befool himself, to conceal the unavoidable, that which had already been determined.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Eleven.”
“Early still.”
“Early,” confirmed the host, and both were silent. Then Melnikov proposed:
“Let’s live together, eh?”
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“What will happen,” said Yevsey, after reflecting a moment.
“Nothing will happen. You’re a quiet fellow. You speak little, neither do I like to speak always. If it’s tiresome I speak, or else I keep quiet all the time. When you ask about something, one says one thing, another says another thing, and a third still another. Well, the devil take you, think I. You have a whole lot of words, but none that are true.”
“Yes,” said Yevsey for the sake of answering.
“Something must be done,” he thought in self-defense. Suddenly he resolved, “At first I will—Sasha—” But he did not wish to represent to himself what would be afterward. “Where are we going to go?” he inquired of Melnikov.
“To the office,” Melnikov replied with unconcern.
“I don’t want to,” declared Yevsey drily and firmly.
Melnikov combed his beard for a time in silence. Then he shoved the dishes from him, and placing his elbows on the table, said meditatively in a subdued voice:
“Our service has become hard. All have begun to rebel, but who are the real rebels here? Make it out, if you can.”
“I know who’s the first scoundrel and skunk,” muttered Klimkov.
“Sasha you mean?” inquired Melnikov.
Yevsey gave no reply. He was quietly beginning to devise a plan of action. Melnikov started to dress, sniffing loudly.
“So we’re going to live together?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to bring your things today?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you sleep here tonight?”
After some reflection Yevsey said:
“Yes.”
When the spy had gone, Klimkov jumped to his feet, and looked around frightened, quivering under the stinging blows of suspicion.
“He locked me in, and went to tell Sasha. They’ll come soon to seize me. I must escape through the window.”
He rushed to the door. It was not locked. He calmed himself, and said with heat, as if convincing somebody:
“Well, is it possible to live this way? You don’t believe anybody—there is nobody—”
He sat long behind the table without moving, straining his mind, employing all his cunning to lay a snare for the enemy without endangering himself. Finally he hit upon a plan. He must in some way lure Sasha from the office to the street, and walk with him. When they would meet a large crowd of people, he would shout:
“This is a spy, beat him!” And probably the same thing would happen as had happened to Zarubin and the fair-haired young man. If the people would not turn upon Sasha as seriously as they had yesterday upon the disguised revolutionist, Yevsey would set them an example. He would fire first, as Zarubin had. But he would hit Sasha. He would aim at his stomach.
/> Klimkov felt himself strong and brave, and made haste to leave. He wanted to do the thing at once. But the recollection of Zarubin hindered him, knotting up the poverty-stricken simplicity of his contrivance. He involuntarily repeated his notion. “It was I who marked him for death.”
He did not reproach, he did not blame, himself. Yet he felt that a certain thread bound him to the little black spy, and he must do something to break the thread.
“I didn’t say good-by to him—and where will I find him now?”
On putting on his overcoat, he was gladdened to feel the revolver in his pocket. Responding to a fresh influx of power and resolution, he walked out into the street with a firm tread.
But the nearer he got to the Department of Safety the more did his bold mood melt and fade away. The feeling of power became dissipated, and when he saw the narrow dull alley at the end of which was the dusky, three-storied building, he suddenly felt an invincible desire to find Zarubin, and take leave of him.
“I insulted him,” he explained his desire to himself, embarrassed and quickly turning aside from his aim. “I must find him.”
At the same time he vaguely felt he could not escape from that which seized his heart and pressed him, drew him on after itself, and silently indicated the one issue from the terrible entanglement.
The problem of the day, the resolve to destroy Sasha, did not hinder the growth of the dark and evil power which filled his heart, while the sudden wish to find the body of the little spy instantly became an insurmountable obstacle to the carrying out of his plan.
He fed this desire artificially, in the fear that it, too, would disappear. He rode about in cabs to police stations for a number of hours, taking the utmost pains in his inquiries regarding Zarubin. When at last he found out where the body was, it was too late to visit it, and he returned home secretly pleased that the day had come to an end.
Melnikov did not put in appearance at his lodging. Yevsey lay alone the whole night, trying not to stir. At each movement of his the canopy over the bed rocked. An odor of dampness was wafted in his face, the bed creaked a tune; he felt stifled, nauseated, and timorous. Taking advantage of the stillness the vile mice ran about, and the rustling sounds they made tore the thin net of Yevsey’s thoughts of Zarubin and Sasha. The interruptions displayed to him the dead, calm, expectant emptiness of his environment, with which the emptiness of his soul insistently desired to blend.
CHAPTER XXIX
Early in the morning he was already standing in the corner of a large yard at a yellow hovel with a cross over the roof. A grey humpbacked watchman said as he opened the door:
“There are two of them here. One was recognized, the other not. The unidentified one will soon be taken to the grave.”
Then Yevsey saw the sullen face of Zarubin. The only change it had undergone was that it had grown a little blue. The small wound in place of the scar had been washed, and had turned black. The little alert body was naked and clean. It lay face upward, stretched like a cord, with the tanned hands folded over the bosom, as if Zarubin were sullenly asking:
“Well, what?”
Beside him lay the other dark body, all rent, swollen, with red, blue, and yellow stains. Someone had covered its face with blue and white flowers. But under them Yevsey could see the bones of the skull, a tuft of hair glued together with blood, and the torn shell of the ear.
Leaning his hump against the wall, the old man said:
“This one cannot be recognized. He has almost no head. Yet he was identified. Two ladies came yesterday with these flowers and covered up human outrage. As for the other one, he’s remained unidentified.”
“I know who he is,” said Yevsey firmly. “He’s Yakov Zarubin. He served in the Department of Safety.”
The watchman looked at him, and shook his head in negation.
“No, it’s not he. The police told us he was Zarubin, and our office inquired of the Department of Safety, but it appeared it wasn’t he.”
“But I know,” Yevsey exclaimed quietly, in an offended tone.
“In the Department of Safety they said, ‘We don’t know such a person. A man by that name never served here.’”
“It’s not true,” exclaimed Yevsey, grieved and dumfounded.
Two young fellows came in from the court, one of whom asked the watchman:
“Which is the unidentified man?”
The humpback pointed his finger at Zarubin, and said to Yevsey:
“You see?”
Klimkov walked out into the court, thrust a coin into the watchman’s hand, and repeated with impotent stubbornness:
“It’s Zarubin, I tell you.”
“As you please,” said the old man, shrugging his hump. “But if it is so, others would have recognized him. An agent came here yesterday in search of someone who had been killed. He didn’t recognize your man either, though why shouldn’t he admit it if he did?”
“What agent?”
“A stout man, bald, with an amiable voice.”
“Solovyov,” guessed Yevsey, observing dully that Zarubin’s body was being laid in a white unpainted coffin.
“It doesn’t go in,” mumbled one of the fellows.
“Bend his legs, the devil!”
“The lid won’t close.”
“Sidewise, lay him in sidewise, eh?”
“Don’t make such a fuss, boys,” said the old man calmly.
The fellow who held the head of the body snuffled, and said:
“It’s a spy, Uncle Fiodor.”
“A dead man is nobody,” observed the humpback didactically, walking up to them. The fellows grew silent, continuing to squeeze the springy tawny body into the narrow short coffin.
“You fools, get another coffin,” said the humpback, angrily.
“It’s all the same,” said one, and the other added grimly, “He’s not a great gentleman.”
Yevsey left the court carrying in his soul a bitter humiliating feeling of insult in behalf of Zarubin. Behind him he clearly heard the hump-back say to the men as they bore off the body:
“Something wrong there, too. He came here, and says ‘I know him.’ Maybe he knows all about this affair.”
The two men answered almost simultaneously:
“Seems to be a spy, too.”
“What’s the difference to us?”
Klimkov quickly jumped into a cab, and shouted to the driver:
“Hurry!”
“Where to?”
Yevsey answered quietly and not at once:
“Straight ahead.”
The insulting thoughts dully knocked in his head.
“They bury him like a dog—no one wants him—and me, too—”
The streets came to meet him. The houses rocked and swayed, the windows gleamed. People walked noisily, and everything was alien.
“Today I’m going to make an end of Sasha. I’ll go there at once and shoot him.” In a moment he was already compelled to persuade himself: “It’s got to be done. As for me, nothing matters to me any more.”
Dismissing the cabman he walked into a restaurant, to which Sasha came less frequently than to the others. He stopped in front of the door of the room where the spies gathered.
“The instant I see him, I’ll shoot him,” he said to himself.
He knocked at the door tremulously, and felt the revolver in his hand. His soul was congealed in cold expectation.
“Who’s there?” asked someone on the other side of the door.
“I.”
The door was opened a little. In the chink flashed the eyes and reddish little nose of Solovyov.
“Ah-h-h!” he drawled in amazement. “There was a rumor that you had been killed.”
“No, I have not been killed,” Klimkov responded sullenly, removing his coat.
“I see.
Lock the door. They say you went with Melnikov—”
Solovyov was thoroughly masticating a piece of ham; which interfered with his articulation. His greasy lips smacked slowly and let out the unconcerned words, “So, it isn’t true that you went with Melnikov?”
“Why isn’t it true?”
“Why, here you are alive, and he’s in bad shape. I saw him yesterday.”
“Where?”
The spy named the hospital from which Yevsey had just come.
“Why is he there?” Klimkov inquired apathetically.
“That is it: a Cossack struck him a sabre blow on the head, and the horses trampled him. It’s not known how it happened, or why. He’s unconscious. The physicians say he won’t recover.”
Solovyov poured some sort of green whiskey into a glass, held it up to the light, and examined it with screwed-up eyes. After which he drank it, and asked:
“Where are you hiding yourself?”
“I’m not hiding.”
“You have been hiding all the same.”
A plate fell to the floor in the corridor. Yevsey started. He remembered he had forgotten to remove the revolver from his overcoat pocket. He rose to his feet.
“Sasha is fuming at you.”
Before Yevsey’s eyes swam the sinister red disk of the moon surrounded by a cloud of ill-smelling lilac-colored mist. He recalled the snuffling, ever-commanding voice, the yellow fingers of the bony hands.
“Won’t he come here?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
Solovyov’s face wore a sleek expression. Apparently he was very well satisfied with something. In his voice sounded the careless affability of an aristocrat. All this was repulsive to Yevsey. Incoherent thoughts tossed about in his mind, one breaking the other off.
“You are all rascals—sorry for Melnikov—so this obese fellow didn’t want to recognize Yakov—why?”
“Did you see Zarubin?”
“That’s who?” asked Solovyov, raising his brows.
“You know. He lay in the hospital there. You saw him.”
“Yes, yes, yes. Of course I saw him.”
“Why didn’t you say there that you knew him?” Yevsey demanded sternly.
The old spy reared his bald head, and exclaimed in astonishment with a sarcastic expression:
