The Spy
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"You're a jolly fellow," he said approvingly.
"Very. I learned to dance from the Cossacks. A score of Cossacks are stationed in our factory. Did you hear that the men in our factory wanted to rise? You didn't? How's that? The newspapers wrote about it. Yes, so I learned to dance from the Cossacks. Wait, you'll see. Nobody can beat me."
"Why did they want to rise?" asked Yevsey, provoked by the simplicity with which Yakov spoke of a revolt.
"Why? They wrong us workingmen. What, then, are we to do?"
"And you would have done it, too?"
"What? Rebel? Of course. What else? Our people are good, they're solid."
"And how about the Cossacks?"
"The Cossacks? So, so. They are people, too. At first they thought they would officer it over us, but then they said, 'Comrades, give us leaflets.'"
Yakov suddenly broke off and looked into Yevsey's face. For a minute he walked in silence with knit brows.
The mention of the leaflets recalled his duty to Yevsey. He wrinkled his forehead painfully. Wishing to push something away from himself and his cousin, he said quietly:
"I read those leaflets."
"Well?" asked Yakov, slackening his gait.
"I don't understand them. What are they for?"
"You read some more."
"I don't want to."
"Why not?"
"Just so."
"They're not interesting to you?"
"No, they're not."
For a while they walked in silence. Yakov sniffed meditatively, and gave a hasty look into his cousin's face. Yevsey felt he had not succeeded in shoving away the unpleasant and dangerous theme.
"These leaflets are a precious matter. It's necessary for us to read them. All the slaves of labor ought to read them," Yakov began heartily, but in a modulated voice. "We, cousin, are slaves, chained to everlasting work. They have made us captives of capitalists, and we live poor in body and in soul. Isn't it so? Now the leaflets eat at our chains, the way rust eats iron, and they liberate our human minds."
Klimkov walked more quickly. He did not want to hear the smooth talk. The desire even darted through his mind to say:
"Don't speak to me about such things, please."
But Yakov himself interrupted his speech.
"There's the zoo!"
They drank a bottle of beer in the bar-room, and listened to the playing of a military band.
"Good?" Yakov asked, nudging Yevsey's side with his elbow. On the cessation of the playing Yakov sighed. "That was Faust they played. An opera. I saw it three times. Beautiful, very! The story is stupid, but the music is good. And the songs, too. Come, let's look at the monkeys."
On the way to the monkey-house he told Yevsey the story of Faust and the devil Mephistopheles. He even attempted to sing something, but not succeeding he burst out laughing. "I can't," he declared. "It's hard. Besides I've forgotten it. Do you know – the singer who plays the devil gets a thousand rubles every time he sings. The devil take him, let him get ten thousand rubles, because it's good. When it's good, I don't grudge anybody anything. I'd give my life, – there, take it, eat! Isn't it so?"
"Yes," replied Yevsey, looking around.
Yakov's account of the opera, the pretty women's faces, the laughter and talk of the crowds of people in holiday attire, and over all the spring sky bathed in sunlight – all this intoxicated Klimkov and expanded his heart.
"What a young fellow he is!" he thought in amazement, as he looked at Yakov. "So brave! And he knows everything. Yet he's the same age I am."
Now it seemed to Yevsey that his cousin was leading him somewhere far off, and was quickly opening up before him a long row of little doors, behind each of which the sound and the light grew pleasanter and pleasanter. He looked around, absorbing the new impressions, and at times opening his eyes wide in anxiety. It seemed to him that the familiar face of a spy was darting about in the crowd.
The two youths stood before the monkey cage. Yakov with a kind smile in his eyes said:
"I love these wise animals. In fact I love every living thing. Just look! Wherein are they less than human beings? Isn't it so? Eyes, chins, how bright all their features are, eh? Their hands – " He suddenly broke off to listen to something. "Wait a minute, there go our folks." He disappeared, and in a minute returned leading a girl and a young man up to Yevsey. The young man wore a sleeveless jacket. Yakov cried out joyously:
"You said you weren't coming here, you deceivers. Well, all right. This is my cousin Yevsey Klimkov. I told you about him. This is Olya – Olga Konstantinova, and this is Aleksey Stepanovich Makarov."
Klimkov bowed clumsily and silently pressed the hands of his new acquaintances.
"There, he's going to 'noose' me in," he thought. "It's better for me to go away."
But he did not go away, though he looked around again, fearful lest he see one of the spies. He saw none, however.
"He's not a very free sort of a fellow," said Yakov to the girl. "He's not a pair to me, sinner that I am. He's a quiet fellow."
"You needn't feel constrained with us. We are simple people," said Olga.
She was taller than Yevsey by an entire head, and her size was heightened by her luxuriant glossy hair, which she wore combed high. Her grey-blue eyes smiled serenely in a pale oval face.
The expression of the man in the sleeveless jacket was intelligent and kind. His eyes were screwed up and his ears large. His motions were slow. In walking he moved his apparently powerful body with a peculiar sort of unconcern.
"Are we going to wander about here long, like unrepentant sinners?" he asked in a soft bass.
"What else should we do?" asked Yakov.
"Let's sit down somewhere."
Olga bent her head to look into Klimkov's face.
"Have you ever been here before?"
"No. This is the first time."
"Do you find it interesting?"
"Yes, I like it."
He walked to her side trying for some reason to lift his feet higher; by which walking became awkward. They sat down at a table, and called for beer. Yakov made jokes, while Makarov whistled softly and regarded the public with his screwed-up eyes.
"Have you any companions?" asked Olga.
"No, not one."
"That's what I thought at once. I thought you were a solitary person," she said smiling. "Lonely people have a peculiar gait. Altogether there's something noticeable about them. How old are you?"
"I'll soon be nineteen."
"Look, there's a spy!" Makarov exclaimed quietly.
Yevsey jumped to his feet, but quickly resumed his seat, and looked at Olga to see if she had observed his involuntary movement of alarm. He could not make out, however. She was silently and attentively examining Melnikov's dark figure, which slowly moved through the passageway between the tables as if with an effort. Melnikov walked with bent neck and eyes fastened on the ground. His arms hung at his side as if dislocated.
"He walks like Judas to the aspen tree," said Yakov in a subdued voice.
"He must be drunk," observed Makarov.
"No, he's always like that," was on the tip of Yevsey's tongue. He fidgetted in his chair.
Melnikov pushed himself through the crowd like a black stone, and was soon lost in its gaily colored stream.
"Did you notice how he walked?" Olga asked Klimkov.
Yevsey nodded his head.
"Of course he's a mean man, but he must be unhappy and lonely."
Yevsey raised his head, and looked at her attentively, with expectation.
"Do you know I think that for a weak man loneliness is the most horrible thing. It can drive him to anything."
"Yes," said Klimkov in a whisper, comprehending something. He looked into the girl's face gratefully, and repeated in a louder tone, "Yes."
"I knew him four years ago," Makarov recounted. Makarov's face seemed suddenly to have lengthened and dried up. His bones became visible, his eyes opened and darkened and looked firmly into the distance. "He delivered over one student, who gave us books to read, and a workingman, Tikhonov. The student was exiled, Tikhonov stayed in prison about a year, then died of typhus."
"Are you afraid of spies?" Olga suddenly asked Klimkov.
"Why?" Yevsey returned dully.
"You started so when you saw him."
Yevsey rubbing his throat vigorously answered without looking at her:
"That was – because I know him, too."
"Aha!" Makarov drawled, smiling.
"Ah, and such a quiet fellow!" exclaimed Yakov.
All now moved more closely around Klimkov as if desiring to hide him from somebody's eyes. He did not understand their exclamations, nor their movements and kind looks. He endeavored to keep quiet, fearing that against his will he would say words that would at once destroy the anxious yet pleasant half-dream of these minutes.
The fresh spring evening approached quietly and benignly, softening sounds and colors. There was a red flush in the sky, and the brass instruments sang a soft pensive strain.
"Well," said Makarov, "are we going to stay here, or are we going home?"
"What will they give here?" asked Olga.
"Chorus singing, tight-rope dancing, and all sorts of similar nonsense."
They decided to go home. On the way Olga asked Klimkov:
"Have you ever been in prison?"
"Yes," he answered, but in an instant added, "Not for long."
They took the tramway to their place of destination. Yevsey found himself in a little room with blue paper on the walls. It was close and stifling, now merry, now gloomy. Makarov played the guitar and sang songs which Yevsey had never before heard. Yakov boldly discussed everything in the world, laughing at the rich and swearing at the officials. Then he danced, filling the whole room with the tread of his feet and the cries and the whistling that accompany the dances. The guitar tinkled the measure of the dance, and Makarov encouraged Yakov with popular sayings and shouts.
"Go ahead, Yasha! Heigho! Who with merriment is blessed, Frightens sorrow from his breast."
Olga looked on serenely and contentedly.
"Good, isn't it?" she asked Klimkov occasionally, smiling at him.
Drunk with a quiet joy unknown to him Klimkov smiled in response. He forgot about himself, and felt the obstinate pricks within him only rarely, for a few seconds at a time. Before his consciousness was able to transform them into clear thought, they disappeared, without recalling his life to him.
It was not until he had reached his home that he remembered his work, his obligation to deliver these merry people into the hands of the gendarmes. On recalling this duty he was seized with cold anguish. He stopped in the middle of the room, his brain a void. Breathing became difficult, and he passed his dry tongue over his lips. He drew off his clothes quickly, and clad in nothing but his underwear seated himself at the window. After several minutes of numbness he thought:
"I will tell them – her – Olga."
But that very minute he heard in his memory the angry and contemptuous shouts of the joiner, "Vermin!" Klimkov shook his head in repudiation of the idea. "I'll write to her. 'Take care,' I'll say – and I'll write about myself."
This thought cheered him. The next minute, however, he reasoned:
"They'll find my letter when they make the search. They'll recognize my handwriting, and then I'm ruined."
Someone within him commanded imperiously:
"You can't do anything of yourself. Do that which you have been bidden to do."
He sat at the window almost until daybreak. It seemed to him that his entire body shrivelled up and collapsed within him like a rubber ball from which the air is expelled. Within grief relentlessly sucked at his heart; without the darkness pressed upon him, full of faces lying in wait. Amid them, like a red ball, lowered the sinister face of Sasha. Klimkov crouched on his seat unable to think. Finally he rose cautiously, and quietly hid himself under the blanket of the bed.
CHAPTER XXI
Life, like a horse that has stood idle too long, began to caper strangely, refusing to surrender to the will of those who wanted to control it – who wanted to control it just as senselessly, just as cruelly as before.
Every evening the people connected with the Department of Safety, who were utterly at a loss, spoke more and more alarmingly of the increasing signs of universal excitement, of the secret league of peasants, who had resolved to take the land by force from the landowners, of the gatherings of workingmen who began to censure the administration openly, of the power of the revolutionists, which clearly was growing from day to day. Filip Filippovich, without abating, continued to scratch the agents of the Department of Safety with his sharp-edged, irritating voice. He overwhelmed everybody with reproaches for inactivity. And Yasnogursky, smacking his lips, made tragic appeals to the agents while pressing his hands to his bosom.
"My children, exert yourselves. Remember that service in behalf of the Czar is not wasted."
But when Krasavin inquired gloomily, "What are we to do?" he merely waved his hand, and stood for a long time with his deep black mouth gaping strangely, unable to find a reply.
"Catch them!" he finally shouted.
Yevsey, who listened to everything, heard the dapper Leontyev cough drily, and say to Sasha:
"Apparently our old methods of war upon the rebels are no good in these days of universal madness."
"Ye-e-e-es, you can't put out fire with spittle," hissed Sasha, a smile distorting his face.
Everybody was vexed and complained and shouted. Sasha drew up his long legs, and cried in mocking derision:
"Aha! The gentlemen revolutionists are getting the better of us, eh?"
He laughed, and his laugh irritated everybody. Yevsey felt that this man was not afraid of anything, and he endeavored not to hear his talk.
The spies tossed about the streets day and night, and every evening brought long reports of their observations. They spoke to one another mournfully:
"Is this the way to work nowadays? Dear me!"
Apparently no one knew a means by which the elemental growth of the popular revolt could be restrained.
"They will comb our curls," said Piotr, cracking his knuckles.
"They'll take us off the list if we remain alive," Solovyov chimed in dismally.
"If they would give us a pension at least! But they won't."
"A noose around our necks, not a pension," said Melnikov sombrely.
The spies were all exhausted and confused; all trembled in fear of the morrow. Both they and the officials seemed to have faded. The people who but a short time ago had been terrible in Yevsey's eyes, who had appeared to him to be the powerful and invincible masters of life, now ran from one corner of the Department of Safety to another, and fluttered about in the streets like last year's dried leaves.
He observed with amazement that there were other people, cheerful, simple, and trusting, who were able to walk into the future, carelessly stepping over every obstacle and snare in their way, everyone of whom was good in his own fashion, and everyone of whom clearly hinted at the possibility of something better than himself. Yevsey compared them with the spies, who, unwillingly with clandestine tread, crept along the streets and into houses, and secretly spirited away these people at night, in order to seclude them in prisons. He clearly realized that the spies did not understand the aim of their work, did not believe that it was needful for life, and did not think or reason when, instinctively, according to their habit, they went about half-sick, half-drunk, driven by different fears.
He liked the tranquil talk of Olga, her greyish blue eyes, and that live strong pity for people which sounded in the girl's every word. He liked the noisy, jesting, somewhat boastful talker Yakov, the careless Aleksey, good-naturedly ready to give away his last shirt and penny to anyone who asked for them. He met an increasing number of people new to him, in each of whom he perceived faith in the victory of his dream. And Yevsey involuntarily, insensibly, yielded to this faith.
Observing the quick crumbling of that power which he had hitherto submissively served, Yevsey began to seek a way by which it would be possible for him to circumvent and escape the necessity of betrayal. He reasoned thus:
"If I go to them, then it will be impossible for me not to deliver them up. To hand them over to another agent is still worse. I must tell them. Now that they are becoming more powerful, it will be better for me to be with them."
So, yielding to the attraction exerted upon him by persons new to him, he visited Yakov more frequently, and became more insistent in endeavoring to meet Olga. After each visit he reported in a quiet voice to Sasha every detail of his intercourse with them – what they said, what they read, and what they wanted to do. He enjoyed telling of them, in fact, repeated their talk with secret satisfaction.
"Oh, a funeral," snuffled Sasha, angrily and sarcastically fixing Klimkov with his dim eyes. "You must push them on yourself, if they are inattentive. You must get in a hint that you can furnish them with type, fix up a printing office. Is it possible you can't do that?"
Yevsey was silent.
"I am asking you, idiot, can you do it? Well?"
"I can."
"Why don't you speak out? Suggest it to them to-morrow, do you hear?"
"Very well."
It was easy for Klimkov to fulfil Sasha's order. In reporting about his cousin's circle, he had not ventured to tell Sasha that both Olga and Yakov had already asked him twice, whether he could obtain type for them. Each time he had managed to get away without answering.
The next evening he went to Olga, carrying in his breast the dark feeling of emptiness he always experienced in moments of nervous tension. The resolution to fulfil the task was put into him by a stranger's will; he did not have to think about it himself. This resolution spread within him, and crowded out all fear, all inconvenient sympathy.
But when the tall figure of Olga stood before him in the small dimly lighted room, and behind her he saw her large shadow on the wall, which moved to meet him, Klimkov lost courage, grew confused, and stood in the doorway without speaking.
"I've just returned from the factory," said Olga pressing his hand. "We had another meeting today. What's the matter with you? Are you tired? Are you sick? Come in, sit down. Let's have some tea, yes?"
She turned the light in the lamp higher, and looked at Klimkov with a smile. While getting the dishes ready she continued.
"I like to drink tea with you alone. I myself and all the comrades, we talk a great deal. We must talk so much, we scarcely have time to think. That's absurd, and bad, but it's true. So it's pleasant to see a taciturn, thinking man. Will you have a glass of milk? It will do you good. You are growing very thin, it seems to me."
Klimkov took the glass she offered him, and slowly sipped the watery unsavory milk. He wanted to get through with the business at once.
"This is it. You said you need type."
"I did. I know you'll give it to us."
She said these words simply, with a confidence not to be shaken. They were like a blow to Yevsey. He flung himself on the back of the chair astonished.
"Why do you know?" he asked dully after a pause.
"When I asked you, you said neither yes nor no. So I thought you would certainly say yes."
Yevsey did not understand. He tried not to meet her look.
"Why?" he queried again.
"It must be because I consider you a good man. I trust you."
"You mustn't trust," said Yevsey.
"Well, enough nonsense, you must."
"And suppose you've been mistaken?"
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Well, what of it?" After a pause she added calmly, "Not to believe a man means not to respect him. It means to think him beforehand a liar, an ugly person. Is that possible?"
"That's what is necessary," mumbled Yevsey.
"What?"
"I can furnish the type." He sighed. The task was accomplished. He was silent for several minutes, sitting with his head bowed, his hands pressed tight between his knees, while he listened suspiciously to the rapid beating of his heart.
Olga leaned her elbows on the table, and in a low voice told him when and where the promised type must be brought. He made a mental note of her words, and repeated them to himself, desiring by this repetition to hinder the growth of the painful feeling in his empty breast. Now that he had fulfilled his duty a stifling nausea slowly arose from the depths of his soul; and that feeling of an alien inside himself, of a constantly widening cleft in his being, came over him in a tormenting wave.
"You noticed," the girl said quietly, "how rapidly the people are changing, how faith in other persons is growing, how quickly one gets to know the other, how everybody seeks friends and finds them. All have become simpler, more trusting, more willing to open up their souls. See how good it is."
Her words trembled before him like moths, each with its own character. Simple, kind, joyous, they all seemed fairly to smile. Unable to make up his mind to look Olga in the face, Klimkov took to watching her shadow on the wall over his shoulders, and drew upon it her blue eyes, the medium-sized mouth with the pale lips, her face somewhat weary and serious, but soft and kind.
"Shall I tell her now that all this is a hocus-pocus? That she will be ruined?"
He answered himself:
"They'll drive me out. They'll swear at me, and drive me out."
"Do you know Zimin the joiner?" he suddenly asked.
"No, why?"
Yevsey sighed painfully.
"Just so. He's a good man, too, a Socialist."
"We are many," observed Olga with assurance.
"If she knew the joiner," Klimkov thought slowly, "I would tell her to ask him about me. Then – "
The chair seemed to be giving way beneath him, the nausea, he thought, would immediately gush into his throat. He coughed, and examined the clean little room, which small and poor though it was, once more gripped at his heart. The moon looked into the room round as Yakov's face, and the light in the lamp seemed irritatingly superfluous.
"More and more people come into being who realize that they are called upon by destiny to order life differently – upon truth and intellect," said Olga dreamily and simply.
Yevsey, yielding more and more to the power of the triumphant feeling the girl and the quiet contracted room inspired in him, thought:
"I'll put out the light, fall on my knees before her, embrace her feet, and tell her everything – and she will give me a kick."
But the fear of ill treatment did not deter him. He raised himself heavily from his chair, and put out his hand to the lamp. Then his hand dropped lazily, drowsily, his legs shook. He started.
"What are you doing?" demanded Olga.
He tried to answer, but a soft gurgle came instead of words. He dropped to his knees, and seized her dress with trembling hands. She pressed one hot hand against his forehead, and with the other grasped his shoulder, at the same time hiding her legs under the table with a powerful movement.
"No, no, get up!" she exclaimed sternly. "Oh my, how dreadful this is! My dear, I understand, you are worn out, I am sorry for you, you are an honorable man – I cannot – why, you don't ask for charity – then get up."
The warmth of her strong body roused in him a sharp sensual desire, and he took the pushing of her hand as an encouraging caress.
"She's not a saint," darted through his mind, and he embraced the girl's knees more vigorously.
"I tell you, get up!" she exclaimed in a muffled voice, no longer persuasively, but in a tone of command.
He rose without having succeeded in saying anything. The girl had confused his desires, his words, and feelings. She had put into his breast something insulting and stinging.
"Understand – " he mumbled, spreading out his hands.
"Yes, yes, I understand – my God, always this on the road!" she exclaimed. Looking into his face she went on harshly, "I am sick of it. I am insulted. I can't be only a woman to everybody. Oh, God! How pitiful you all are, after all."
She went to the window, and the table now separated her from Yevsey. A dim, cold perplexity took hold of his heart; an insulting shame quietly burned him.
"I tell you what – don't come to me – I beg of you. I'll feel awkward in your presence, and you, too – please."