Short Fiction, Leonid Andreyev [good e books to read .TXT] 📗

would be no answer. Soon, however, he would see, as all the others did, that the Governor must be killed⁠—that his death was imperative!⁠ ⁠… yet he would have known as little as all the rest from what source this knowledge came. Everyone⁠—friend or foe of the Governor⁠—partisan or prosecutor⁠—all gave themselves up to the one unswerving thought of his death. Ideas differed, and words differed, but the feeling was the same: a mighty, all-pervading conviction, strong and immutable as death itself!

Born in the dark, itself a part of the unfathomable darkness, it reigned triumphant and menacing⁠ ⁠… and all in vain men sought to illuminate it with the feeble light of then intelligence. As though the hoary withered law, “A death for a death,” had waked from its torpid sleep, opened its glazed eyes, gazed on the slaughtered children, the men and the women, and had stretched its remorseless arm over the head of their slayer. And the people, thinking and unthinking, inclined themselves to this law, and avoided the sinner. He was at the mercy of any death that might come. And from all sides⁠—from dark corners, from fields, woods and hollows⁠—they pressed about him: reeling, limping, dull and abject⁠—not even interested!

So it might have been in those far-distant times while still there were prophets among men; when thoughts and words were scarcer, and this same hoary Law, that punished death with death, was young. When the beasts made friends with man, and the lightning was his brother! In those strange days of old, the guilty must pay for death in kind. The bee stung him, the ox gored him, the overhanging stone awaited his coming to fall and crush his defenceless head; disease gnawed him, as the jackal gnaws the carrion; arrows turned in their flight, only to strike his black heart or his downcast eyes; and rivers changed their course only to wash the sands from beneath his feet⁠—even the majestic ocean dashed its tattered waves on high and threatened him with its roar⁠—till he fled to the desert. A thousand deaths⁠—thousand graves! The desert buried him under her soft sands; she wept and smiled, and over him her winds blew, whistling. And the sun itself⁠—that life-giver⁠—seared his dead brain with careless laugh, and softly beamed on the creatures that swarmed in the hollows of his miserable eyes. The heavy masses of the hills lay upon his breast, and in their eternal silences they buried the secret of his expiation!⁠ ⁠… But that was long ago, when this great Law was young⁠—a stripling that punished death with death⁠—and seldom in those days did his cold, keen eyes swerve in the performance of his duty!⁠ ⁠…

Within the town discussion soon died out, poisoned by its own unripeness. One must either accept the assassination as a sacred fact and meet all argument as the women did with the one incontrovertible phrase: “What right had he to murder children?” or else be reduced to helpless contradictions, to vacillation, to shifting grounds⁠—as a drunken group might gravely exchange their hats, yet get no farther on their homeward way!

Speculation wearied them finally, so they stopped talking; and nothing on the surface reminded one of that fatal day. But amid the silence and the calm grew a great cloud of grim suspense. All waited⁠—those who were indifferent to the catastrophe and its consequences, those who looked eagerly forward to the execution, and those who were uneasy about it⁠—all!⁠ ⁠… all waited for the inevitable, with the same vast, breathless suspense! Had the Governor died of a fever in these days, or from an accident, none would have taken it for mere chance, but behind the given reason would have found a primary cause⁠—invisible, unacknowledged.

Among the masses, as the foreboding grew, their thoughts turned often to the Kawatnaja lane. The lane itself was still and calm, as was the city; and the swarming spies peered vainly for any signs of new uprising or criminal attempts. Here, as elsewhere, they heard rumours of the assassination of the Governor, but could never discover their source. All spoke of it, but in such an uncertain, even foolish way, that one could find no key to their talk.

“Some mighty man⁠—oh, a very mighty man, who could never possibly fail!⁠—would undoubtedly kill the Governor one of these days!” That was all one could make of it.

The secret agent, Grigorjeff, overheard some such gossip one day as he sat in a low gin-shop pretending to be drunk. Two workmen, who had already been drinking rather freely, sat at the next table, their heads together. Clumsily clinking their glasses, they talked in suppressed murmurs. “They’ll kill him with a bomb!” said the first, evidently well informed. “What! with a bomb!” said the other, amazed.

“Certainly, with a bomb⁠—what else?” reiterated the other. He puffed at his cigarette, blew the smoke in his companion’s face, and added sternly: “It will blow him to a thousand little bits!”

“They said it would be on the ninth day.”

“No,” said the other, with a frown which expressed the highest degree of scornful negation. “Why the ninth day? That’s superstition⁠—that idea of the ninth day! They’ll simply kill him early in the morning⁠—that’s all!”

“When?”

Shielding his face with his outspread hand, he lurched suddenly forward and hissed into his companion’s ear: “Next Sunday week!”

Silently they stared into each other’s grim, bleary eyes, both swaying to and fro. Then the first lifted a threatening finger and said, with impressive secrecy:

“Do you understand?”

“They’ll never miss him⁠ ⁠… no! They’re not that kind.”

“No,” said the other, with lowering brows. “How could we miss? The pack is stacked.⁠ ⁠… We hold four aces.”

“A whole handful of trumps⁠—” added the other.⁠—“You understand, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course I understand!”

“Then, if you understand, we’ll drink to it. Aren’t you afraid of me now, Wanja?”

They whispered for some time, blinking and nodding, and upsetting the empty bottles in their eagerness.⁠ ⁠… That same night they were arrested, yet nothing suspicious was found upon them, and the preliminary examination showed that they did not know