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

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.

“Oh Delilah! What a smiler!”

They laughed.

The superintendent, smiling pleasantly and rubbing his flabby red nose downwards, suddenly approached the man and stood as if to screen him from the officers with his own carcase encased in the loose hanging coat; and he murmured under his breath, rolling his eyes wildly:

“Shameful, sir! You might at least have put your drawers on, sir! Shameful! And a hero, too? Involved with a prostitute⁠ ⁠… with this carrion-flesh? What will your comrades say of you⁠—eh, you cur?”

Liuba, stretching her naked neck, heard him. They were together now, side by side, these three plain truths of life, the corrupt old drunkard who yearned for heroes, the dissolute woman into whose soul some scattered seeds of purpose and self-denial had fallen⁠—and the man. After the superintendent’s words, he paled slightly, and seemed to wish to say something⁠—but changed his mind and smiled, and went on swinging that hairy leg.

The officers wandered off; the police accommodated themselves to the situation, to the presence of the half naked couple, and stood about sleepily, with that absence of visible thought which renders the faces of all guards alike.

The superintendent put his hands on the table and pondered deeply and sadly⁠—that he would not get a nap today, that he would have to go to the station and set matters on foot. But something else made him even more melancholy and weary.

“May I dress myself?” asked Liuba.

“No!”

“I’m cold.”

“Never mind⁠—sit as you are!”

The superintendent didn’t even look at her. So she turned away, and, stretching out her thin neck, whispered something to the man, softly, with her lips only. He raised his brows in enquiry, and she repeated:

“Darling! My Darling!”

He nodded and smiled affectionately. Then seeing him smile to to her so gently, though plainly forgetting nothing⁠—seeing him, who was so handsome and proud, now naked and despised by all, with his dirty bare legs, she was suddenly flushed with a feeling of unbearable love and demoniac blind wrath. She gasped, and flung herself on her knees on that damp floor, and embraced those cold hairy feet.

“Dress yourself, darling!” she murmured in an ecstasy. “Dress yourself!”

“Liubka, stop this!” The superintendent dragged her away. “He’s not worth it!”

The girl sprang to her feet.

“Silence, you old profligate! He’s better than the whole lot of you put together!”

“He’s a swine!”

“You’re a swine!”

“What?” The superintendent promptly lost his temper. “Tackle her, my man! Hold her down. Leave your rifle alone, you blockhead!”

“Oh, darling, why did you give up your revolver?” the girl moaned, struggling with the policeman. “Why didn’t you bring a bomb? We might have⁠ ⁠… might have⁠ ⁠… them all to.⁠ ⁠…”

“Gag her!”

The panting woman struggled desperately, trying to bite the rough fingers that were holding her. The policeman with the white eyelashes, disconcerted, not knowing how to fight a woman, was seizing her by her hair, by her breasts, trying to fling her on the ground and sniffing in his desperation.

From the corridor new voices were heard, loud, unconcerned, and the jangle of a police officer’s spurs. A sweet, sincere, barytone voice was leading, as though a star was making his entrance and now at last the real and serious opera was about to commence.

The superintendent pulled his coat straight.

The Seven Who Were Hanged I At One O’Clock, Your Excellency!

As the Minister was a very stout man, inclined to apoplexy, they feared to arouse in him any dangerous excitement, and it was with every possible precaution that they informed him that a very serious attempt upon his life had been planned. When they saw that he received the news calmly, even with a smile, they gave him, also, the details. The attempt was to be made on the following day at the time that he was to start out with his official report; several men, terrorists, whose plans had already been betrayed by a provocateur, and who were now under the vigilant surveillance of detectives, were to meet at one o’clock in the afternoon in front of his house, and, armed with bombs and revolvers, were to wait till he came out. There the terrorists were to be trapped.

“Wait!” muttered the Minister, perplexed. “How did they know that I was to leave the house at one o’clock in the afternoon with my report, when I myself learned of it only the day before yesterday?”

The Chief of the Guards stretched out his arms with a shrug.

“Exactly at one o’clock in the afternoon, your Excellency,” he said.

Half surprised, half commending the work of the police, who had managed everything skilfully, the Minister shook his head, a morose smile upon his thick, dark lips, and still smiling obediently, and not desiring to interfere with the plans of the police, he hastily made ready, and went out to pass the night in someone else’s hospitable palace. His wife and his