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

death, there were many others similarly sentenced, and he was not regarded as an important criminal. They spoke to him accordingly, with neither fear nor respect, just as they would speak to prisoners who were not to be executed. The warden, on learning of the verdict, said to him:

“Well, my friend, they’ve hanged you!”

“When are they going to hang me?” asked Yanson distrustfully. The warden meditated a moment.

“Well, you’ll have to wait⁠—until they can get together a whole party. It isn’t worth bothering for one man, especially for a man like you. It is necessary to work up the right spirit.”

“And when will that be?” persisted Yanson. He was not at all offended that it was not worth while to hang him alone. He did not believe it, but considered it as an excuse for postponing the execution, preparatory to revoking it altogether. And he was seized with joy; the confused, terrible moment, of which it was so painful to think, retreated far into the distance, becoming fictitious and improbable, as death always seems.

“When? When?” cried the warden, a dull, morose old man, growing angry. “It isn’t like hanging a dog, which you take behind the barn⁠—and it is done in no time. I suppose you would like to be hanged like that, you fool!”

“I don’t want to be hanged,” and suddenly Yanson frowned strangely. “He said that I should be hanged, but I don’t want it.”

And perhaps for the first time in his life he laughed, a hoarse, absurd, yet gay and joyous laughter. It sounded like the cackling of a goose, Ga-ga-ga! The warden looked at him in astonishment, then knit his brow sternly. This strange gayety of a man who was to be executed was an offence to the prison, as well as to the very executioner; it made them appear absurd. And suddenly, for the briefest instant, it appeared to the old warden, who had passed all his life in the prison, and who looked upon its laws as the laws of nature, that the prison and all the life within it was something like an insane asylum, in which he, the warden, was the chief lunatic.

“Pshaw! The devil take you!” and he spat aside. “Why are you giggling here? This is no dramshop!”

“And I don’t want to be hanged⁠—ga-ga-ga!” laughed Yanson.

“Satan!” muttered the inspector, feeling the need of making the sign of the cross.

This little man, with his small, wizened face⁠—he resembled least of all the devil⁠—but there was that in his silly giggling which destroyed the sanctity and the strength of the prison. If he laughed longer, it seemed to the warden as if the walls might fall asunder, the grating melt and drop out, as if the warden himself might lead the prisoners to the gates, bowing and saying: “Take a walk in the city, gentlemen; or perhaps some of you would like to go to the village?”

“Satan!”

But Yanson had stopped laughing, and was now winking cunningly.

“You had better look out!” said the warden, with an indefinite threat, and he walked away, glancing back of him.

Yanson was calm and cheerful throughout the evening. He repeated to himself, “I shall not be hanged,” and it seemed to him so convincing, so wise, so irrefutable, that it was unnecessary to feel uneasy. He had long forgotten about his crime, only sometimes he regretted that he had not been successful in attacking his master’s wife. But he soon forgot that, too.

Every morning Yanson asked when he was to be hanged, and every morning the warden answered him angrily:

“Take your time, you devil! Wait!” and he would walk off quickly before Yanson could begin to laugh.

And from these monotonously repeated words, and from the fact that each day came, passed and ended as every ordinary day had passed, Yanson became convinced that there would be no execution. He began to lose all memory of the trial, and would roll about all day long on his cot, vaguely and happily dreaming about the white melancholy fields, with their snow-mounds, about the refreshment bar at the railroad station, and about other things still more vague and bright. He was well fed in the prison, and somehow he began to grow stout rapidly and to assume airs.

“Now she would have liked me,” he thought of his master’s wife. “Now I am stout⁠—not worse-looking than the master.”

But he longed for a drink of vodka, to drink and to take a ride on horseback, to ride fast, madly.

When the terrorists were arrested the news of it reached the prison. And in answer to Yanson’s usual question, the warden said eagerly and unexpectedly:

“It won’t be long now!”

He looked at Yanson calmly with an air of importance and repeated:

“It won’t be long now. I suppose in about a week.”

Yanson turned pale, and as though falling asleep, so turbid was the look in his glassy eyes, asked:

“Are you joking?”

“First you could not wait, and now you think I am joking. We are not allowed to joke here. You like to joke, but we are not allowed to,” said the warden with dignity as he went away.

Toward evening of that day Yanson had already grown thinner. His skin, which had stretched out and had become smooth for a time, was suddenly covered with a multitude of small wrinkles, and in places it seemed even to hang down. His eyes became sleepy, and all his motions were now so slow and languid as though each turn of the head, each move of the fingers, each step of the foot were a complicated and cumbersome undertaking which required very careful deliberation. At night he lay on his cot, but did not close his eyes, and thus, heavy with sleep, they remained open until morning.

“Aha!” said the warden with satisfaction, seeing him on the following day. “This is no dramshop for you, my dear!”

With a feeling of pleasant gratification, like a scientist whose experiment had proved successful again, he examined the condemned man closely and carefully from head to