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

sharply, straight into her face.

“Young lady, young lady! What about you? Her cheeks are rosy and she is laughing. Look, she is really laughing,” he said, clasping Werner’s knee with his clutching, ironlike fingers. “Look, look!”

Reddening, smiling confusedly, Musya also gazed straight into his sharp and wildly searching eyes.

The wheels rattled fast and noisily. The small cars kept hopping along the narrow rails. Now at a curve or at a crossing the small engine whistled shrilly and carefully⁠—the engineer was afraid lest he might run over somebody. It was strange to think that so much humane painstaking care and exertion was being introduced into the business of hanging people; that the most insane deed on earth was being committed with such an air of simplicity and reasonableness. The cars were running, and human beings sat in them as people always do, and they rode as people usually ride; and then there would be a halt, as usual.

“The train will stop for five minutes.”

And there death would be waiting⁠—eternity⁠—the great mystery.

XII They Are Hanged

The little cars ran on carefully.

Sergey Golovin at one time had lived for several years with his relatives at their country-house, along this very road. He had traveled upon it by day as well as by night, and he knew it well. He closed his eyes, and thought that he might now simply be returning home⁠—that he had stayed out late in the city with acquaintances, and was now coming back on the last train.

“We will soon be there,” he said, opening his eyes and looking out of the grated, mute window.

Nobody stirred, nobody answered; only Tsiganok spat quickly several times and his eyes ran over the car, as though feeling the windows, the doors, the soldiers.

“It’s cold,” said Vasily Kashirin, his lips closed tightly, as though really frozen; and his words sounded strangely.

Tanya Kovalchuk began to bustle about.

“Here’s a handkerchief. Tie it about your neck. It’s a very warm one.”

“Around the neck?” Sergey asked suddenly, startled by his own question. But as the same thing occurred to all of them, no one seemed to hear him. It was as if nothing had been said, or as if they had all said the same thing at the same time.

“Never mind, Vasya, tie it about your neck. It will be warmer,” Werner advised him. Then he turned to Yanson and asked gently:

“And you, friend, are you cold?”

“Werner, perhaps he wants to smoke. Comrade, perhaps you would like to smoke?” asked Musya. “We have something to smoke.”

“I do.”

“Give him a cigarette, Seryozha,” said Werner delightedly. But Sergey was already getting out a cigarette. All looked on with friendliness, watching how Yanson’s fingers took the cigarette, how the match flared, and then how the blue smoke issued from Yanson’s mouth.

“Thanks,” said Yanson; “it’s good.”

“How strange!” said Sergey.

“What is strange?” Werner turned around. “What is strange?”

“I mean⁠—the cigarette.”

Yanson held a cigarette, an ordinary cigarette, in his ordinary live hands, and, pale-faced, looked at it with surprise, even with terror. And all fixed their eyes upon the little tube, from the end of which smoke was issuing, like a bluish ribbon, wafted aside by the breathing, with the ashes, gathering, turning black. The light went out.

“The light’s out,” said Tanya.

“Yes, the light’s out.”

“Let it go,” said Werner, frowning, looking uneasily at Yanson, whose hand, holding the cigarette, was hanging loosely, as if dead. Suddenly Tsiganok turned quickly, bent over to Werner, close to him, face to face, and rolling the whites of his eyes, like a horse, whispered:

“Master, how about the convoys? Suppose we⁠—eh? Shall we try?”

“No, don’t do it,” Werner replied, also in a whisper. “We shall drink it to the bitter end.”

“Why not? It’s livelier in a fight! Eh? I strike him, he strikes me, and you don’t even know how the thing is done. It’s just as if you don’t die at all.”

“No, you shouldn’t do it,” said Werner, and turned to Yanson. “Why don’t you smoke, friend?”

Suddenly Yanson’s wizened face became woefully wrinkled, as if somebody had pulled strings which set all the wrinkles in motion. And, as in a dream, he began to whimper, without tears, in a dry, strained voice:

“I don’t want to smoke. Aha! aha! aha! Why should I be hanged? Aha! aha! aha!”

They began to bustle about him. Tanya Kovalchuk, weeping freely, petted him on the arm, and adjusted the drooping earlaps of his worn fur cap.

“My dear, do not cry! My own! my dear! Poor, unfortunate little fellow!”

Musya looked aside. Tsiganok caught her glance and grinned, showing his teeth.

“What a queer fellow! He drinks tea, and yet feels cold,” he said, with an abrupt laugh. But suddenly his own face became bluish-black, like cast-iron, and his large yellow teeth flashed.

Suddenly the little cars trembled and slackened their speed. All, except Yanson and Kashirin, rose and sat down again quickly.

“Here is the station,” said Sergey.

It seemed to them as if all the air had been suddenly pumped out of the car, it became so difficult to breathe. The heart grew larger, making the chest almost burst, beating in the throat, tossing about madly⁠—shouting in horror with its blood-filled voice. And the eyes looked upon the quivering floor, and the ears heard how the wheels were turning ever more slowly⁠—the wheels slipped and turned again, and then suddenly⁠—they stopped.

The train had halted.

Then a dream set in. It was not terrible, rather fantastic, unfamiliar to the memory, strange. The dreamer himself seemed to remain aside, only his bodiless apparition moved about, spoke soundlessly, walked noiselessly, suffered without suffering. As in a dream, they walked out of the car, formed into parties of two, inhaled the peculiarly fresh spring air of the forest. As in a dream, Yanson resisted bluntly, powerlessly, and was dragged out of the car silently.

They descended the steps of the station.

“Are we to walk?” asked someone almost cheerily.

“It isn’t far now,” answered another, also cheerily.

Then they walked in a large, black, silent crowd amid the forest, along a rough, wet