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boorish and outrageous acts, and every link in this chain was worse than the
one before. The drunken dancing in the arms of the telegrapher on the lawn
in front of the Pushkino telegraph office to the sounds of some itinerant
barrel-organ was worth something! The chase after some female citizens
shrieking with terror! The attempt at a fight with the barman in the Yalta
itself! Scattering green onions all over the floor of the same Yalta.
Smashing eight bottles of dry white Ai-Danil. Breaking the meter when
the taxi-driver refused to take Styopa in his cab. Threatening to arrest the
citizens who attempted to stop Styopa's obnoxiousness... In short, black
horror!
Styopa was well known in Moscow theatre circles, and everyone knew that
the man was no gift. But all the same, what the administrator was telling
about him was too much even for Styopa. Yes, too much. Even much too much...
Rimsky's needle-sharp glance pierced the administrator's face from
across the desk, and the longer the man spoke, the grimmer those eyes
became. The more lifelike and colourful the vile details with which the
administrator furnished his story, the less the findirector believed the
storyteller. And when Varenukha told how Styopa had let himself go so far as
to try to resist those who came to bring him back to Moscow, the findirector
already knew firmly that everything the administrator who had returned at
midnight was telling him, everything, was a lie! A lie from first word to
last!
Varenukha never went to Pushkino, and there was no Styopa in Pushkino.
There was no drunken telegrapher, there was no broken glass in the
tavern, Styopa did not get tied up with ropes ... none of it happened.
As soon as the findirector became firmly convinced that the
administrator was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting from the
legs, and twice again the findirector fancied that a putrid malarial
dankness was wafting across the floor. Never for a moment taking his eyes
off the administrator - who squirmed somehow strangely in his armchair,
trying not to get out of the blue shade of the desk lamp, and screening
himself with a newspaper in some remarkable fashion from the bothersome
light - the findirector was thinking of only one thing: what did it all
mean? Why was he being lied to so brazenly, in the silent and deserted
building, by the administrator who was so late in coming back to him? And
the awareness of danger, an unknown but menacing danger, began to gnaw at
Rimsky's soul. Pretending to ignore Varenukha's dodges and tricks with the
newspaper, the findirector studied his face, now almost without listening to
the yarn Varenukha was spinning. There was something that seemed still more
inexplicable than the calumny invented. God knows why, about adventures in
Pushkino, and that something was the change in the administrator's
appearance and manners.
No matter how the man pulled the duck-like visor of his cap over his
eyes, so as to throw a shadow on his face, no matter how he fidgeted with
the newspaper, the findirector managed to make out an enormous bruise on the
right side of his face just by the nose. Besides that, the normally
full-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor,
and on this stifling night his neck was for some reason wrapped in an old
striped scarf. Add to that the repulsive manner the administrator had
acquired during the time of his absence of sucking and smacking, the sharp
change in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtiveness
and cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan Savelyevich
Varenukha had become unrecognizable.
Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable to
grasp precisely what it was, however much he strained his feverish mind,
however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he could affirm, that there
was something unprecedented, unnatural in this combination of the
administrator and the familiar armchair.
"Well, we finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,' Varenukha
boomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand.
Rimsky suddenly reached out and, as if mechanically, tapping his
fingers on the table at the same time, pushed the electric-bell button with
his palm and went numb. The sharp signal ought to have been heard without
fail in the empty building. But no signal came, and the button sank
lifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken.
The findirector's stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, who
asked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes:
"What are you ringing for?'
'Mechanically,' the findirector replied hollowly, jerking his hand
back, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: "What's that on your face?'
'The car skidded, I bumped against the door-handle,' Varenukha said,
looking away.
'He's lying!' the findirector exclaimed mentally. And here his eyes
suddenly grew round and utterly insane, and he stared at the back of the
armchair.
Behind the chair on the floor two shadows lay criss-cross, one more
dense and black, the other faint and grey. The shadow of the back of the
chair and of its tapering legs could be seen distinctly on the floor, but
there was no shadow of Varenukha's head above the back of the chair, or of
the administrator's legs under its legs.
`He casts no shadow!' Rimsky cried out desperately in his mind. He
broke into shivers.
Varenukha, following Rimsky's insane gaze, looked furtively behind him
at the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out.
He got up from the chair (the findirector did likewise) and made one
step back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands.
'He's guessed, damn him! Always was clever,' Varenukha said, grinning
spitefully right in the findirector's face, and he sprang unexpectedly from
the chair to the door and quickly pushed down the catch on the lock. The
findirector looked desperately behind him, as he retreated to the window
giving on to the garden, and in this window, flooded with moonlight, saw the
face of a naked girl pressed against the glass and her naked arm reaching
through the vent-pane and trying to open the lower latch. The upper one was
already open.
It seemed to Rimsky that the light of the desk lamp was going out and
the desk was tilting. An icy wave engulfed Rimsky, but - fortunately for him
- he got control of himself and did not fall. He had enough strength left to
whisper, but not cry out:
'Help...'
Varenukha, guarding the door, hopped up and down by it, staying in air
for a long time and swaying there. Waving his hooked fingers in Rimsky's
direction, he hissed and smacked, winking to the girl in the window.
She began to hurry, stuck her red-haired head through the vent, reached
her arm down as far as she could, her nails clawing at the lower latch and
shaking the frame. Her arm began to lengthen, rubber-like, and became
covered with a putrid green. Finally the dead woman's green fingers got hold
of the latch knob, turned it, and the frame began to open. Rimsky cried out
weakly, leaned against the wall, and held his briefcase in front of him like
a shield. He realized that his end had come.
The frame swung wide open, but instead of the night's freshness and the
fragrance of the lindens, the smell of a cellar burst into the room. The
dead woman stepped on to the window-sill. Rimsky clearly saw spots of decay
on her breast.
And just then the joyful, unexpected crowing of a cock came from the
garden, from that low building beyond the shooting gallery where birds
participating in the programme were kept. A loud, trained cock trumpeted,
announcing that dawn was rolling towards Moscow from the east.
Savage fury distorted the girl's face, she emitted a hoarse oath, and
at the door Varenukha shrieked and dropped from the air to the floor.
The cock-crow was repeated, the girl clacked her teeth, and her red
hair stood on end. With the third crowing of the cock, she turned and flew
out and after her, jumping up and stretching himself horizontally in the
air, looking like a flying cupid, Varenukha slowly floated over the desk and
out the window.
White as snow, with not a single black hair on his head, the old man
who still recently had been Rimsky rushed to the door, undid the catch,
opened the door, and ran hurtling down the dark corridor. At the turn to the
stairs, moaning with fear, he felt for the switch, and the stairway lighted
up. On the stairs the shaking, trembling old man fell because he imagined
that Varenukha had softly tumbled on top of him.
Having run downstairs, Rimsky saw a watchman asleep on a chair by the
box office in the lobby. Rimsky stole past him on tiptoe and slipped out the
main entrance. Outside he felt slightly better. He recovered his senses
enough to realize, clutching his head, that his hat had stayed behind in the
office.
Needless to say, he did not go back for it, but, breathless, ran across
the wide street to the opposite corner by the movie theatre, near which a
dull reddish light hovered. In a moment he was there. No one had time to
intercept the cab.
`Make the Leningrad express, I'll tip you well,' the old man said,
breathing heavily and clutching his heart.
'I'm going to the garage,' the driver answered hatefully and turned
away.
Then Rimsky unlatched his briefcase, took out fifty roubles, and handed
them to the driver through the open front window.
A few moments later, the rattling car was flying like the wind down
Sadovoye Ring. The passenger was tossed about on his seat, and in the
fragment of mirror hanging in front of the driver, Rimsky saw now the
driver's happy eyes, now his own insane ones. Jumping out of the car in
front of the train station, Rimsky cried to the first man he saw in a white
apron with a badge:
'First class, single, I'll pay thirty,' he was pulling the banknotes
from his briefcase, crumpling them, 'no first class, get me second ... if
not -- a hard bench!'
The man with the badge kept glancing up at the lighted clock face as he
tore the banknotes from Rimsky's hand.
Five minutes later the express train disappeared from under the glass
vault of the train station and vanished clean away in the darkness. And with
it vanished Rimsky.
It is not difficult to guess that the fat man with the purple
physiognomy who was put in room 119 of the clinic was Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy.
He got to Professor Stravinsky not at once, however, but after first
visiting another place [1]. Of this other place little remained in Nikanor
Ivanovich's memory. He recalled only a desk, a bookcase and a sofa.
There a conversation was held with Nikanor Ivanovich, who had some sort
of haze before his eyes from the rush of blood and mental agitation, but the
conversation came out somehow strange, muddled, or, better to say, did not
come out at all.
The very first question put to Nikanor Ivanovich was the following:
'Are you Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the house committee at
no.502-bis on Sadovaya Street?'
To this Nikanor Ivanovich, bursting into terrible laughter, replied
literally thus:
'I'm Nikanor, of course I'm Nikanor! But what the deuce kind of
chairman am I?'
'Meaning what?' the question was asked with a narrowing of eyes.
`Meaning,' he replied, `that if I was chairman, I should have
determined at once that he was an unclean power! Otherwise - what is it? A
cracked pince-nez, all in rags... what kind of foreigner's interpreter could
he be?'
'Who are you talking about?' Nikanor Ivanovich was asked.
'Koroviev!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried out. `Got himself lodged in our
apartment number fifty. Write it down - Koroviev! He must be caught at once.
Write it down - the sixth entrance. He's there.'
`Where did you get the currency?' Nikanor Ivanovich was asked soul
fully.
'As God is true, as God is almighty,' Nikanor Ivanovich began, he sees
everything, and it serves me right. I never laid a finger on it, never even
suspected what it was, this currency! God is punishing me for my iniquity,'
Nikanor Ivanovich went on with feeling, now buttoning, now unbuttoning
his shirt, now crossing himself. 'I took! I took, but I took ours. Soviet
money! I'd register people for money, I don't argue, it happened. Our
secretary Bedsornev is a good one, too, another good one! Frankly speaking,
there's nothing but thieves in the house management... But I never took
currency!'
To the request that he stop playing the fool and tell how the dollars
got into the ventilation, Nikanor Ivanovich went on his knees and swayed,
opening his mouth as if he meant to swallow a section of the parquet.
'If you want,' he mumbled, 'I'll eat dirt that I didn't do it! And
Koroviev - he's the devil!'
All patience has its limits, and the voice at the desk was now raised,
hinting to Nikanor Ivanovich that it was time he began speaking in human
language.
Here the room with that same sofa resounded with Nikanor Ivanovich's
wild roaring, as he jumped up from his knees:
'There he is! There, behind the bookcase! He's grinning! And his
pince-nez... Hold him! Spray the room with holy water!'
The blood left Nikanor Ivanovich's face. Trembling, he made crosses in
the air, rushing to the door and back, intoned some prayer, and finally
began spouting sheer gibberish.
It became perfectly clear that Nikanor Ivanovich was unfit for any
conversation. He was taken out and put in a separate room, where he calmed
down somewhat and only prayed and sobbed.
They did, of course, go to Sadovaya and visit apartment no.50. But they
did not find any Koroviev there, and no one in the house either knew or had
seen any Koroviev. The apartment occupied by the late Berlioz, as well as by
the Yalta-visiting Likhodeev, was empty, and in the study wax seals hung
peacefully on the bookcases, unbroken by anyone. With that they left
Sadovaya, and there also departed with them the perplexed and dispirited
secretary of the house management, Bedsornev.
In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was delivered to Stravinsky's clinic.
There he became so agitated that an injection, made according to
Stravinsky's recipe, had to be given him, and only after midnight did
Nikanor Ivanovich fall asleep in room 119, every now and then emitting a
heavy, painful moan.
But the longer he slept, the easier his sleep became. He stopped
tossing and groaning, his breathing became easy and regular, and he was left
alone. Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream, at the basis of which
undoubtedly lay the experience of that day. It began with Nikanor Ivanovich
seeing as it were some people with golden trumpets in their hands leading
him, and very solemnly, to a big lacquered door. At this door his companions
played as it were a nourish for Nikanor Ivanovich, and then from the sky a
resounding bass said merrily:
'Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!'
Exceedingly astonished, Nikanor Ivanovich saw a black loudspeaker above
him.
Then he found himself for some reason in a theatre house, where crystal
chandeliers blazed under a gilded ceiling and Quinquet lamps [2] on the
walls. Everything was as it ought to be in a small-sized but very costly
theatre. There was a stage closed off by a velvet curtain, its dark cerise
background spangled, as if with stars, with oversized gold pieces, there was
a prompter's box, and there was even an audience.
What surprised Nikanor Ivanovich was that this audience was all of the
same sex - male - and all for some reason bearded. Besides that, it was
striking that there were no seats in the theatre, and the audience was all
sitting on the floor, splendidly polished and slippery.
Abashed in this new and big company, Nikanor Ivanovich, after a brief
hesitation, followed the general example and sat down on the parquet
Turkish-fashion, huddled between some stalwart, bearded redhead and another
citizen, pale and quite overgrown. None of the sitters paid any attention to
the newly arrived spectator.
Here the soft ringing of a bell was heard, the lights in the house went
out, and the curtain opened to reveal a lighted stage with an armchair, a
little table on which stood a golden bell, and a solid black velvet
backdrop.
An artiste came out from the wings in an evening jacket, smoothly
shaven, his hair neatly parted, young and with very pleasant features. The
audience in the house livened up, and everyone turned towards the stage. The
artiste advanced to the prompter's box and rubbed his hands.
'All sitting?'[3] he asked in a soft baritone and smiled to the house.
'Sitting, sitting,' a chorus of tenors and basses answered from the
house.
'Hm ...' the artiste began pensively, 'and how you're not sick of it. I
just don't understand! Everybody else is out walking around now, enjoying
the spring sun and the warmth, and you're stuck in here on the floor of a
stuffy theatre! Is the programme so interesting? Tastes differ, however,'
the artiste concluded philosophically.
Then he changed both the timbre of his voice and its intonation, and
announced gaily and resoundingly:
`And now for the next number on our programme - Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy, chairman of a house committee and director of a dietetic kitchen.
Nikanor Ivanovich, on-stage!'
General applause greeted the artiste. The surprised Nikanor Ivanovich
goggled his eyes, while the master of ceremonies, blocking the glare of the
footlights with his hand, located him among the sitters and tenderly
beckoned him on-stage with his finger. And Nikanor Ivanovich, without
knowing how, found himself on-stage. Beams of coloured light struck his eyes
from in front and below, which at once caused the house and the audience to
sink into darkness.
'Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, set us a good example, sir,' the young
artiste said soulfully, 'turn over your currency.'
Silence ensued. Nikanor Ivanovich took a deep breath and quietly began
to speak:
'I swear to God that I...'
But before he had time to get the words out, the whole house burst into
shouts of indignation. Nikanor Ivanovich got confused and fell silent.
'As far as I understand you,' said the programme announcer, 'you wanted
to swear to God that you haven't got any currency?', and he gazed
sympathetically at Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Exactly right, I haven't,' replied Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Right,' responded the artiste, 'and... excuse the indiscretion, where
did the four hundred dollars that were found in the privy of the apartment
of which you and your wife are the sole inhabitants come from?'
'Magic!' someone in the dark house said with obvious irony.
'Exactly right - magic,' Nikanor Ivanovich timidly replied, vaguely
addressing either the artiste or the dark house, and he explained:
'Unclean powers, the checkered interpreter stuck me with them.'
And again the house raised an indignant roar. When silence came, the
artiste said:
'See what La Fontaine fables I have to listen to! Stuck him with four
hundred dollars! Now, all of you here are currency dealers, so I address you
as experts: is that conceivable?'
We're not currency dealers,' various offended voices came from the
theatre, 'but, no, it's not conceivable!'
'I'm entirely of the same mind,' the artiste said firmly, `and let me
ask you: what is it that one can be stuck with?'
'A baby!' someone cried from the house.
`Absolutely correct,' the programme announcer confirmed, 'a baby, an
anonymous letter, a tract, an infernal machine, anything else, but no one
will stick you with four hundred dollars, for such idiots don't exist in
nature.' And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, the artiste added reproachfully
and sorrowfully:
`You've upset me, Nikanor Ivanovich, and I was counting on you. So, our
number didn't come off.'
Whistles came from the house, addressed to Nikanor Ivanovich.
'He's a currency dealer,' they shouted from the house, 'and we innocent
ones have to suffer for the likes of him!'
`Don't scold him,' the master of ceremonies said softly, 'he'll
repent.' And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, his blue eyes filled with tears,
he added: 'Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, you may go to your place.'
After that the artiste rang the bell and announced loudly:
'Intermission, you blackguards!'
The shaken Nikanor Ivanovich, who unexpectedly for himself had become a
participant in some sort of theatre programme, again found himself in his
place on the floor. Here he dreamed that the house was plunged in total
darkness, and fiery red words leaped out on the walls:
Turn over your currency!' Then the curtain opened again and the master
of ceremonies invited:
'I call Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil to the stage.'
Dunchil turned out to be a fine-looking but rather unkempt man of about
fifty.
`Sergei Gerardovich,' the master of ceremonies addressed him, 'you've
been sitting here for a month and a half now, stubbornly refusing to turn
over the currency you still have, while the country is in need of it, and
you have no use for it whatsoever. And still you persist. You're an
intelligent man, you understand it all perfectly well, and yet you don't
want to comply with me.'
To my regret, there is nothing I can do, since I have no more
currency,' Dunchil calmly replied.
`Don't you at least have some diamonds?' asked the artiste. 'No
diamonds either.'
The artiste hung his head and pondered, then clapped his hands. A
middle-aged lady came out from the wings, fashionably dressed - that is, in
a collarless coat and a tiny hat. The lady looked worried, but Dunchil
glanced at her without moving an eyebrow.
'Who is this lady?' the programme announcer asked Dunchil. 'That is my
wife,' Dunchil replied with dignity and looked at the lady's long neck with
a certain repugnance.
We have troubled you, Madame Dunchil,' the master of ceremonies
adverted to the lady, 'with regard to the following: we wanted to ask you,
does your husband have any more currency?'
`He turned it all over the other time,' Madame Dunchil replied
nervously.
'Right,' said the artiste, 'well, then, if it's so, it's so. If he
turned it all over, then we ought to part with Sergei Gerardovich
immediately, there's nothing else to do! If you wish, Sergei Gerardovich,
you may leave the theatre.' And the artiste made a regal gesture.
Dunchil turned calmly and with dignity, and headed for the wings. 'Just
a moment!' the master of ceremonies stopped him. 'Allow me on parting to
show you one more number from our programme.' And again he clapped his
hands.
The black backdrop parted, and on to the stage came a young beauty in a
ball gown, holding in her hands a golden tray on which lay a fat wad tied
with candy-box ribbon and a diamond necklace from which blue, yellow and red
fire leaped in all directions.
Dunchil took a step back and his face went pale. The house froze.
'Eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand in
gold,' the artiste solemnly announced, `kept by Sergei Gerardovich in the
city of Kharkov, in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Herkulanovna Vors,
whom we have the pleasure of seeing here before us and who so kindly helped
in discovering these treasures - priceless, vet useless in the hands of a
private person. Many thanks, Ida Herkulanovna!'
The beauty smiled, flashing her teeth, and her lush eyelashes
fluttered. 'And under your so very dignified mask,' the artiste adverted to
Dunchil, `is concealed a greedy spider and an astonishing bamboozler and
liar. You wore everyone out during this month and a half with your dull
obstinacy. Go home now, and let the hell your wife sets up for you be your
punishment.'
Dunchil swayed and, it seems, wanted to fall down, but was held up by
someone's sympathetic hands. Here the front curtain dropped and concealed
all those on-stage.
Furious applause shook the house, so much so that Nikanor Ivanovich
fancied the lights were leaping in the chandeliers. When the front curtain
went up, there was no one on-stage except the lone artiste. Greeted with a
second burst of applause, he bowed and began to speak:
'In the person of this Dunchil, our programme has shown you a typical
ass. I did have the pleasure of saying yesterday that the concealing of
currency is senseless. No one can make use of it under any circumstances, I
assure you. Let's take this same Dunchil. He gets a splendid salary and
doesn't want for anything. He has a splendid apartment, a wife and a
beautiful mistress. But no, instead of living quietly and peacefully without
any troubles, having turned over the currency and stones, this mercenary
blockhead gets himself exposed in front of everybody, and to top it off
contracts major family trouble. So, who's going to turn over? Any
volunteers? In that case, for the next number on our programme, a famous
dramatic talent, the actor Kurolesov, Sawa Potapovich, especially invited
here, will perform excerpts from The Covetous Knight [4] by the poet
Pushkin.'
The promised Kurolesov was not slow in coming on stage and turned out
to be a strapping and beefy man, clean-shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie.
Without any preliminaries, he concocted a gloomy face, knitted his
brows, and began speaking in an unnatural voice, glancing sidelong at the
golden bell:
`As a young scapegrace awaits a tryst with some sly strumpet...'[5]
And Kurolesov told many bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich
heard Kurolesov confess that some wretched widow had gone on her knees to
him, howling, in the rain, but had failed to move the actor's callous heart.
Before his dream, Nikanor Ivanovich had been completely ignorant of the
poet Pushkin's works, but the man himself he knew perfectly well and several
times a day used to say phrases like: 'And who's going to pay the rent -
Pushkin?'[6] or `Then who did unscrew the bulb on the stairway - Pushkin?'
or 'So who's going to buy the fuel - Pushkin?'
Now, having become acquainted with one of his works, Nikanor Ivanovich
felt sad, imagined the woman on her knees, with her orphaned children, in
the rain, and involuntarily thought: "What a type, though, this Kurolesov!'
And the latter, ever raising his voice, went on with his confession and
got Nikanor Ivanovich definitively muddled, because he suddenly started
addressing someone who was not on-stage, and responded for this absent one
himself, calling himself now dear sir, now baron, now father, now son, now
formally, and now familiarly.
Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing, that the actor died an
evil death, crying out: 'Keys! My keys!', after which he collapsed on the
floor, gasping and carefully tearing off his tie.
Having died, Kurolesov got up, brushed the dust from his trousers,
bowed with a false smile, and withdrew to the accompaniment of thin
applause. And the master of ceremonies began speaking thus:
'We have just heard The Covetous Knight wonderfully performed by Sawa
Potapovich. This knight hoped that frolicking nymphs would come running to
him, and that many other pleasant things in the same vein would occur. But,
as you see, none of it happened, no nymphs came running to him, and the
muses paid him no tribute, and he raised no mansions, but, on the contrary,
ended quite badly, died of a stroke, devil take him, on his chest of
currency and jewels. I warn you that the same sort of thing, if not worse,
is going to happen to you if you don't turn over your currency!'
Whether Pushkin's poetry produced such an effect, or it was the prosaic
speech of the master of ceremonies, in any case a shy voice suddenly came
from the house:
'I'll turn over my currency.'
`Kindly come to the stage,' the master of ceremonies courteously
invited, peering into the dark house.
On-stage appeared a short, fair-haired citizen, who, judging by his
face, had not shaved in about three weeks.
'Beg pardon, what is your name?' the master of ceremonies inquired.
'Kanavkin, Nikolai,' the man responded shyly.
'Ah! Very pleased. Citizen Kanavkin. And so? ...'
'I'll turn it over,' Kanavkin said quietly.
'How much?'
'A thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces.'
'Bravo! That's all, then?'
The programme announcer stared straight into Kanavkin's eyes, and it
even seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that those eyes sent out rays that
penetrated Kanavkin like X-rays. The house stopped breathing.
`I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguished his
gaze. I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that
your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human
eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never!
A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you
get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and
you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but -
alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul
leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're
caught!'
Having delivered, and with great ardour, this highly convincing speech,
the artiste tenderly inquired of Kanavkin:
'And where is it hidden?'
With my aunt, Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka.'
'Ah! That's... wait... that's Klavdia Ilyinishna, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! A separate little house? A little front garden
opposite? Of course, I know, I know! And where did you put it there?'
'In the cellar, in a candy tin...'
The artiste clasped his hands.
'Have you ever seen the like?' he cried out, chagrined. "Why, it'll get
damp and mouldy there! Is it conceivable to entrust currency to such people?
Eh? Sheer childishness! By God! ...'
Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he
hung his tufty head.
'Money,' the artiste went on, 'must be kept in the state bank, in
special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt's cellar,
where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for
shame! You're a grown-up!'
Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at
the lapel of his jacket with his finger.
'Well, all right,' the artiste relented, 'let bygones be...' And he
suddenly added unexpectedly: 'Ah, by the way ... so that in one ... to save
a trip ... this same aunt also has some, eh?'
Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the
theatre fell silent.
'Ehh, Kanavkin...' the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach,
'and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no
reason at all! It's absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn't I just talking about eyes?
Can't we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us
for nothing?'
'She has!' Kanavkin cried dashingly.
'Bravo!' cried the master of ceremonies.
'Bravo!' the house roared frightfully.
When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated
Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and
told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask
her kindly to come for the programme at the women's theatre.
'Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she
hides hers?' the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering
Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned
somehow wistfully.
'I believe you, I believe you,' the artiste responded with a sigh. 'Not
just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn't tell the devil himself! Well,
so, we'll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the
strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!'
And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there
were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered
with silence.
'Odd birds, by God!' the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid
him.
The lights went out, there was darkness for a while, and in it a
nervous tenor was heard singing from far away:
There great heaps of gold do shine, and all those heaps of gold are
mine..."
Then twice the sound of subdued applause came from somewhere.
'Some little lady in the women's theatre is turning hers over,' Nikanor
Ivanovich's red-bearded neighbour spoke up unexpectedly, and added with a
sigh: 'Ah, if it wasn't for my geese! ... I've got fighting geese in
Lianozovo, my dear fellow ... they'll die without me, I'm afraid. A fighting
bird's delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn't for my geese!
'... They won't surprise me with Pushkin...' And again he began to
sigh.
Here the house lit up brightly, and Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed that
cooks in white chef's hats and with ladles in their hands came pouring from
all the doors. Scullions dragged in a cauldron of soup and a stand with
cut-up rye bread. The spectators livened up. The jolly cooks shuttled among
the theatre buffs, ladled out bowls of soup, and distributed bread.
'Dig in, lads,' the cooks shouted, 'and turn over your currency! What's
the point of sitting here? Who wants to slop up this swill! Go home, have a
good drink, a little bite, that's the way!'
'Now, you, for instance, what're you doing sitting here, old man?"
Nikanor Ivanovich was directly addressed by a fat cook with a
raspberry-coloured neck, as he offered him a bowl in which a lone cabbage
leaf floated in some liquid.
'I don't have any! I don't! I don't!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried out in a
terrible voice. 'You understand, I don't!'
`You don't?' the cook bellowed in a menacing bass. 'You don't?' he
asked in a tender woman's voice. `You don't, you don't,' he murmured
soothingly, turning into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.
She was gently shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned
in his sleep. Then the cooks melted away, and the theatre with its curtain
broke up. Through his tears, Nikanor Ivanovich made out his room in the
hospital and two people in white coats, who were by no means casual cooks
getting at people with their advice, but the doctor and that same Praskovya
Fyodorovna, who was holding not a bowl but a little dish covered with gauze,
with a syringe lying on it.
`What is all this?' Nikanor Ivanovich said bitterly, as they were
giving him the injection. 'I don't have any and that's that! Let Pushkin
turn over his currency for them. I don't have any!'
'No, you don't, you don't,' the kind-hearted Praskovya Fyodorovna
soothed him, 'and if you don't, there's no more to be said.'
After the injection, Nikanor Ivanovich felt better and fell asleep
without any dreams.
But, thanks to his cries, alarm was communicated to room 120, where the
patient woke up and began looking for his head, and to room 118, where the
unknown master became restless and wrung his hands in anguish, looking at
the moon, remembering the last bitter autumn night of his life, a strip of
light under the basement door, and uncurled hair.
From room 118, the alarm flew by way of the balcony to Ivan, and he
woke up and began to weep.
But the doctor quickly calmed all these anxious, sorrowing heads, and
they began to fall asleep. Ivan was the last to become oblivious, as dawn
was already breaking over the river. After the medicine, which suffused his
whole body, calm came like a wave and covered him. His body grew lighter,
his head basked in the warm wind of reverie. He fell asleep, and the last
waking thing he heard was the pre-dawn chirping of birds in the woods. But
they soon fell silent, and he began dreaming that the sun was already going
down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double
cordon ...
The sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was
cordoned off by a double cordon.
The cavalry ala that had cut across the procurator's path around noon
came trotting up to the Hebron gate of the city. Its way had already been
prepared. The infantry of the Cappadocian cohort had pushed the
conglomeration of people, mules and camels to the sides, and the ala,
trotting and raising white columns of dust in the sky, came to an
intersection where two roads met: the south road leading to Bethlehem, and
the north-west road to Jaffa. The ala raced down the north-west road. The
same Cappadocians were strung out along the sides of the road, and in good
time had driven to the sides of it all the caravans hastening to the feast
in Yershalaim. Crowds of pilgrims stood behind the Cappadocians, having
abandoned their temporary striped tents, pitched right on the grass. Going
on for about a half-mile, the ala caught up with the second cohort of the
Lightning legion and, having covered another half-mile, was the first to
reach the foot of Bald Mountain. Here they dismounted. The commander broke
the ala up into squads, and they cordoned off the whole foot of the small
hill, leaving open only the way up from the Jaffa road.
After some time, the ala was joined at the hill by the second cohort,
which climbed one level higher and also encircled the hill in a wreath.
Finally the century under the command of Mark Ratslayer arrived. It
went stretched out in files along the sides of the road, and between these
files, convoyed by the secret guard, the three condemned men rode in a cart,
white boards hanging around their necks with 'robber and rebel' written on
each of them in two languages - Aramaic and Greek.
The cart with the condemned men was followed by others laden with
freshly hewn posts with crosspieces, ropes, shovels, buckets and axes. Six
executioners rode in these carts. They were followed on horseback by the
centurion Mark, the chief of the temple guard of Yershalaim, and that same
hooded man with whom Pilate had had a momentary meeting in a darkened room
of the palace.
A file of soldiers brought up the rear of the procession, and behind it
walked about two thousand of the curious, undaunted by the infernal heat and
wishing to be present at the interesting spectacle. The curious from the
city were now joined by the curious from among the pilgrims, who were
admitted without hindrance to the tail of the procession. Under the shrill
cries of the heralds who accompanied the column and cried aloud what Pilate
had cried out at around noon, the procession drew itself up Bald Mountain.
The ala admitted everyone to the second level, but the second century
let only those connected with the execution go further up, and then,
manoeuvring quickly, spread the crowd around the entire hill, so that people
found themselves between the cordons of infantry above and cavalry below.
Now they could watch the execution through the sparse line of the
infantry.
And so, more than three hours had gone by since the procession climbed
the mountain, and the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, but the
heat was still unbearable, and the soldiers in both cordons suffered from
it, grew weary with boredom, and cursed the three robbers in their hearts,
sincerely wishing them the speediest death.
The little commander of the ala, his brow moist and the back of his
white shirt dark with sweat, having placed himself at the foot of the hill
by the open passage, went over to the leather bucket of the first squad
every now and then, scooped handfuls of water from it, drank and wetted his
turban. Somewhat relieved by that, he would step away and again begin pacing
back and forth on the dusty road leading to the top. His long sword slapped
against his laced leather boot. The commander wished to give his cavalrymen
an example of endurance, but, pitying his soldiers, he allowed them to stick
their spears pyramid-like in the ground and throw their white cloaks over
them. Under these tents, the Syrians hid from the merciless sun. The buckets
were quickly emptied, and cavalrymen from different squads took turns going
to fetch water in the gully below the hill, where in the thin shade of
spindly mulberries a muddy brook was living out its last days in the
devilish heat. There, too, catching the unsteady shade, stood the bored
horse-handlers, holding the quieted horses.
The weariness of the soldiers and the abuse they aimed at the robbers
were understandable. The procurator's apprehensions concerning the disorders
that might occur at the time of the execution in the city of Yershalaim, so
hated by him, fortunately were not borne out. And when the fourth hour of
the execution came, there was, contrary to all expectations, not a single
person left between the two files, the infantry above and the cavalry below.
The sun had scorched the crowd and driven it back to Yershalaim. Beyond
the file of two Roman centuries there were only two dogs that belonged to no
one knew whom and had for some reason ended up on the hill. But the heat got
to them, too, and they lay down with their tongues hanging out, panting and
paying no attention to the green-backed lizards, the only beings not afraid
of the sun, darting among the scorching stones and some sort of big-thorned
plants that crept on the ground.
No one attempted to rescue the condemned men either in Yershalaim
itself, flooded with troops, or here on the cordoned-off hill, and the crowd
went back to the city, for indeed there was absolutely nothing interesting
in this execution, while there in the city preparations were under way for
the great feast of Passover, which was to begin that evening.
The Roman infantry on the second level suffered still more than the
cavalry. The only thing the centurion Ratslayer allowed his soldiers was to
take off their helmets and cover their heads with white headbands dipped in
water, but he kept them standing, and with their spears in their hands. He
himself, in the same kind of headband, but dry, not wet, walked about not
far from the group of executioners, without even taking the silver plaques
with lions' muzzles off his shirt, or removing his greaves, sword and knife.
The sun beat straight down on the centurion without doing him any harm,
and the lions' muzzles were impossible to look at - the eyes were devoured
by the dazzling gleam of the silver which was as if boiling in the sun.
Ratslayer's mutilated face expressed neither weariness nor displeasure,
and it seemed that the giant centurion was capable of pacing like that all
day, all night and the next day - in short, for as long as necessary. Of
pacing in the same way, holding his hands to the heavy belt with its bronze
plaques, glancing in the same stern way now at the posts with the executed
men, now at the file of soldiers, kicking aside with the toe of a shaggy
boot in the same indifferent way human bones whitened by time or small
flints that happened under his feet.
That man in the hood placed himself not far from the posts on a
three-legged stool and sat there in complacent motionlessness, though poking
the sand with a twig from time to time out of boredom.
What has been said about there not being a single person beyond the
file of legionaries is not quite true. There was one person, but he simply
could not be seen by everyone. He had placed himself, not on the side where
the way up the mountain was open and from where it would have been most
convenient to watch the execution, but on the north side, where the slope
was not gentle and accessible, but uneven, with gaps and clefts, where in a
crevice, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless soil, a sickly fig tree
was trying to live.
Precisely under it, though it gave no shade, this sole spectator who
was not a participant in the execution had established himself, and had sat
on a stone from the very beginning, that is, for over three hours now. Yes,
he had chosen not the best but the worst position for watching the
execution. But still, even from there the posts could be seen, and there
one before. The drunken dancing in the arms of the telegrapher on the lawn
in front of the Pushkino telegraph office to the sounds of some itinerant
barrel-organ was worth something! The chase after some female citizens
shrieking with terror! The attempt at a fight with the barman in the Yalta
itself! Scattering green onions all over the floor of the same Yalta.
Smashing eight bottles of dry white Ai-Danil. Breaking the meter when
the taxi-driver refused to take Styopa in his cab. Threatening to arrest the
citizens who attempted to stop Styopa's obnoxiousness... In short, black
horror!
Styopa was well known in Moscow theatre circles, and everyone knew that
the man was no gift. But all the same, what the administrator was telling
about him was too much even for Styopa. Yes, too much. Even much too much...
Rimsky's needle-sharp glance pierced the administrator's face from
across the desk, and the longer the man spoke, the grimmer those eyes
became. The more lifelike and colourful the vile details with which the
administrator furnished his story, the less the findirector believed the
storyteller. And when Varenukha told how Styopa had let himself go so far as
to try to resist those who came to bring him back to Moscow, the findirector
already knew firmly that everything the administrator who had returned at
midnight was telling him, everything, was a lie! A lie from first word to
last!
Varenukha never went to Pushkino, and there was no Styopa in Pushkino.
There was no drunken telegrapher, there was no broken glass in the
tavern, Styopa did not get tied up with ropes ... none of it happened.
As soon as the findirector became firmly convinced that the
administrator was lying to him, fear crept over his body, starting from the
legs, and twice again the findirector fancied that a putrid malarial
dankness was wafting across the floor. Never for a moment taking his eyes
off the administrator - who squirmed somehow strangely in his armchair,
trying not to get out of the blue shade of the desk lamp, and screening
himself with a newspaper in some remarkable fashion from the bothersome
light - the findirector was thinking of only one thing: what did it all
mean? Why was he being lied to so brazenly, in the silent and deserted
building, by the administrator who was so late in coming back to him? And
the awareness of danger, an unknown but menacing danger, began to gnaw at
Rimsky's soul. Pretending to ignore Varenukha's dodges and tricks with the
newspaper, the findirector studied his face, now almost without listening to
the yarn Varenukha was spinning. There was something that seemed still more
inexplicable than the calumny invented. God knows why, about adventures in
Pushkino, and that something was the change in the administrator's
appearance and manners.
No matter how the man pulled the duck-like visor of his cap over his
eyes, so as to throw a shadow on his face, no matter how he fidgeted with
the newspaper, the findirector managed to make out an enormous bruise on the
right side of his face just by the nose. Besides that, the normally
full-blooded administrator was now pale with a chalk-like, unhealthy pallor,
and on this stifling night his neck was for some reason wrapped in an old
striped scarf. Add to that the repulsive manner the administrator had
acquired during the time of his absence of sucking and smacking, the sharp
change in his voice, which had become hollow and coarse, and the furtiveness
and cowardliness in his eyes, and one could boldly say that Ivan Savelyevich
Varenukha had become unrecognizable.
Something else burningly troubled the findirector, but he was unable to
grasp precisely what it was, however much he strained his feverish mind,
however hard he peered at Varenukha. One thing he could affirm, that there
was something unprecedented, unnatural in this combination of the
administrator and the familiar armchair.
"Well, we finally overpowered him, loaded him into the car,' Varenukha
boomed, peeking from behind the paper and covering the bruise with his hand.
Rimsky suddenly reached out and, as if mechanically, tapping his
fingers on the table at the same time, pushed the electric-bell button with
his palm and went numb. The sharp signal ought to have been heard without
fail in the empty building. But no signal came, and the button sank
lifelessly into the wood of the desk. The button was dead, the bell broken.
The findirector's stratagem did not escape the notice of Varenukha, who
asked, twitching, with a clearly malicious fire flickering in his eyes:
"What are you ringing for?'
'Mechanically,' the findirector replied hollowly, jerking his hand
back, and asked in turn, in an unsteady voice: "What's that on your face?'
'The car skidded, I bumped against the door-handle,' Varenukha said,
looking away.
'He's lying!' the findirector exclaimed mentally. And here his eyes
suddenly grew round and utterly insane, and he stared at the back of the
armchair.
Behind the chair on the floor two shadows lay criss-cross, one more
dense and black, the other faint and grey. The shadow of the back of the
chair and of its tapering legs could be seen distinctly on the floor, but
there was no shadow of Varenukha's head above the back of the chair, or of
the administrator's legs under its legs.
`He casts no shadow!' Rimsky cried out desperately in his mind. He
broke into shivers.
Varenukha, following Rimsky's insane gaze, looked furtively behind him
at the back of the chair, and realized that he had been found out.
He got up from the chair (the findirector did likewise) and made one
step back from the desk, clutching his briefcase in his hands.
'He's guessed, damn him! Always was clever,' Varenukha said, grinning
spitefully right in the findirector's face, and he sprang unexpectedly from
the chair to the door and quickly pushed down the catch on the lock. The
findirector looked desperately behind him, as he retreated to the window
giving on to the garden, and in this window, flooded with moonlight, saw the
face of a naked girl pressed against the glass and her naked arm reaching
through the vent-pane and trying to open the lower latch. The upper one was
already open.
It seemed to Rimsky that the light of the desk lamp was going out and
the desk was tilting. An icy wave engulfed Rimsky, but - fortunately for him
- he got control of himself and did not fall. He had enough strength left to
whisper, but not cry out:
'Help...'
Varenukha, guarding the door, hopped up and down by it, staying in air
for a long time and swaying there. Waving his hooked fingers in Rimsky's
direction, he hissed and smacked, winking to the girl in the window.
She began to hurry, stuck her red-haired head through the vent, reached
her arm down as far as she could, her nails clawing at the lower latch and
shaking the frame. Her arm began to lengthen, rubber-like, and became
covered with a putrid green. Finally the dead woman's green fingers got hold
of the latch knob, turned it, and the frame began to open. Rimsky cried out
weakly, leaned against the wall, and held his briefcase in front of him like
a shield. He realized that his end had come.
The frame swung wide open, but instead of the night's freshness and the
fragrance of the lindens, the smell of a cellar burst into the room. The
dead woman stepped on to the window-sill. Rimsky clearly saw spots of decay
on her breast.
And just then the joyful, unexpected crowing of a cock came from the
garden, from that low building beyond the shooting gallery where birds
participating in the programme were kept. A loud, trained cock trumpeted,
announcing that dawn was rolling towards Moscow from the east.
Savage fury distorted the girl's face, she emitted a hoarse oath, and
at the door Varenukha shrieked and dropped from the air to the floor.
The cock-crow was repeated, the girl clacked her teeth, and her red
hair stood on end. With the third crowing of the cock, she turned and flew
out and after her, jumping up and stretching himself horizontally in the
air, looking like a flying cupid, Varenukha slowly floated over the desk and
out the window.
White as snow, with not a single black hair on his head, the old man
who still recently had been Rimsky rushed to the door, undid the catch,
opened the door, and ran hurtling down the dark corridor. At the turn to the
stairs, moaning with fear, he felt for the switch, and the stairway lighted
up. On the stairs the shaking, trembling old man fell because he imagined
that Varenukha had softly tumbled on top of him.
Having run downstairs, Rimsky saw a watchman asleep on a chair by the
box office in the lobby. Rimsky stole past him on tiptoe and slipped out the
main entrance. Outside he felt slightly better. He recovered his senses
enough to realize, clutching his head, that his hat had stayed behind in the
office.
Needless to say, he did not go back for it, but, breathless, ran across
the wide street to the opposite corner by the movie theatre, near which a
dull reddish light hovered. In a moment he was there. No one had time to
intercept the cab.
`Make the Leningrad express, I'll tip you well,' the old man said,
breathing heavily and clutching his heart.
'I'm going to the garage,' the driver answered hatefully and turned
away.
Then Rimsky unlatched his briefcase, took out fifty roubles, and handed
them to the driver through the open front window.
A few moments later, the rattling car was flying like the wind down
Sadovoye Ring. The passenger was tossed about on his seat, and in the
fragment of mirror hanging in front of the driver, Rimsky saw now the
driver's happy eyes, now his own insane ones. Jumping out of the car in
front of the train station, Rimsky cried to the first man he saw in a white
apron with a badge:
'First class, single, I'll pay thirty,' he was pulling the banknotes
from his briefcase, crumpling them, 'no first class, get me second ... if
not -- a hard bench!'
The man with the badge kept glancing up at the lighted clock face as he
tore the banknotes from Rimsky's hand.
Five minutes later the express train disappeared from under the glass
vault of the train station and vanished clean away in the darkness. And with
it vanished Rimsky.
It is not difficult to guess that the fat man with the purple
physiognomy who was put in room 119 of the clinic was Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy.
He got to Professor Stravinsky not at once, however, but after first
visiting another place [1]. Of this other place little remained in Nikanor
Ivanovich's memory. He recalled only a desk, a bookcase and a sofa.
There a conversation was held with Nikanor Ivanovich, who had some sort
of haze before his eyes from the rush of blood and mental agitation, but the
conversation came out somehow strange, muddled, or, better to say, did not
come out at all.
The very first question put to Nikanor Ivanovich was the following:
'Are you Nikanor Ivanovich Bosoy, chairman of the house committee at
no.502-bis on Sadovaya Street?'
To this Nikanor Ivanovich, bursting into terrible laughter, replied
literally thus:
'I'm Nikanor, of course I'm Nikanor! But what the deuce kind of
chairman am I?'
'Meaning what?' the question was asked with a narrowing of eyes.
`Meaning,' he replied, `that if I was chairman, I should have
determined at once that he was an unclean power! Otherwise - what is it? A
cracked pince-nez, all in rags... what kind of foreigner's interpreter could
he be?'
'Who are you talking about?' Nikanor Ivanovich was asked.
'Koroviev!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried out. `Got himself lodged in our
apartment number fifty. Write it down - Koroviev! He must be caught at once.
Write it down - the sixth entrance. He's there.'
`Where did you get the currency?' Nikanor Ivanovich was asked soul
fully.
'As God is true, as God is almighty,' Nikanor Ivanovich began, he sees
everything, and it serves me right. I never laid a finger on it, never even
suspected what it was, this currency! God is punishing me for my iniquity,'
Nikanor Ivanovich went on with feeling, now buttoning, now unbuttoning
his shirt, now crossing himself. 'I took! I took, but I took ours. Soviet
money! I'd register people for money, I don't argue, it happened. Our
secretary Bedsornev is a good one, too, another good one! Frankly speaking,
there's nothing but thieves in the house management... But I never took
currency!'
To the request that he stop playing the fool and tell how the dollars
got into the ventilation, Nikanor Ivanovich went on his knees and swayed,
opening his mouth as if he meant to swallow a section of the parquet.
'If you want,' he mumbled, 'I'll eat dirt that I didn't do it! And
Koroviev - he's the devil!'
All patience has its limits, and the voice at the desk was now raised,
hinting to Nikanor Ivanovich that it was time he began speaking in human
language.
Here the room with that same sofa resounded with Nikanor Ivanovich's
wild roaring, as he jumped up from his knees:
'There he is! There, behind the bookcase! He's grinning! And his
pince-nez... Hold him! Spray the room with holy water!'
The blood left Nikanor Ivanovich's face. Trembling, he made crosses in
the air, rushing to the door and back, intoned some prayer, and finally
began spouting sheer gibberish.
It became perfectly clear that Nikanor Ivanovich was unfit for any
conversation. He was taken out and put in a separate room, where he calmed
down somewhat and only prayed and sobbed.
They did, of course, go to Sadovaya and visit apartment no.50. But they
did not find any Koroviev there, and no one in the house either knew or had
seen any Koroviev. The apartment occupied by the late Berlioz, as well as by
the Yalta-visiting Likhodeev, was empty, and in the study wax seals hung
peacefully on the bookcases, unbroken by anyone. With that they left
Sadovaya, and there also departed with them the perplexed and dispirited
secretary of the house management, Bedsornev.
In the evening Nikanor Ivanovich was delivered to Stravinsky's clinic.
There he became so agitated that an injection, made according to
Stravinsky's recipe, had to be given him, and only after midnight did
Nikanor Ivanovich fall asleep in room 119, every now and then emitting a
heavy, painful moan.
But the longer he slept, the easier his sleep became. He stopped
tossing and groaning, his breathing became easy and regular, and he was left
alone. Then Nikanor Ivanovich was visited by a dream, at the basis of which
undoubtedly lay the experience of that day. It began with Nikanor Ivanovich
seeing as it were some people with golden trumpets in their hands leading
him, and very solemnly, to a big lacquered door. At this door his companions
played as it were a nourish for Nikanor Ivanovich, and then from the sky a
resounding bass said merrily:
'Welcome, Nikanor Ivanovich, turn over your currency!'
Exceedingly astonished, Nikanor Ivanovich saw a black loudspeaker above
him.
Then he found himself for some reason in a theatre house, where crystal
chandeliers blazed under a gilded ceiling and Quinquet lamps [2] on the
walls. Everything was as it ought to be in a small-sized but very costly
theatre. There was a stage closed off by a velvet curtain, its dark cerise
background spangled, as if with stars, with oversized gold pieces, there was
a prompter's box, and there was even an audience.
What surprised Nikanor Ivanovich was that this audience was all of the
same sex - male - and all for some reason bearded. Besides that, it was
striking that there were no seats in the theatre, and the audience was all
sitting on the floor, splendidly polished and slippery.
Abashed in this new and big company, Nikanor Ivanovich, after a brief
hesitation, followed the general example and sat down on the parquet
Turkish-fashion, huddled between some stalwart, bearded redhead and another
citizen, pale and quite overgrown. None of the sitters paid any attention to
the newly arrived spectator.
Here the soft ringing of a bell was heard, the lights in the house went
out, and the curtain opened to reveal a lighted stage with an armchair, a
little table on which stood a golden bell, and a solid black velvet
backdrop.
An artiste came out from the wings in an evening jacket, smoothly
shaven, his hair neatly parted, young and with very pleasant features. The
audience in the house livened up, and everyone turned towards the stage. The
artiste advanced to the prompter's box and rubbed his hands.
'All sitting?'[3] he asked in a soft baritone and smiled to the house.
'Sitting, sitting,' a chorus of tenors and basses answered from the
house.
'Hm ...' the artiste began pensively, 'and how you're not sick of it. I
just don't understand! Everybody else is out walking around now, enjoying
the spring sun and the warmth, and you're stuck in here on the floor of a
stuffy theatre! Is the programme so interesting? Tastes differ, however,'
the artiste concluded philosophically.
Then he changed both the timbre of his voice and its intonation, and
announced gaily and resoundingly:
`And now for the next number on our programme - Nikanor Ivanovich
Bosoy, chairman of a house committee and director of a dietetic kitchen.
Nikanor Ivanovich, on-stage!'
General applause greeted the artiste. The surprised Nikanor Ivanovich
goggled his eyes, while the master of ceremonies, blocking the glare of the
footlights with his hand, located him among the sitters and tenderly
beckoned him on-stage with his finger. And Nikanor Ivanovich, without
knowing how, found himself on-stage. Beams of coloured light struck his eyes
from in front and below, which at once caused the house and the audience to
sink into darkness.
'Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, set us a good example, sir,' the young
artiste said soulfully, 'turn over your currency.'
Silence ensued. Nikanor Ivanovich took a deep breath and quietly began
to speak:
'I swear to God that I...'
But before he had time to get the words out, the whole house burst into
shouts of indignation. Nikanor Ivanovich got confused and fell silent.
'As far as I understand you,' said the programme announcer, 'you wanted
to swear to God that you haven't got any currency?', and he gazed
sympathetically at Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Exactly right, I haven't,' replied Nikanor Ivanovich.
'Right,' responded the artiste, 'and... excuse the indiscretion, where
did the four hundred dollars that were found in the privy of the apartment
of which you and your wife are the sole inhabitants come from?'
'Magic!' someone in the dark house said with obvious irony.
'Exactly right - magic,' Nikanor Ivanovich timidly replied, vaguely
addressing either the artiste or the dark house, and he explained:
'Unclean powers, the checkered interpreter stuck me with them.'
And again the house raised an indignant roar. When silence came, the
artiste said:
'See what La Fontaine fables I have to listen to! Stuck him with four
hundred dollars! Now, all of you here are currency dealers, so I address you
as experts: is that conceivable?'
We're not currency dealers,' various offended voices came from the
theatre, 'but, no, it's not conceivable!'
'I'm entirely of the same mind,' the artiste said firmly, `and let me
ask you: what is it that one can be stuck with?'
'A baby!' someone cried from the house.
`Absolutely correct,' the programme announcer confirmed, 'a baby, an
anonymous letter, a tract, an infernal machine, anything else, but no one
will stick you with four hundred dollars, for such idiots don't exist in
nature.' And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, the artiste added reproachfully
and sorrowfully:
`You've upset me, Nikanor Ivanovich, and I was counting on you. So, our
number didn't come off.'
Whistles came from the house, addressed to Nikanor Ivanovich.
'He's a currency dealer,' they shouted from the house, 'and we innocent
ones have to suffer for the likes of him!'
`Don't scold him,' the master of ceremonies said softly, 'he'll
repent.' And turning to Nikanor Ivanovich, his blue eyes filled with tears,
he added: 'Well, Nikanor Ivanovich, you may go to your place.'
After that the artiste rang the bell and announced loudly:
'Intermission, you blackguards!'
The shaken Nikanor Ivanovich, who unexpectedly for himself had become a
participant in some sort of theatre programme, again found himself in his
place on the floor. Here he dreamed that the house was plunged in total
darkness, and fiery red words leaped out on the walls:
Turn over your currency!' Then the curtain opened again and the master
of ceremonies invited:
'I call Sergei Gerardovich Dunchil to the stage.'
Dunchil turned out to be a fine-looking but rather unkempt man of about
fifty.
`Sergei Gerardovich,' the master of ceremonies addressed him, 'you've
been sitting here for a month and a half now, stubbornly refusing to turn
over the currency you still have, while the country is in need of it, and
you have no use for it whatsoever. And still you persist. You're an
intelligent man, you understand it all perfectly well, and yet you don't
want to comply with me.'
To my regret, there is nothing I can do, since I have no more
currency,' Dunchil calmly replied.
`Don't you at least have some diamonds?' asked the artiste. 'No
diamonds either.'
The artiste hung his head and pondered, then clapped his hands. A
middle-aged lady came out from the wings, fashionably dressed - that is, in
a collarless coat and a tiny hat. The lady looked worried, but Dunchil
glanced at her without moving an eyebrow.
'Who is this lady?' the programme announcer asked Dunchil. 'That is my
wife,' Dunchil replied with dignity and looked at the lady's long neck with
a certain repugnance.
We have troubled you, Madame Dunchil,' the master of ceremonies
adverted to the lady, 'with regard to the following: we wanted to ask you,
does your husband have any more currency?'
`He turned it all over the other time,' Madame Dunchil replied
nervously.
'Right,' said the artiste, 'well, then, if it's so, it's so. If he
turned it all over, then we ought to part with Sergei Gerardovich
immediately, there's nothing else to do! If you wish, Sergei Gerardovich,
you may leave the theatre.' And the artiste made a regal gesture.
Dunchil turned calmly and with dignity, and headed for the wings. 'Just
a moment!' the master of ceremonies stopped him. 'Allow me on parting to
show you one more number from our programme.' And again he clapped his
hands.
The black backdrop parted, and on to the stage came a young beauty in a
ball gown, holding in her hands a golden tray on which lay a fat wad tied
with candy-box ribbon and a diamond necklace from which blue, yellow and red
fire leaped in all directions.
Dunchil took a step back and his face went pale. The house froze.
'Eighteen thousand dollars and a necklace worth forty thousand in
gold,' the artiste solemnly announced, `kept by Sergei Gerardovich in the
city of Kharkov, in the apartment of his mistress, Ida Herkulanovna Vors,
whom we have the pleasure of seeing here before us and who so kindly helped
in discovering these treasures - priceless, vet useless in the hands of a
private person. Many thanks, Ida Herkulanovna!'
The beauty smiled, flashing her teeth, and her lush eyelashes
fluttered. 'And under your so very dignified mask,' the artiste adverted to
Dunchil, `is concealed a greedy spider and an astonishing bamboozler and
liar. You wore everyone out during this month and a half with your dull
obstinacy. Go home now, and let the hell your wife sets up for you be your
punishment.'
Dunchil swayed and, it seems, wanted to fall down, but was held up by
someone's sympathetic hands. Here the front curtain dropped and concealed
all those on-stage.
Furious applause shook the house, so much so that Nikanor Ivanovich
fancied the lights were leaping in the chandeliers. When the front curtain
went up, there was no one on-stage except the lone artiste. Greeted with a
second burst of applause, he bowed and began to speak:
'In the person of this Dunchil, our programme has shown you a typical
ass. I did have the pleasure of saying yesterday that the concealing of
currency is senseless. No one can make use of it under any circumstances, I
assure you. Let's take this same Dunchil. He gets a splendid salary and
doesn't want for anything. He has a splendid apartment, a wife and a
beautiful mistress. But no, instead of living quietly and peacefully without
any troubles, having turned over the currency and stones, this mercenary
blockhead gets himself exposed in front of everybody, and to top it off
contracts major family trouble. So, who's going to turn over? Any
volunteers? In that case, for the next number on our programme, a famous
dramatic talent, the actor Kurolesov, Sawa Potapovich, especially invited
here, will perform excerpts from The Covetous Knight [4] by the poet
Pushkin.'
The promised Kurolesov was not slow in coming on stage and turned out
to be a strapping and beefy man, clean-shaven, in a tailcoat and white tie.
Without any preliminaries, he concocted a gloomy face, knitted his
brows, and began speaking in an unnatural voice, glancing sidelong at the
golden bell:
`As a young scapegrace awaits a tryst with some sly strumpet...'[5]
And Kurolesov told many bad things about himself. Nikanor Ivanovich
heard Kurolesov confess that some wretched widow had gone on her knees to
him, howling, in the rain, but had failed to move the actor's callous heart.
Before his dream, Nikanor Ivanovich had been completely ignorant of the
poet Pushkin's works, but the man himself he knew perfectly well and several
times a day used to say phrases like: 'And who's going to pay the rent -
Pushkin?'[6] or `Then who did unscrew the bulb on the stairway - Pushkin?'
or 'So who's going to buy the fuel - Pushkin?'
Now, having become acquainted with one of his works, Nikanor Ivanovich
felt sad, imagined the woman on her knees, with her orphaned children, in
the rain, and involuntarily thought: "What a type, though, this Kurolesov!'
And the latter, ever raising his voice, went on with his confession and
got Nikanor Ivanovich definitively muddled, because he suddenly started
addressing someone who was not on-stage, and responded for this absent one
himself, calling himself now dear sir, now baron, now father, now son, now
formally, and now familiarly.
Nikanor Ivanovich understood only one thing, that the actor died an
evil death, crying out: 'Keys! My keys!', after which he collapsed on the
floor, gasping and carefully tearing off his tie.
Having died, Kurolesov got up, brushed the dust from his trousers,
bowed with a false smile, and withdrew to the accompaniment of thin
applause. And the master of ceremonies began speaking thus:
'We have just heard The Covetous Knight wonderfully performed by Sawa
Potapovich. This knight hoped that frolicking nymphs would come running to
him, and that many other pleasant things in the same vein would occur. But,
as you see, none of it happened, no nymphs came running to him, and the
muses paid him no tribute, and he raised no mansions, but, on the contrary,
ended quite badly, died of a stroke, devil take him, on his chest of
currency and jewels. I warn you that the same sort of thing, if not worse,
is going to happen to you if you don't turn over your currency!'
Whether Pushkin's poetry produced such an effect, or it was the prosaic
speech of the master of ceremonies, in any case a shy voice suddenly came
from the house:
'I'll turn over my currency.'
`Kindly come to the stage,' the master of ceremonies courteously
invited, peering into the dark house.
On-stage appeared a short, fair-haired citizen, who, judging by his
face, had not shaved in about three weeks.
'Beg pardon, what is your name?' the master of ceremonies inquired.
'Kanavkin, Nikolai,' the man responded shyly.
'Ah! Very pleased. Citizen Kanavkin. And so? ...'
'I'll turn it over,' Kanavkin said quietly.
'How much?'
'A thousand dollars and twenty ten-rouble gold pieces.'
'Bravo! That's all, then?'
The programme announcer stared straight into Kanavkin's eyes, and it
even seemed to Nikanor Ivanovich that those eyes sent out rays that
penetrated Kanavkin like X-rays. The house stopped breathing.
`I believe you!' the artiste exclaimed finally and extinguished his
gaze. I do! These eyes are not lying! How many times have I told you that
your basic error consists in underestimating the significance of the human
eye. Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes - never!
A sudden question is put to you, you don't even flinch, in one second you
get hold of yourself and know what you must say to conceal the truth, and
you speak quite convincingly, and not a wrinkle on your face moves, but -
alas - the truth which the question stirs up from the bottom of your soul
leaps momentarily into your eyes, and it's all over! They see it, and you're
caught!'
Having delivered, and with great ardour, this highly convincing speech,
the artiste tenderly inquired of Kanavkin:
'And where is it hidden?'
With my aunt, Porokhovnikova, on Prechistenka.'
'Ah! That's... wait... that's Klavdia Ilyinishna, isn't it?'
'Yes.'
'Ah, yes, yes, yes, yes! A separate little house? A little front garden
opposite? Of course, I know, I know! And where did you put it there?'
'In the cellar, in a candy tin...'
The artiste clasped his hands.
'Have you ever seen the like?' he cried out, chagrined. "Why, it'll get
damp and mouldy there! Is it conceivable to entrust currency to such people?
Eh? Sheer childishness! By God! ...'
Kanavkin himself realized he had fouled up and was in for it, and he
hung his tufty head.
'Money,' the artiste went on, 'must be kept in the state bank, in
special dry and well-guarded rooms, and by no means in some aunt's cellar,
where it may, in particular, suffer damage from rats! Really, Kanavkin, for
shame! You're a grown-up!'
Kanavkin no longer knew what to do with himself, and merely picked at
the lapel of his jacket with his finger.
'Well, all right,' the artiste relented, 'let bygones be...' And he
suddenly added unexpectedly: 'Ah, by the way ... so that in one ... to save
a trip ... this same aunt also has some, eh?'
Kanavkin, never expecting such a turn of affairs, wavered, and the
theatre fell silent.
'Ehh, Kanavkin...' the master of ceremonies said in tender reproach,
'and here I was praising him! Look, he just went and messed it up for no
reason at all! It's absurd, Kanavkin! Wasn't I just talking about eyes?
Can't we see that the aunt has got some? Well, then why do you torment us
for nothing?'
'She has!' Kanavkin cried dashingly.
'Bravo!' cried the master of ceremonies.
'Bravo!' the house roared frightfully.
When things quieted down, the master of ceremonies congratulated
Kanavkin, shook his hand, offered him a ride home to the city in a car, and
told someone in the wings to go in that same car to fetch the aunt and ask
her kindly to come for the programme at the women's theatre.
'Ah, yes, I wanted to ask you, has the aunt ever mentioned where she
hides hers?' the master of ceremonies inquired, courteously offering
Kanavkin a cigarette and a lighted match. As he lit up, the man grinned
somehow wistfully.
'I believe you, I believe you,' the artiste responded with a sigh. 'Not
just her nephew, the old pinchfist wouldn't tell the devil himself! Well,
so, we'll try to awaken some human feelings in her. Maybe not all the
strings have rotted in her usurious little soul. Bye-bye, Kanavkin!'
And the happy Kanavkin drove off. The artiste inquired whether there
were any others who wished to turn over their currency, but was answered
with silence.
'Odd birds, by God!' the artiste said, shrugging, and the curtain hid
him.
The lights went out, there was darkness for a while, and in it a
nervous tenor was heard singing from far away:
There great heaps of gold do shine, and all those heaps of gold are
mine..."
Then twice the sound of subdued applause came from somewhere.
'Some little lady in the women's theatre is turning hers over,' Nikanor
Ivanovich's red-bearded neighbour spoke up unexpectedly, and added with a
sigh: 'Ah, if it wasn't for my geese! ... I've got fighting geese in
Lianozovo, my dear fellow ... they'll die without me, I'm afraid. A fighting
bird's delicate, it needs care ... Ah, if it wasn't for my geese!
'... They won't surprise me with Pushkin...' And again he began to
sigh.
Here the house lit up brightly, and Nikanor Ivanovich dreamed that
cooks in white chef's hats and with ladles in their hands came pouring from
all the doors. Scullions dragged in a cauldron of soup and a stand with
cut-up rye bread. The spectators livened up. The jolly cooks shuttled among
the theatre buffs, ladled out bowls of soup, and distributed bread.
'Dig in, lads,' the cooks shouted, 'and turn over your currency! What's
the point of sitting here? Who wants to slop up this swill! Go home, have a
good drink, a little bite, that's the way!'
'Now, you, for instance, what're you doing sitting here, old man?"
Nikanor Ivanovich was directly addressed by a fat cook with a
raspberry-coloured neck, as he offered him a bowl in which a lone cabbage
leaf floated in some liquid.
'I don't have any! I don't! I don't!' Nikanor Ivanovich cried out in a
terrible voice. 'You understand, I don't!'
`You don't?' the cook bellowed in a menacing bass. 'You don't?' he
asked in a tender woman's voice. `You don't, you don't,' he murmured
soothingly, turning into the nurse Praskovya Fyodorovna.
She was gently shaking Nikanor Ivanovich by the shoulder as he moaned
in his sleep. Then the cooks melted away, and the theatre with its curtain
broke up. Through his tears, Nikanor Ivanovich made out his room in the
hospital and two people in white coats, who were by no means casual cooks
getting at people with their advice, but the doctor and that same Praskovya
Fyodorovna, who was holding not a bowl but a little dish covered with gauze,
with a syringe lying on it.
`What is all this?' Nikanor Ivanovich said bitterly, as they were
giving him the injection. 'I don't have any and that's that! Let Pushkin
turn over his currency for them. I don't have any!'
'No, you don't, you don't,' the kind-hearted Praskovya Fyodorovna
soothed him, 'and if you don't, there's no more to be said.'
After the injection, Nikanor Ivanovich felt better and fell asleep
without any dreams.
But, thanks to his cries, alarm was communicated to room 120, where the
patient woke up and began looking for his head, and to room 118, where the
unknown master became restless and wrung his hands in anguish, looking at
the moon, remembering the last bitter autumn night of his life, a strip of
light under the basement door, and uncurled hair.
From room 118, the alarm flew by way of the balcony to Ivan, and he
woke up and began to weep.
But the doctor quickly calmed all these anxious, sorrowing heads, and
they began to fall asleep. Ivan was the last to become oblivious, as dawn
was already breaking over the river. After the medicine, which suffused his
whole body, calm came like a wave and covered him. His body grew lighter,
his head basked in the warm wind of reverie. He fell asleep, and the last
waking thing he heard was the pre-dawn chirping of birds in the woods. But
they soon fell silent, and he began dreaming that the sun was already going
down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was cordoned off by a double
cordon ...
The sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, and the mountain was
cordoned off by a double cordon.
The cavalry ala that had cut across the procurator's path around noon
came trotting up to the Hebron gate of the city. Its way had already been
prepared. The infantry of the Cappadocian cohort had pushed the
conglomeration of people, mules and camels to the sides, and the ala,
trotting and raising white columns of dust in the sky, came to an
intersection where two roads met: the south road leading to Bethlehem, and
the north-west road to Jaffa. The ala raced down the north-west road. The
same Cappadocians were strung out along the sides of the road, and in good
time had driven to the sides of it all the caravans hastening to the feast
in Yershalaim. Crowds of pilgrims stood behind the Cappadocians, having
abandoned their temporary striped tents, pitched right on the grass. Going
on for about a half-mile, the ala caught up with the second cohort of the
Lightning legion and, having covered another half-mile, was the first to
reach the foot of Bald Mountain. Here they dismounted. The commander broke
the ala up into squads, and they cordoned off the whole foot of the small
hill, leaving open only the way up from the Jaffa road.
After some time, the ala was joined at the hill by the second cohort,
which climbed one level higher and also encircled the hill in a wreath.
Finally the century under the command of Mark Ratslayer arrived. It
went stretched out in files along the sides of the road, and between these
files, convoyed by the secret guard, the three condemned men rode in a cart,
white boards hanging around their necks with 'robber and rebel' written on
each of them in two languages - Aramaic and Greek.
The cart with the condemned men was followed by others laden with
freshly hewn posts with crosspieces, ropes, shovels, buckets and axes. Six
executioners rode in these carts. They were followed on horseback by the
centurion Mark, the chief of the temple guard of Yershalaim, and that same
hooded man with whom Pilate had had a momentary meeting in a darkened room
of the palace.
A file of soldiers brought up the rear of the procession, and behind it
walked about two thousand of the curious, undaunted by the infernal heat and
wishing to be present at the interesting spectacle. The curious from the
city were now joined by the curious from among the pilgrims, who were
admitted without hindrance to the tail of the procession. Under the shrill
cries of the heralds who accompanied the column and cried aloud what Pilate
had cried out at around noon, the procession drew itself up Bald Mountain.
The ala admitted everyone to the second level, but the second century
let only those connected with the execution go further up, and then,
manoeuvring quickly, spread the crowd around the entire hill, so that people
found themselves between the cordons of infantry above and cavalry below.
Now they could watch the execution through the sparse line of the
infantry.
And so, more than three hours had gone by since the procession climbed
the mountain, and the sun was already going down over Bald Mountain, but the
heat was still unbearable, and the soldiers in both cordons suffered from
it, grew weary with boredom, and cursed the three robbers in their hearts,
sincerely wishing them the speediest death.
The little commander of the ala, his brow moist and the back of his
white shirt dark with sweat, having placed himself at the foot of the hill
by the open passage, went over to the leather bucket of the first squad
every now and then, scooped handfuls of water from it, drank and wetted his
turban. Somewhat relieved by that, he would step away and again begin pacing
back and forth on the dusty road leading to the top. His long sword slapped
against his laced leather boot. The commander wished to give his cavalrymen
an example of endurance, but, pitying his soldiers, he allowed them to stick
their spears pyramid-like in the ground and throw their white cloaks over
them. Under these tents, the Syrians hid from the merciless sun. The buckets
were quickly emptied, and cavalrymen from different squads took turns going
to fetch water in the gully below the hill, where in the thin shade of
spindly mulberries a muddy brook was living out its last days in the
devilish heat. There, too, catching the unsteady shade, stood the bored
horse-handlers, holding the quieted horses.
The weariness of the soldiers and the abuse they aimed at the robbers
were understandable. The procurator's apprehensions concerning the disorders
that might occur at the time of the execution in the city of Yershalaim, so
hated by him, fortunately were not borne out. And when the fourth hour of
the execution came, there was, contrary to all expectations, not a single
person left between the two files, the infantry above and the cavalry below.
The sun had scorched the crowd and driven it back to Yershalaim. Beyond
the file of two Roman centuries there were only two dogs that belonged to no
one knew whom and had for some reason ended up on the hill. But the heat got
to them, too, and they lay down with their tongues hanging out, panting and
paying no attention to the green-backed lizards, the only beings not afraid
of the sun, darting among the scorching stones and some sort of big-thorned
plants that crept on the ground.
No one attempted to rescue the condemned men either in Yershalaim
itself, flooded with troops, or here on the cordoned-off hill, and the crowd
went back to the city, for indeed there was absolutely nothing interesting
in this execution, while there in the city preparations were under way for
the great feast of Passover, which was to begin that evening.
The Roman infantry on the second level suffered still more than the
cavalry. The only thing the centurion Ratslayer allowed his soldiers was to
take off their helmets and cover their heads with white headbands dipped in
water, but he kept them standing, and with their spears in their hands. He
himself, in the same kind of headband, but dry, not wet, walked about not
far from the group of executioners, without even taking the silver plaques
with lions' muzzles off his shirt, or removing his greaves, sword and knife.
The sun beat straight down on the centurion without doing him any harm,
and the lions' muzzles were impossible to look at - the eyes were devoured
by the dazzling gleam of the silver which was as if boiling in the sun.
Ratslayer's mutilated face expressed neither weariness nor displeasure,
and it seemed that the giant centurion was capable of pacing like that all
day, all night and the next day - in short, for as long as necessary. Of
pacing in the same way, holding his hands to the heavy belt with its bronze
plaques, glancing in the same stern way now at the posts with the executed
men, now at the file of soldiers, kicking aside with the toe of a shaggy
boot in the same indifferent way human bones whitened by time or small
flints that happened under his feet.
That man in the hood placed himself not far from the posts on a
three-legged stool and sat there in complacent motionlessness, though poking
the sand with a twig from time to time out of boredom.
What has been said about there not being a single person beyond the
file of legionaries is not quite true. There was one person, but he simply
could not be seen by everyone. He had placed himself, not on the side where
the way up the mountain was open and from where it would have been most
convenient to watch the execution, but on the north side, where the slope
was not gentle and accessible, but uneven, with gaps and clefts, where in a
crevice, clutching at the heaven-cursed waterless soil, a sickly fig tree
was trying to live.
Precisely under it, though it gave no shade, this sole spectator who
was not a participant in the execution had established himself, and had sat
on a stone from the very beginning, that is, for over three hours now. Yes,
he had chosen not the best but the worst position for watching the
execution. But still, even from there the posts could be seen, and there