VI + 

Everything was as usual, just as if there had been no war at all and Sasha had never been imprisoned in Nagasaki. Just as usual the fishermen, with their giant boots, were celebrating a lucky catch of sturgeon, while bands of thieves danced in the old way, Sasha playing, just as he used to do, sailor songs brought to him from every inlet of the globe. + 

But already dangerous, stormy times were at hand. One evening the whole town became stirred and agitated, as though roused by a tocsin, and, at an unusual hour, the streets grew black with people. Small white sheets were going from hand to hand, bearing the miraculous word “Liberty,” which the whole immeasurable confident country repeated to itself that evening. + 

There followed clear, holiday-like, exulting days, and their radiance lit up even the vaults of Gambrinous’. Students and workmen came in and beautiful young girls came too. People with blazing eyes mounted on those barrels, which had seen so much in their time, and spoke. Everything was not comprehensible in the words they uttered, but the hearts of all throbbed and expanded to meet the flaming hope and the great love that vibrated through them. + 

“Sasha, the ‘Marseillaise’! Go ahead with the ‘Marseillaise’!” + 

No, this was not at all like that other “Marseillaise” that the mayor had grudgingly allowed to be played during the week of the Franco-Russian celebrations. Endless processions, with songs and red flags, were going along the streets. The women wore red ribbons and red flowers. People who were utter strangers met and shook hands with each other with happy smiles. But suddenly all this jubilation disappeared, as if washed out like children’s footsteps on the sands. The sub-inspector of police, fat, small, choking, with bloodshot protruding eyes, his face red as an overripe tomato, stormed into Gambrinous’. + 

“What? Who’s the proprietor of this place?” he rattled out. “Bring him to me.” Suddenly his eyes fell on Sasha, who was standing, fiddle in hand. + 

“So you’re the proprietor, are you! Shut up! What, playing anthems? No anthems permitted.” + 

“There will be no more anthems at all, your Highness,” Sasha replied calmly. + 

The police dog turned purple, brought his raised index finger to Sasha’s very nose, and shook it menacingly from left to right. + 

“None⁠—what⁠—ever.” + 

“I understand your Highness⁠—none whatever.” + 

“I’ll teach you revolutions! I’ll teach you!” + 

The sub-inspector bounded out of the beershop like a bomb, and with his departure everyone became flattened and dejected. And gloom descended on the whole town. For dark, anxious, repugnant rumours were floating about. One talked cautiously. People feared to betray themselves by a glance, were afraid of their own shadows, afraid of their own thoughts. The town thought for the first time with dread of the sewer that was rumbling under its feet, down there by the sea into which it had been throwing out, for so many years, its poisoned refuse. The town shielded the plate-glass windows of its magnificent shops, protected with patrols its proud monuments, and posted artillery in the yards of its fine houses in case of emergency. But in the outskirts, in the fetid dens, in the rotting garrets, throbbed, prayed, and cried with awe the people chosen by God, abandoned long ago by the wrathful Bible God, but still believing that the measure of its heavy trials was not yet spent. + 

Down there by the sea, in those streets that resembled black, sticky drainpipes, a mysterious work was progressing. The doors of the cabarets, teashops, and night-shelters were open all night. + 

In the morning the pogrom began. These people who, so recently uplifted by the pure, general joy, so recently softened by the light of the coming brotherhood of man, who had gone through the streets singing beneath the symbols of the liberty they had won⁠—these very people were now going to kill, not because they had been ordered to kill, not because they had any hatred against the Jews, with whom they had often close friendships, not even for the sake of loot, which was doubtful, but because the sly dirty devil that lives deep down in each human being was whispering in their ears: “Go. Nothing will be punished: the forbidden curiosity of the murderer, the sensuality of rape, the power over other people’s lives.” + 

In these days of the pogroms, Sasha, with his funny, monkey-like, purely Jewish physionomy, went freely about the town. They did not touch him. There was about him that immovable courage of the soul, that absence even of fear of fear which guards the weakest better than any revolver. But on one occasion, when, jammed against the wall, he was trying to avoid the crowd that flowed like a hurricane down the full width of the street, a mason in a red shirt and a white apron threatened him with his pointed crowbar and grunted out, “Sheeny! Smash the sheeny! Smash him to the gutter.” + 

Someone seized his hands from behind. + 

“Stop, devil! It’s Sasha, you lout!” + 

The mason stopped. In this drunken, delirious, insane moment he was ready to kill anyone⁠—his father, his sister, the priest, the Orthodox God himself⁠—but he was also ready, as an infant, to obey the orders of any strong will. He grinned like an idiot, spat, and wiped his nose with his hand. Suddenly his eyes fell on the white, nervous little dog, which was trembling all over as it rubbed itself against Sasha. The man bent down quickly, caught it by the hind legs, lifted it up, struck it against the paving-stone, and then took to his heels. Sasha looked at him in silence. He was running all bent forward, his hands stretched out, without his cap, his mouth open, his eyes white and round with madness. + 

On Sasha’s boots were sprinkled the brains of little Bielotchka. Sasha wiped off the stains with his handkerchief. + 